UFC middleweight striker, Joaquin Buckley has revealed the reasoning regarding his decision to host Detriot Urban Survival Training self-defense instructor, Dale Brown in his corner at UFC Vegas 48 last weekend, claiming that the practitioner’s techniques are also well advised.
Buckley, who opened the UFC Apex facility’s main card, managed to narrowly survive a late rally against Abdul Razak Alhassan to score a close split decision victory against the Ghana-born knockout kingpin.
The victory came as Buckley’s second consecutively, following a third round knockout win against Antonio Arroyo last year – which returned him to the winner’s enclosure.
UFC middleweight Sean Strickland recently called out and questioned Dale Brown and his techniques
However, Buckley hit the headlines during fight week ahead of UFC Vegas 48, with reports detailing how the aforenoted self-defense instructor, Brown would be cornering him for his fight with Alhassan.
Speaking with Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour, Joaquin Buckley revealed his reasoning for starring Brown in his corner, intending to capitalize on Brown’s recent viral success.
“We just started brainstorming, what if I put this man (Dale Brown) in my corner?” Joaquin Buckley said. “What type of impact would that make? After that, history was made on Feb. 19. When everything started blowing up the way that it did, I reached out to him and was like, ‘Hey, would you be cool being in my corner?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, I think we’ll pretty much blow up the internet.’ which we did. It went crazy.”
“He was down from the get-go,” Joaquin Buckley said. “Shout out to Dale Brown. He’s a cool dude, he gets a lot of negativity about the things that he’s doing but he’s legit in the self-defense and security game (for) 26 years. He was a military paratrooper, he knows what he’s talking about. He’s been in the game for a minute.”
Following his close decision victory over Alhassan, Buckley maintained that he was now only interested in securing his next bout – against an opponent with equal or more followers than him across social media.