Save for a spinning heel kick that landed in the third round that left Kevin Lee on wobbly legs, Edson Barboza was on the receiving end of an almost five-round beating at UFC Atlantic City. The fight ended at the 2:18 mark of round five when the ringside doctors decide to step in and stop the action after Barboza sustained a huge cut above his right eye.
As early as the first two rounds, “The Motown Phenom” was already imposing his will, taking the fight to the mat and pounding away from up top. During his recent appearance on the MMA Hour, Lee admitted that he began to slow the onslaught down after seeing Barboza seemingly having no answer at all.
“He took a whooping, and I kinda took it a little bit easy on him too after that,” Lee said (via MMA Fighting). “It was like during the second round, I could see he was taking a whooping and I didn’t want to keep hitting that man like that. He’s a nice guy, I wish him nothing but the best.
“Yeah, he’s taken a whooping these last few fights, but he’s going to come back and he’s going to knock some dudes clean out. I mean, Barboza’s still one of the toughest guys in this division, hands down. I think if anything, this is just going to make him tougher.”
As for the kick that made him a subject of online jokes because of his immediate reaction to it, Lee said he was still feeling it the Monday after the fight, as he also conceded to the notion that he may have lost focus in those crucial split seconds of action.
“I mean, he kicked the sh-t outta me, I ain’t gonna lie. Barboza’s explosive,” Lee said. “I was setting up my knockout shot and I took my focus off of him for a half-a-second, and at this level, especially with a guy like that — that’s been one of the things that my coaches have been saying to me for a long time, and that’s one of the things that I even had to keep reminding myself of during the actual fight.”
“A reporter asked me, he was like, ‘It sounded like you were in there talking.’ I wasn’t talking to Barboza, I was talking to myself,” he continued. “I was reminding myself of those things, to stay sharp and not get caught with something. But, for that split-second, I looked away and yeah, he rang me.”
The victory moved Lee up a notch to number five in the UFC’s official rankings, as he now holds a win-loss slate of 17-3, with ten wins by stoppage.