Following his loss this past weekend at UFC 140, Lyoto Machida looks back and responds about his performance against UFC light heavyweight champion Jon Jones. Jones was tested by Machida in the first round and in the second took him down landed a vicious elbow which eventually lead to his submission victory.
Machida spoke with TATAME.com about this fight and admits he couldn’t recover from the elbow that Jones landed on the ground.
Well, I guess it was a hard fight. The preparation was tougher in all aspects. We went there and tried to do our job. We set a game plan that, from where I’m standing, until a certain moment was working, but he landed that elbow and I got dizzy, I couldn’t see things straight anymore and it disturbed me because I couldn’t see. And on that moment I thought: “I gotta do my best here and now”. And that’s what happened.
I guess I didn’t have enough time. He took me down launching an elbow on me, and that surprised me a little, because I thought he would take me down but I would have a little time to think it straight. It was very fast and I had my head close to the fence, he hit me with an elbow, I couldn’t see and I tried to stand up and he hit me even more… I stood up and the judge interrupted, but we started fighting again and I didn’t have enough time to recover from that.
The fight was stopped when referee “Big” John McCarthy noticed Machida’s right arm go limp due to Jones’ standing guillotine. When Jones let go of the choke, Machida fell flat on the canvas.
