Yancy Medeiros suffered a first-round TKO loss to Donald ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone at UFC Fight Night 126 last night (Feb18, 2018), which took place at Frank Erwin Center in Austin, Texas.
Moreover, Yancy Medeiros wasn’t exactly happy with referee Herb Dean’s stoppage at UFC Austin. The finish came after he was put down by a cracking Cowboy right hand, in the waning seconds of the first round, and the referee stepped in at the 4:58 mark of first.
In a post-fight talk with the media, Medeiros joked that he wished he’d had a more liberal referee, say, Mario Yamasaki, may have handled it differently, but he’s ultimately accepting of his reality.
“Hats off to Cowboy, he caught me with a nice right hand,” Medeiros said. “Two seconds left, Herb Dean stopped it. I felt I could have continued, but he didn’t feel that way. We had an inside joke, my team and I, I was like ‘fuck where’s Mario [Yamasaki] when you needed him!’ But I was just fucking around, you know. I mean, he caught me. I kept my head on the center line and he just caught me with that nice punch. It is what it is.”
“I know the referees are there to watch for our safety,” he added. “Obviously Herb Dean didn’t see that I was safe enough to continue. So, his call. Gotta learn, gotta make my adjustments. I’ll be back. Hats off to Cowboy.”
Cerrone and Medeiros showed each other nothing but respect leading up to the fight and during the pre-fight salutations on Sunday.
Do you think referee stopped the fight too early and Yancy Medeiros should have given the opportunity to survive until the end of the first round?
