When Conor McGregor hopped the fence to embrace teammate Charlie Ward following his victory over John Redmond at Bellator 187, he may have completely changed the course of the fight in the process
That is the perspective of John Redmond, the man who now has a KO loss on his record against Ward.
Redmond believes that the fight could and should have continued. McGregor’s actions may have not just “overshadowed” the event but could have been directly influential on the decision to stop the bout altogether:
“We had a good fight in there and I think him jumping into the cage overshadowed the whole fight and the whole event,” Redmond told MMA Fighting.
“I don’t want to piss and moan about it. I don’t want anyone taking pity on me or anything like that. I didn’t get the win, but I showed I was in charge of the fight up until that big shot at the end of the round.
“I think the fight was far from finished and all the madness that was going on in there didn’t help me getting a chance to go out for the second.”
McGregor, following his exit from the cage, turned around and shouted: “that was a f*cking stoppage” towards officials. Redmond believes his intervention led to a commissioner’s decision to award Ward the KO rather than let the fight go to the second round
“I think there was a lot of panic in the ring as soon as he got in there. I think everybody was just concerned with getting him out of there as quickly as possible,” Redmond said.
“Marc Goddard was going to let the fight go into the second, but then the commission seemed to overrule his decision. I think that decision was swayed because of the circus and madness that was going down at the time. It was just a mad scene. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
