post-fight press conference<\/a>, Cortes-Acosta was asked why he decided to fight through the foul rather than settle for a no-contest.<\/p>\n\u201cLook, it\u2019s a different breed,\u201d Cortes-Acosta said. \u201cI\u2019m born in Dominican Republic. Everything is war over there. One poke in the eye, everything that happened in my life, this can\u2019t stop me. I\u2019ll never let one poke of the eye lose one opportunity can change my life and my family\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n
Waldo Cortes-Acosta\u2019s miraculous win was not without controversy.<\/p>\n
Initially, it looked as though referee Mark Smith had waved off the bout with Delija flurrying with punches and Cortes-Acosta struggling to defend himself against the fence. However, after a review for the potential eye poke, Smith acknowledged the foul and Cortes-Acosta was given the option to continue. He did and moments later his hand was raised.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first one I see is the whole crowd outside and then him thinking he won the fight,\u201d Cortes-Acosta said, recapping the strange sequence. \u201cJumping, everything, the head coach jumping, [Delija] winning and everything like that, and the referee and the commission saying, \u2018I didn\u2019t stop the fight. You have five minutes, like, recover for your eye\u2019 and everything like that and I said, at one point, \u2018I can fight like that.\u2019 \u2026 What happened with me is I see in that moment and that reminded me, a little bit, the hands still punching me\u2026 but him punching me, like, 11, 12 times, continuing on my head, pretending he can knock me out like that, it\u2019s impossible. I have a break in my head right now. When we have a decision to continue fighting, I can\u2019t let anybody stop me like that.\u201d<\/p>\n
With all that said, Cortes-Acosta wasn\u2019t exactly unscathed by the illegal maneuver.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe eye is bad right now,\u201d Cortes-Acosta said. \u201cI know I see, but I don\u2019t see completely \u2026 it\u2019s hurt.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe doctor back here in the exams that were done afterwards, post-fight medical, said that there was some sort of streak here inside the eye as if his nail actually got into my eye and struck along the eyeline, but inside the eye. So you could see that that had been damaged,\u201d Cortes-Acosta added with assistance from a Spanish translator.<\/p>\n
Hurt or not, Cortes-Acosta doesn\u2019t plan to waste time now that he\u2019s back in the win column. He defended his spot in the heavyweight rankings, has now won six of his past seven fights, and already has an idea for who he should fight next to take a step closer to a championship fight.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn seven days, [the doctor] says I\u2019ll be ready to come back,\u201d Cortes-Acosta said. \u201cI\u2019m ready for the fighting, this December, and UFC put me on the card, any card I can do it. I want to fight with Curtis Blaydes and I want a title shot. I want [Aspinall and Gane] to rematch and [I\u2019ll] be available for the winner and a title shot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Waldo Cortes-Acosta made sure another UFC event didn\u2019t end in unceremonious fashion due to an eye poke. Just…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258197,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-258196","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258196\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}