Marlon Moraes felt the stoppage in his second-round TKO defeat to Cory Sandhagen was a little premature.
Sandhagen returned to the win column with an impressive spinning wheel kick that dropped Moraes in the UFC Fight Island 5 headliner last night. The referee stopped the bout soon after as Sandhagen pounced to land ground and pound on the Brazilian.
While many had no problems with the stoppage, some observers felt the fight could have gone a bit longer and Moraes certainly agrees.
“I thought we had a very good first round. But I thought I won the round,” Moraes said during the post-fight show on ESPN+ (via Sherdog). “And then he started the second and I don’t know, I think he kind of catch me with a kick and bloodied my eye a little bit and right after he surprised me. He didn’t come this way, he came the other way and that’s it.
“Probably a little early stoppage but whatever. I thought I was [OK to continue] but the ref just jumped on me. I didn’t have time enough to get up.”
Regardless of how he felt about the stoppage, Moraes made no excuses about the defeat and believes it just wasn’t his day as he was simply caught.
“I just got caught,” Moraes added. “He catch me. I was doing good the first round, it was a good fight. I was very excited for this fight. I knew we were going to do the ‘Fight of the Night’ for sure.
“But unfortunately, I got caught. I caught a lot of guys before but that was my day.”
What did you think of the stoppage?