Pros criticized the call on social media<\/a> and cageside commentator Joe Rogan also questioned Hatley\u2019s decision.<\/p>\nAt the evening\u2019s post-fight presser, Riley was told that Rogan didn\u2019t agree with the stoppage and he responded to that statement and online critics.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe didn\u2019t?\u201d Riley said. \u201cThey\u2019ve f*cking lost their minds. Honestly, two more seconds, [Kamaka] would have been face down on the canvas. That\u2019s baffled me a bit, that one. I don\u2019t really know what to say to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you think that was sort of an early stoppage, then I feel like you shouldn\u2019t be watching fighting, but it is what it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Regardless of the controversy, it was another knockout win for the undefeated Riley, who has finished 10 of his 14 fights via strikes. After earning a unanimous decision over Michael Aswell in his previous fight, Riley was thrilled to leave it out of the hands of the judges and remind fans how dangerous his standup game can be.<\/p>\n
\u201cEven now, people have underestimated my power very, very much,\u201d Riley said. \u201cYou don\u2019t understand how hard. I know for a fact I am the hardest-hitting person in this division, 1,000,000 percent.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, my last fight, maybe the co-main played into the fact that I went in a bit too tense, too stiff. This time I just came in loose, was in the moment, and knew if I touch someone on the chin, it\u2019s like I said in the cage, \u2018Bedtime,\u2019 and yeah, that\u2019s all she wrote.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Kamaka, this was just the third knockout loss of his 27-fight career and the first time he succumbed to strikes since a previous UFC stint in 2020. Though Kamaka was not dropped by Riley\u2019s strikes, he appeared to be visibly dazed even after Hatley stepped in for the save.<\/p>\n
From Riley\u2019s perspective, the situation was only going to get worse for Kamaka had the fight continued.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was just a wounded animal trying to stay alive and he was going to be put down if the ref didn\u2019t stop the fight,\u201d Riley said. \u201cSo yeah, the ref done a very, very good job or he would have been down, out, face-down on the canvas, which wouldn\u2019t have been a good look, would it?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luke Riley is thrilled with his UFC 329 win, no matter what anyone else has to say about…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811989,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-811988","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811988","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811988"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811988\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811989"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811988"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811988"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811988"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}