Joaquin Buckley gave a honest and raw reaction to his loss to Kamaru Usman at UFC on ESPN 69.
Buckley (22-7 MMA, 11-5 UFC) saw his six-fight winning streak snapped by former champion Usman (21-4 MMA, 16-3 UFC) in this past Saturday’s UFC on ESPN 69 headliner at State Farm Arena in Atlanta.
Usman resorted to his wrestling to stifle Buckley, and “New Mansa” wound up getting taken down four times and controlled for almost 13 minutes in a unanimous decision loss.
“Every round he took me down, kept me there,” Buckley said of Usman on his YouTube channel. “I couldn’t get back up to my feet. I’m looking at Mike Beltran, like, ‘Bro, stand us up at least one time, let me get back up to my feet.’ I’m not going to lie to y’all, I feel so embarrassed because of that loss.
“I feel so humiliated because of that loss. But at the same time, I’ve got to bow my head. Usman showed me who he was – truthfully, bro. I’ve really just got to understand that as many excuses that I can make about this fight, and why it didn’t go my way because X, Y, Z – it don’t matter. That night, it really showed it’s levels to this game.”
Buckley explained what he felt like went wrong.
“That was the first time I went into a fight, and I didn’t have that kill or be killed mentality, and that’s what kind of led to my downfall,” Buckley said. “I’m looking at pretty much the next move, and how big and how massive we’re going to become. This is our show-out moment, and it’s OK to have that type of mentality, but you’ve got to always remember it’s just another fight. With that being said, he had that key mentality. He was aware of the threat that was in front of him, I wasn’t, and I wasn’t aware of that threat until the fifth round, and that’s when I knew I had to turn it on.”
