Bantamweight Andre Ewell went the distance with Irwin Rivera at UFC Vegas 11 over the weekend — then apologized for doing so, despite getting the win.
“I definitely felt good,” saw Ewell (17-6), who added immediately that “I want to get this off my chest, I want to apologize. I was aiming for the finish, because I know everybody’s been talking about me having a finish.”
“That first round, you can clearly see it was there,” he continued. “I guess you could say I rushed it, the man had heart, and that’s what ends up happening with a Mexican warrior like Irwin Rivera. Dude has heart, and it automatically pushed him.”
Aside from the lack of a finish — Ewell is still looking for his first stoppage victory in the UFC — the bantamweight was happy with his performance. More or less. “I would give myself a C+ on performance today. I know it’s going to end up improving. I don’t know if you ended up seeing it, but my takedown defense was on point, and not only that, my kicks was out there, and I was landing those bad boys.”
The biggest shock in the fight was, perhaps, that it was a split decision. When the result was being read, Ewell was left thinking “about the first round, because I should have finished it. That’s honestly how I looked at it. Granted, when you leave it to the judges, stuff like that happens.”
After his second straight win, Ewell is hoping to get back to action soon. “Get me in two weeks. Two weeks, next week, anything is possible. I want to go to Abu Dhabi,” he exclaimed, joking about being ready to fight anyone from Colby Covington that same night, to Derrick Lewis — for a bucket of chicken.
Ewell also revealed that in the seven months since his last fight, he had a plate inserted in his arm, which he broke during his bout with Jonathan Martinez at UFC 247. “I lowkey had a broken forearm. Joe [Rogan] didn’t want to talk to me on the commentary that day, but I literally broke my forearm in the first 10 seconds, and I had to survive, and fight that whole fight. 14 minutes and 50 seconds with one arm, I bet you no one even noticed that, no one knows that, because Joe didn’t want to talk to me. So nothing but love to Joe, but tell Joe that he hurt my heart, because he didn’t want to talk to me.”
His entire time away, he added, was “seven months of recovery.”
Watch the full UFC Vegas 11 post-fight press conference with Andre Ewell above.
