LAS VEGAS – Dan Argueta thinks he was en route to finishing Ronnie Lawrence at UFC on ESPN 46 before the referee intervened.
In the first round of their featherweight bout this past Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Argueta (9-1 MMA, 1-1 UFC) caught Lawrence (8-2 MMA, 2-1 UFC) in a mounted guillotine choke. Referee Keith Peterson thought he witnessed Lawrence tapping, prompting him to waive the fight off.
Peterson stopped the fight after grabbing Lawrence’s arm to check for consciousness, but Lawrence never made a tapping motion. The Nevada Athletic Commission reviewed the footage, and the bout was ruled a no contest. An upset Argueta reflected on the fight-ending sequence, which he thinks cost him a win.
“I was about to get that finish,” Argueta told reporters, including MMA Junkie, post-fight at UFC on ESPN 46. “I threw that shallow guillotine on him. Obviously it’s one of my tricks, and I held it, and I held it, and when I felt the ref pulling him off, I was like, ‘Oh damn, he’s already asleep. I didn’t even start the crank yet.’ There’s two chances to tap. It’s suffocating him, and then all I have to do is kind of crank it a little bit, and usually I’m getting just about everyone to tap.
“So, that was really unfortunate. That was quite a few months of work. That was about 14 months since I was at bantamweight. That’s the weight class that all you guys wanted me to come into the UFC at. And that’s what I can do in, I don’t even know, two minutes? Two and a half minutes?”
Argueta gave Peterson the benefit of the doubt but hopes the UFC schedules a rematch between him and Lawrence.
“I want to run it back,” Argueta continued. “I think it’s the same outcome minus – OK, Keith has a hard job. I’m not even going to sh*t on him. I get it, his arm was up, I watched it, it looked like he could have been sleeping when his arm’s up because I did have his shoulders kind of pinned up like that.
‘I can’t really apologize. I wish I could apologize to all the fans who wanted to either see me get my hand raised, see me walk off with an L, or just wanted to just wanted watch me fight in general. I apologize to all those fans, that’s a tough one to swallow, and I’m just grateful for the UFC that I even have the opportunity to go try something like that.”
Argueta, who is now 1-1-1 in his three octagon appearances, is disappointed with the premature stoppage.
“That’s the most focused I’ve ever felt in my life,” Argueta said. “I felt amazing. It’s just tough when things don’t go your way, and I had so many plans for myself this year, and that was the first hurdle, and someone took it from me. That hurts.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC on ESPN 46.
