Daniel Cormier doesn’t have an issue with Chris Weidman getting his hand raised at UFC on ESPN 54.
Weidman (16-7 MMA, 12-7 UFC) picked up a controversial win over Bruno Silva this past Saturday at Boardwalk Hall – a unanimous decision that was initially ruled a third-round TKO. Weidman dropped Silva with a left hook but poked him in both eyes before landing the blow.
The finish was reviewed, and a slow-motion replay showed that Silva was clearly poked in the eye two times before Weidman dropped him and finished him on the ground. With Weidman up on the judges’ scorecards, the result was overturned to a unanimous decision, and Cormier agrees with the final outcome of the fight.
“There’s a rule in place, that if you go past a certain point in the fight, it’s scored,” Cormier said on his ESPN show “Good Guy/Bad Guy” with Chael Sonnen. “If there is an illegal blow, they score the fight and if you score that fight, Chris Weidman wins. So I think by them making it a decision, it saves the fight, staying a win for Chris Weidman – because he really did deserve to get a victory because he fought so well. He made one point that I thought was very important. He said, ‘I get it, but Bruno Silva has to understand you can’t fall to the ground and turn away from the fight because I am going to jump on you and finish the fight.’
“Chris Weidman did what his instincts told him, and that was to go finish Bruno Silva when Bruno reacted the way that he did from the eye poke. I’m only saying this because, to me, it felt like a soccer player when they get fouled and they’re rolling around on the ground when the guy barely touches them. Bruno Silva got eye poked, but I think he understood where he was in the fight. He was getting beat. He was losing. He fell to the ground. He reacted in the way he was reacting, hoping, ‘Wait, stop, stop, stop, poke to the eye. No contest.’ Instead, Weidman went and finished him.”
Weidman picked up his first win in almost four years, and his first since breaking his leg in a TKO loss to Uriah Hall in April 2021.
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