Junior dos Santos will reportedly be fighting Francis Ngannou at UFC 239, and the last man Ngannou defeated is a man whom dos Santos has a very long history with in Cain Velasquez. When Junior dos Santos sat back to watch the Velasquez/Ngannou fight at UFC Phoenix, he was surprised at the outcome…or at least how swiftly it arrived:
“I was very curious to see how would be his performance right now, you know” dos Santos told Helen Yee sports.” And right in front of the TV watching the fight, but it was 26 seconds. Too fast. So he couldn’t show anything, you know? I was expecting to see more of him, and I couldn’t. But, yeah, once again, Francis Ngannou showed the world how powerful he is.”
With such a small sample size, Junior dos Santos cannot get a good handle on where Cain Velasquez is right now as an MMA athlete, but there is one thing that he does feel certain of: Velasquez’s knee had nothing to do with the outcome of the fight:
“No way. That was sounding like excuses,” dos Santos said frankly. “I’m sorry, Cain Velasquez, but that was sounding like an excuse for the loss. Because everybody saw that the punch connected, and then he fell on top of the knee. Maybe he fell on the knee after the punch and not before the punch, you know?”
It appears Cain Velasquez may agree with dos Santos after all…sort of. Velasquez’s head coach Javier Mendez revealed in a recent interview that Cain Velasquez now claims to have been fine until an alleged “hammerfist to the back of the head.” But whether the knee was an excuse or if the alleged hammerfist is another one, Junior dos Santos knows how difficult it can be to accept losing:
“But yeah, a fight’s a fight. Nobody likes to lose. And when you lose, that’s the worst moment in the world, the worst moment of your life. So I understand him.”
Do you believe Cain Velasquez is making excuses for his loss to Francis Ngannou at UFC Phoenix?
