\u201cFirst, I want to thank God for my life and my health,\u201d Ruffy said in Portuguese. \u201cI am in perfect health. I feel 100 percent. I also want to thank all of you for the love and support. I received so many amazing messages. I haven\u2019t read all of them yet because there were so many, but I truly felt supported and embraced by all of you.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI received the call a little more than six weeks out \u2014 exactly six weeks and four days \u2014 and I dedicated everything I had to this training camp. I know it may seem like a short amount of time, but I felt ready to fight anyone. I was doing great and felt confident. I stayed away from my family and pushed through several difficult situations. There were days when my body couldn\u2019t take any more, but I kept going.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI entered the fight so confident that I wanted to experience everything. I didn\u2019t want a quick first-round knockout. I wanted to overcome some of the things inside my head and prove to myself that I was ready. I wanted to defend his takedowns and leave there as a better fighter. I wanted to go through those difficult situations and prove to myself how prepared I was.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter the flash knockdown, I felt his strength beginning to fade and believed the fight was under my control. I hit him with an elbow to the ribs while he was defending a reversal, and I saw how much it hurt him. His eye was closing, I was landing punches, and I was certain I would finish the fight in the second round.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is important to say that the mistake was completely mine. It was my fault and my carelessness, but it was also his merit. Arman is an excellent fighter.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen my corner yelled that there were ten seconds remaining and he shot for my legs, I thought that was the best possible thing for me. I thought, \u2018He\u2019s going to spend more energy here, the second round will begin, and then I\u2019ll knock him out.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere were four seconds left. I could have thrown strikes or moved away from the fence, but I didn\u2019t want to. I wanted to use that moment against him, and it was a good idea. I simply got careless. I relaxed defensively, which is something I normally don\u2019t do, and I paid the price.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I want to apologize to my fans for the sadness of the loss. I know it\u2019s not easy to root for someone through a defeat, but guys, I\u2019m learning. You\u2019ve seen the evolution of each fight, and this fight was going very well. But I\u2019m happy for everything that happened. It\u2019s difficult to deal with loss and all that, but it makes us grow.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cFirst, I want to thank God for my life and my health,\u201d Ruffy said in Portuguese. \u201cI am…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":903166,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,465858,1396,179146,6656,355513],"class_list":["post-903165","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-331","tag-ufc-news","tag-ufc-on-paramount","tag-ufc-results","tag-ufc-mma-social-media-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903165","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=903165"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/903165\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/903166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=903165"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=903165"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=903165"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}