San Diego, CA – UFC middleweight Gerald Meerschaert took a dangerous fight against Bruno Silva at UFC San Diego and made the most of it when he finished Silva via submission on Saturday night.
“Probably for the fans it was kind of a little bit slow of a start, but you know I was just fighting a smart technical fight at first. Bruno Silva’s a really dangerous guy, and if you run in there like that you can get put to sleep real quick,” Meerschaert told Cageside Press among other media at his post-fight scrum.
“So I had to play the smart game and show off some of my other moves, and I think it went well.”
While the fight was on the feet for most of the fight, after Meerschaert hurt Silva, he went right to the guillotine choke to finish the fight.
“I thought I was going to get a walk-off (KO) because I’ve seen fights stopped for less. I admired my work a little too long and I came in, fought a little too close, he grabbed ahold of me. I was hitting him like ‘Man this dude’s too tough, he’s going to cling onto my leg and I ain’t going to be able to get him outta there’. So I just went to my bread and butter, got ahold of the neck,” Meerschaert.
“He was so far rocked at that point there’s no way he was getting out of it.”
After the fight Meerschaert had a name ready for a call out. Andre Petroski.
“Yeah he called me out, and after he’s last fight I just said ‘Hey, you want the smoke? Run it.” Let’s go,” he said.
Petroski is a unique challenge for Meerschaert being a fighter who likes to take the fight to the ground and grapple.
“He likes to wrestle and grapple a lot. He’s not bad at all. No knocks against his skills. We know some of the same people. I know he comes from a really good storied school with a lot of good grapplers,” he said.
“But hey. Someone says my name I’m bound to get froggy. Let’s go.”
Watch the entire post-fight media scrum with Gerald Meerschaert above.
