With a combined total of 41 significant strikes over the course of a 15-minute fight, Irish welterweight Cathal Pendred and his Mexican opponent Augusto Montano delivered by far the most lackluster opponent of last Saturday’s UFC 188 card. 20,000 people in the audience vented their displeasure with constant and deafening boos, that even got approved by UFC president Dana White.
But not only the crowd in Mexico City and the millions watching at home were disappointed in the fight, Cathal Pendred was, too. Very “disappointed” and “not happy at all”, to be exact, as he told reporters in a post-fight media scrum.
“I expected a lot better fight. Better from myself and better from my opponent,” he explained. “I won, but I wanted to be very, very dominant. My opponent had never been stopped before. I was determined to be the first person to stop him and make a statement.”
Pendred and Montano really did nothing for three rounds, fans and even high-profile MMA journalists described the bout as the “worst fight” they have ever seen.
This could be the worst UFC fight I have ever seen.
— Kevin Iole (@KevinI) June 13, 2015
Pendred went 4-0 in the UFC within only 11 months. What sounds impressive at first, was an array of hardly entertaining performances. Pendred revealed, that originally, his plan was to ask Dana White and matchmaker Joe Silva for a fifth fight within the next month, to have the chance to become the first man in the modern UFC era that went 5-0 within under a year. After Saturday’s performance, he scrapped that plan and will likely take some time off to work on his game, he promised.
“There’s something I’m missing,” Pendred said. “There’s something I really need to bring my game forward, which I need to do before I start climbing the ranks.”
You can watch the whole interview (via MMA Fighting) above.
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