We haven’t seen the last of Yoel Romero in a title fight, at least at middleweight.
Romero suffered a unanimous decision defeat to Israel Adesanya in what was a lackluster middleweight title headliner at UFC 248 in March.
Both fighters received criticism for their lack of activity during the fight and although many believe Adesanya did enough to win, there are also some observers who felt Romero should have won the title.
Regardless, the Cuban is 1-4 in his last five fights and has failed to come out on top in each of his scheduled middleweight title fights. It would be a miracle if he got another title shot at least going by UFC president Dana White’s remarks.
But for American Top Team head coach Mike Brown — who rates Romero as the greatest athlete he’s ever seen — he wouldn’t be surprised if the 42-year-old clawed back to another title shot.
“He’s the greatest athlete I’ve ever seen, (even) at this age,” Brown told MMA Junkie. “What he can do with his body is incredible, I’ve never seen anything like it: speed, reaction time, agility. I mean, he’s in his 40s and his reaction time is incredible, the speed is incredible, his coordination is incredible.
“The more I see guys like him, the more I realize what a terrible athlete I am. I can’t imagine what he was like when he was 30 or 25. It must have been unbelievable. I know he’s a world champion in wrestling and this is so difficult, wrestling is so deep and so many people are competing for the same title, it’s very competitive. He got a very late start in MMA and he’s done some amazing things.
“You have to worry about time catches up to everybody, but right now – how he looks in the gym and what he can do – I mean, I definitely see him getting back to the title.”
Leading up to UFC 248, Romero claimed he wanted to fight for another decade or so. While Brown is uncertain about that, he isn’t ruling out the possibility either given how Romero is currently performing at his age.
As for the fight with Adesanya, he felt his fighter did enough to earn the victory though he acknowledged it was a very close fight.
“I don’t know about that [Romero fighting another 10 years], but I mean I can’t believe he looks like he does right now,” Brown said. “You don’t know when things are going to change, but right now, he can beat anybody in the world. On any night he’s as good as anybody. He was right there that night. That night, when it came down to the scorecards – even though it was a boring fight, people didn’t like it – but in my head I thought he had done enough in those rounds to win.
“Watching it live, the leg kicks didn’t feel like enough. To me, it felt like Adesanya was on the run more or maybe in danger of getting finished more. I mean you can’t always see the angles if the punches are landing or not, but Yoel would attack and Adesanya was stumbling around, maybe the punches were missing, but its hard to tell sometimes. But from the outside I thought he had won. But again I knew they were close again, so I didn’t know how the judges had scored it, but if I were scoring it I’d say he had won three of those rounds, but again, I knew they were close enough to argue either way.”
What do you make of Brown’s comments?