Just two days after suffering a disappointing loss to Renan Barao in the main event of UFC 149, Urijah Faber joined up with The MMA Hour to talk about his performance and new-found position in the UFC bantamweight division.
“I watched the fight, and after the fight I didn’t feel liked I’d won the fight, but I didn’t know why exactly,” noted Faber, who elaborates on his experience.
I wasn’t really beat up. I know I broke my rib in the first round and my leg hurt a little bit. But I watched it and it was just basically kind of an uneventful fight, a little bit. I just didn’t do enough at any given time to be like, ‘alright, I won that round.’
Though it sounds like Faber isn’t all that thrilled with his performance against the new UFC interim bantamweight champ, he doesn’t seem to feel as though the outcome is telling of any sort of decline from his place in the sport of MMA, nor the UFC’s bantamweight division.
Faber explains:
I’m right there with the top guys. Renan Barao is on a win streak. I don’t feel like I [was] beat up in the fight, I feel like I just lost. I didn’t do enough to win. I landed some good punches, I was elusive in the fight. I just fought Dominick Cruz, I thought won that fight, I knocked him down three times, didn’t really take too much damage there also. It’s not like I’m getting severely outclassed here by any of these guys. I’m just a smidgen off and I’ve got some things to work on.
What Faber says is true to an extent—neither his loss to Cruz or Barao were blowouts, though the latter was certainly one-sided.
Faber is 5-5 over his last 10 contests—5-0 in non-title fights, 0-5 in title fights. While that record would seem to suggest he is no longer fighting at a championship level, it also suggests that he is really knocking at the door.
Whether he gets another chance to kick it down, something he believes he remains able to do, is yet to be seen.
Hap tip to mmafighting.com for the MMA Hour video.
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