Diego Sanchez made it two straight wins at welterweight at UFC 235, and feels opponent Mickey Gall ate his words in the loss.
Las Vegas, NV — Diego Sanchez made life a nightmare for Mickey Gall at UFC 235. Gall, if you remember, called out Sanchez last year. For a fighter who has found success calling opponent’s out (CM Punk, Sage Northcutt), it was a move that landed him a fight with a legend. Unfortunately for Gall, he wasn’t up to the task. The original Ultimate Fighter earned the TKO finish in the second round, after wearing Gall down.
The younger fighter simply couldn’t keep the pace. To Sanchez, it might have been a little bit of karma.
“Mickey Gall, he ate his own words. Because when CM Punk came into the game, he told CM Punk, he said ‘CM, there’s levels to this game, you can’t fight those levels,'” Sanchez told reporters including Cageside Press post-fight.
“I’m like ‘Mickey, you know, you’re going to eat your own words. There’s levels to this game, Diego Sanchez is up here, you’re down here.” That’s pretty much what happened. Sanchez survived an early swarm. As the fight wore on, Gall slowed down.
“I was expecting a finish,” he continued, but “the first round didn’t play out the way I anticipated it to.” Instead of an early finish, Gall came out firing. “He came in with a lot of emotion, a lot of aggressiveness,” Sanchez pointed out. As if Gall wanted to put into practice everything teammate Joe Schilling had taught him, all at once.
“When he got in there, he hit me with one punch where it was like ‘uuuggghh.’ Like pushing.” To Sanchez, it reminded him of someone lifting heavy weights. A that point, “ten more of these, twenty more of these, this guy’s not gonna have no gas in the tank.”
Turns out, Sanchez was right. It’s clear Sanchez still has something left in his own tank.
Watch the full UFC 235 post-fight press scrum with Diego Sanchez above.