Florian hits back at Dana White’s comments
Keith Florian, the brother of UFC lightweight contender, Kenny Florian has hit back at UFC President Dana White in the wake of his comments following UFC 118 in Boston, Massachusetts, saying maybe White doesn’t know what he’s looking for when he’s watching a fight.
Speaking via MMAWeekly.com, Keith said:
“Honestly my reaction is Dana is just being Dana. I just don’t know if he really understands the little nuances of what’s going on in the fight, I think he’s really just looking at things for face value. If you look back it’s more of a wrestling thing than anything else. The fight against Sherk, at that time Sherk was a better fighter, that’s it. B.J. took him down, and Gray took him down again. It’s just a matter of wrestling, that’s what we need to work on. We need to get it so ingrained in his head that it becomes muscle memory.”
“It’s really tough when you want to throw, and you want to throw hard. You want to throw something that’s going to knock your opponent out, and also thinking that in the back of your head, if I do that I’m going to get taken down. That being said, no one really knows what’s going on in a fighter’s mind or what exactly is going on unless you’re in the cage with that person at that time. In between rounds, especially between the second and third, Firas said ‘get in the middle of that Octagon and throw’ and you’ll hear me ‘we need a finish’ and we weren’t trying to sugar coat anything. We told him what we needed to do.”
“We’re obviously not doing enough wrestling and it’s showing. I made a comment in the Boston Herald and I’ll say the same comment to you, he proved in the last two fights that his wrestling has improved. Not only did (Clay) Guida not take him down, but he took Guida down. He’s the only person to do this, and Guida’s taken down every single opponent beforehand. And Kenny stopped him and took him down. Gomi is also a wrestler back in Japan, and he took him down too. Obviously, Gray’s at a different level, and we need to be prepared for any and every level, and not just very good wrestlers, or good wrestlers, or mediocre wrestlers. We need to be prepared for the absolute best wrestlers.”
“There’s no question by the rules that they’re playing with right now that Gray won that fight. I’m not trying to take anything away from him, he played an absolutely beautiful game plan. If Kenny had the skills Gray had, I would have done the exact same thing fighting Kenny. People love to throw around the word ‘destroyed,’ people love to throw around the word ‘dominated,’ people love to throw these words around, but just look at the first four minutes of the first round, and you tell me who’s winning/ He really didn’t get hit very hard on the bottom. People love to throw around those words ‘dominated, destroyed, overwhelming.’ It’s a (expletive) joke.”
“I think what we need to do in a week or a week and a half, is just come back together and see what’s going on. The wheels are in motion that we are going to get a serious wrestling coach involved, and it’s going to be immediate. We’re going to bring wrestlers in or Kenny’s going out to a wrestling camp or a wrestling team and that’s a fact.”
Kenny will now be forced to begin his road to the title all over again, determined to prove once and for all that he doesn’t choke when it comes to the big stage.
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