Esther Lin, MMA Fighting
Anthony Pettis stunned the fight world when he successfully moved up in weight to 170 and knocked out Stephen Thompson back in March, re-establishing himself as a serious threat to anyone in his weight classes. Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to put in a similar winning performance against Nate Diaz at UFC 241.
The younger Diaz brother smothered Pettis with an endless stream of punches, keeping “Showtime” from executing enough of spinning s**t to win their fight. At the end of 15 minutes, the judges would hand Diaz the win with 30-27×2 and 29-28 scores (watch the highlights here).
We never got to hear much about what Pettis thought of the fight or his performance because he was whisked away to the hospital. Now Anthony is dropping updates on his social media accounts filling us in on the not very glamorous end to his night.
”Congrats, Nate Diaz,” he wrote in one. The second has a picture of his foot looking unusually lumpy. “You have a hard ass head homie, lol.”
According to Pettis’ coach Duke Roufus (via Ariel Helwani), Pettis broke his foot in the first round of the fight, which would explain what the commentary booth was seeing and perhaps contributed to Nate’s ease in pushing Pettis back into a corner and lighting him up like a CBD blunt. The break is bad enough that surgery is being discussed, but whether that happens is something to be determined once the team returns to Milwaukee.
Pettis drops to 22-9 (9-8 UFC). It’s been rough going for the former Wheaties spokesman since he lost the 155 pound belt to Rafael dos Anjos back in 2015. That was the first loss of a three fight skid, and “Showtime” has been going win-loss-win-loss for eight fights now. Of course, there’s no shame in losing to the names on that run – Holloway, Poirier, Ferguson, and Diaz. The wins – over Oliveira, Miller, Chiesa, and Thompson – speak for themselves.
Pettis may not be winning another UFC title without some big changes, but we’re still going to tune in whenever it’s “Showtime.”