Urijah Faber criticises referee Mario Yamasaki over Jose Aldo vs. Chad Mendes fight
UFC bantamweight number one contender, Urijah Faber has been giving his thoughts on the last time featherweight champion, Jose Aldo defended his title, coincidentally against his Team Alpha Male training partner, Chad Mendes, and it seems “The California Kid” feels referee Mario Yamasaki has a lot to answer for.
Speaking via MMAFighting.com, Faber said:
“You know, we don’t like to dwell on things we can’t really control, but, the bottom line is, that’s an infraction, they should have stopped the action and maybe started them down. The ref had said something about [fence grabbing] in the locker room before the fight. But he had been put on blast because of a questionable call against the Brazilians earlier in the night, so I guess he didn’t want to piss off the Brazilians very much.”
“I think he was prepared to take the penalty for the fence grab, but it didn’t happen. It’s not his fault, he just kept on fighting, he was doing that to save himself from getting taken down. It would have changed the fight for sure. I think he did that on purpose, because he knows, he knew [the ground was] where he didn’t want to be. He was willing to take a penalty to avoid that. It was a gamble on his part and it paid off.”
Faber is coming off an impressive second round submission win over former WEC champion, Brian Bowles last time out. This enabled him to bounce back from the close decision loss to Cruz last summer which went the distance over 25 minutes. He’ll take on Renan Barao for the interim bantamweight title on July 7th at UFC 148. Stay tuned to MMABay for more build-up to this one as we get it.
By Michael Pepper. (Follow me on Twitter)
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