You know, we aren’t here to say who is right and who is wrong or to dictate what anyone should do, but it’s hard not to admit that Junior Dos Santos took an amazing amount of punishment at UFC 166 against Cain Velasquez. In this uber-macho sport that we like to call MMA there is a stigma about being a tough guy and enduring a lot of punishment, but as fans, we might require a lot out of these fighters that could really affect them down the line. If you are a fan of a fighter, and I mean a real fan, you probably don’t want to see them get hurt so that they can live to fight another day, as opposed to keep their ego inflated.
There has been a lot of talk online about Junior Dos Santos and his team, how no one thought to stop the fight to protect him. His BJJ coach, Yuri Carlton, spoke with MMAFighting about it.
“To be honest, I never considered throwing in the towel,” he said. “If something like that ever happens, Luiz Carlos Dorea (boxing coach) would be the one to decide. I was hoping for the knockout all the time. In the fifth round, ‘Cigano’ went for that choke. Anything can happen. We see a guy lose the whole fight and then win in the last round. It happens all the time. We’re not impressed by blood or anything like that, neither is ‘Cigano’. He always fights for the win, no matter what.
“He always tries that submission in the gym, and he submits a lot of sparring partners here with it,” Carlton said about dos Santos’ submission attempt seconds before the end of the fight. “He went for it automatically. Cain Velasquez rolled to defend and ‘Cigano’ felt with his face on the ground and couldn’t fight anymore. But even if he didn’t hit his head on the ground he wouldn’t win anyway, it wouldn’t change the fight. He was already beat. We hoped he could land a good punch even if he was completely tired, but it didn’t happen.
“After the second round, he was fighting in the autopilot mode but he didn’t tell me he thought he lost in the second round,” he said. “But that’s normal. Sometimes you go out with a punch or a good elbow but keep fighting automatically. That’s normal.”