At a UFC on FX 1 press conference with Melvin Guillard, he discusses his defeat to Jim Miller in the main event Friday night, the status of his ground game, whether he regrets changing camps, what went wrong in the fight, where he views himself in the lightweight division and more.
On his performance:
I came in tonight very focused. The key for me to my success right now is to be patient. I thought I had Jim hurt. He’s very tough. For me to hurt a guy like Jim, I didn’t want to overdo it and just fatigue my arms, so I tried to back off and reset and go back in again. I’m still having trouble figuring out how he caught my back. I don’t regret changing camps. I’ve been working on my back escapes and it’s crazy. I knew what exactly to do to get him off my back but when he grabbed me, he had it tight at that point. I couldn’t do anything.
On the people criticizing his jiu-jitsu and why it is still a continuing problem:
It wasn’t a problem. I mean, I did everything right. I knew exactly how to shake him off my back. I just happened, when he jumped on my back, I was actually going to go down, so I could pull his arm away from my throat. But when he reset, it shook me. He collapsed my hip and I fell down. At that point, I had to try to roll over to the other side. I was sticking to the basics of what I learned. You know a lot of people criticize my ground game, I’m not going to sit here and think I have the best ground game because obviously I don’t. I’ve lost fights on submissions. To lose to a guy like Jim, I wasn’t emotional about this loss like I was for the [Joe] Lauzon fight because I really feel in my heart the Lauzon fight was a fluke.
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