Going 0-3 and still managing to get a pay raise from the UFC tells you something about Tim Elliott. His awkward yet entertaining style in the cage definitely gets fans talking. It’s probably a factor in why Elliott found himself in the co-main event at UFC Fight Island 2. When Frankie Edgar vs. Pedro Munhoz fell off the card it was Elliott, and his fight with Ryan Benoit, that the promotion turned to.
And once again, Elliott put on a wildly entertaining show. Ultimately, he took home a unanimous decision win. Not before getting trapped in a nasty looking kneebar, however.
“It was painful. I think maybe it was less painful because he hit it on the knee where I had ACL, LCL, MCL, PCL, meniscus surgery on my knee,” Elliott told Cageside Press following the fight. “So I have a lot of dead nerves in there. Who knows? It could have been worse without that surgery. But again, I was it was tight, it hurt. I almost panicked tapped, but I have some of the best coaches in the world. My coach was calm. He didn’t seem like the kneebar was bothering him. So it didn’t really bother me. And, he coached me me right out of it.”
The coach in question: James Krause. Elliott had been back with Krause, his coach in years gone by, just a matter of weeks prior to UFC Fight Island 1. He can only imagine where months or years working with his fellow UFC fighter will take him.
One wrinkle in the fight, and in particular that sequence, was the lack of fans in the venue. Read: none. Which made it much easier to hear Krause — but Elliott would still rather have the crowd back.
When the idea of the silence being a benefit was suggested to him, Elliott responded by saying “That could be, but at the same time, when the fans are yelling, cheering, it also gives you a little bit of adrenaline where those pain submissions don’t hurt so much.”
“I’m a guy who, I got to the UFC because I do better under the lights,” he continued. “I like to hear people either screaming, cheering, or booing me, but the silence kind of bothers me.”
Watch the full UFC Fight Island 1 virtual post-fight press scrum with Tim Elliott above.
