Photo by Chris Unger/Zuffa LLC
“I think I know who I am now: I’m a heel. You don’t like what I do. I like to make you mad.”
Top-three UFC heavyweight Curtis Blayde’s has declared himself MMA’s latest heel following his dominant — albeit lackluster — unanimous decision win over Alexander Volkov in the UFC on ESPN 11 main event.
“I think I know who I am now: I’m a heel,” Blaydes said following his win over Volkov on Saturday (h/t MMA Fighting’s Steven Marrocco). “You don’t like what I do. I like to make you mad. I like to win.”
Blaydes did warn MMA fans beforehand that he was going to employ a wrestling-heavy style against Volkov but the 29-year-old has faced criticism nonetheless.
“That’s probably the best part about this win is I predicted this, and I did it for 25 minutes,” he said. “It didn’t look the best, but I’m OK with having a gritty win like that. I know a lot of fans didn’t like it. I’m OK with that. It makes me happy. I’m very happy with the result. It was a dominant decision. I can live with that.”
Blaydes acknowledged that he did tire in the championship rounds and will work on pacing himself and limiting his takedowns in future fights.
“I’m going to work on it,” Blaydes said. “You live and you learn. It’s always good to learn lessons, especially when you win and learn a lesson. Next time, I’ll be a lot more judicious with my takedowns and the pace. Next time we get a tall guy like that, I didn’t really get to bring in anyone who was like him. I wasn’t really used to the dimensions, and it presented problems when I was in the guard. It presented some problems that we weren’t really ready for it, but we made it.”
UFC president Dana White slammed Blaydes for his performance and said the former NJCAA wrestler looked ‘stupid’ after talking ‘sh-t’ about fighter pay in the leadup to the bout.
“Curtis Blaydes has the wrong attitude, as far as I’m concerned. I don’t have anything against the kid at all… When you talk sh-t like he talked this week, you better come in and whoop somebody’s ass when you talk sh-t like that.
“When you talk the sh-t that he talked and perform like he performed tonight, you look stupid.”