Las Vegas, NV — Team Alpha Male’s Andre Fili walked away with the win at UFC on ESPN 10 on Saturday. But it wasn’t the ending he necessarily wanted.
“I really want to finish these fights, but the kid was real tough,” he said following a three-round scrap with Charles Jourdain that saw the Canadian knock “Touchy” Fili down in the opening round.
“I’m really looking for those finishes from here on out,” Fili told media outlets backstage at the UFC Apex. “I think we made a statement tonight, but I want to make the statement that I’m out here finishing guys, and I want to be known as an elite fighter, because I really believe I’m the best 45’er alive.”
Jourdain was positioned as the young upstart against the more experienced Fili. But Andre Fili let it be known that “I’m still a young guy. I’ve got a chip on my shoulder every day.”
The way he sees it, “everyone I fight is trying to take something from me. So I always have a chip on my shoulder. You lose a fight, you lose half your money. There’s no other sport like that. A basketball team might lose 30 games in a season, they’re still the number one team. You lose three fights, people are telling you to retire.”
The judges were a concern, of course. “I’m just so happy that they got the fight right. He caught me once, for sure,” said Fili, referring to the knockdown in the opening round. “I don’t think he won another second of that fight.”
It’s extra important because Fili is looking to buy a house, complete with a big yard for his dog. A quick turnaround could help in that pursuit. But Fili was careful to explain, post-fight, why he wasn’t calling out any names.
“I just got hit in the head. I don’t want to just start calling names out, I don’t like when people do that,” he explained. “I’m going to call my shots, but there’s a way to do it, and Two minutes outside of a fifteen minute fight I don’t think is the way to just start spouting names off.”
“Hopefully the next guy has got a big name,” Fili added.
