Brendan Schaub is coming off a fight with Andrei Arlovski at UFC 174 that will undeniably go down as one of the worst fights of 2014. The bout was expected to have decent potential for explosive action, but instead saw the two men spend the first two rounds circling or clinching against the cage. Schaub would win round three, the only round that was clearly won by either man, but lose a controversial decision when two judges awarded the bout to Arlovski.
Schaub would go on to say that he hopes the UFC treats the fight as though he won, similar to Ross Pearson’s recent controversial loss to Diego Sanchez. Instead, UFC president Dana White trashed both fighters and said that the fans lost, “I think everybody would agree that fight sucked. That fight was horrible. You know who lost that fight? The fans. The fans lost in that fight.”
Schaub was on his The Fighter and The Kid podcast to discuss the fight and ended up in tears, as transcribed by MMA Fighting:
“For me, it’s just frustrating, but it’s onwards and upwards. I don’t know any different, but to get back to training and just…this is what I do, man. This is what I do. This is it. It went to the judges. I got screwed in a decision. I probably should’ve done more to make it clear, that’s on me.
“That’s the sport, man. You’re only as good as your last fight. As far as the naysayers and criticism and stuff like that, that’s what you sign up. That happens. It’s just part of the sport. That doesn’t really bother me. When I knocked out Mirko CroCop, I got negative comments. When I beat Lavar Johnson, of course, I get negative comments. When I beat Matt Mitrione and didn’t get touched, I got negative comments.”
From there, however, Schaub began to tear up when speaking to co-host Bryan Callen about, of all things, the very podcast they were on. Schaub says, yes, there’s plenty of hate, but because of the podcast and how it has exposed him to the MMA audiences in a new way, he’s also never had more praise and affection than he gets today.
“This is serious here, ” Schaub says as his voice begins to tremble. “I’m trying not to get emotional here. I’ve never got so much love in my life since this fight,” Schaub said of the podcast.