London, England — At UFC London this past Saturday, one of Tom Aspinall’s main training partners, Mick Parkin, made his UFC debut against fellow Contender Series alum Jamal Pogues.
Parkin (7-0) was coming in off the back of a first round victory over Eduardo Neves on the Contender Series, whereas his opponent, Pogues, was coming in off his successful UFC debut against Josh Parisian, where he picked up the decision.
Earlier in fight week, Parkin spoke about the fact that Pogues was the more experienced fighter, but admitted that he believed he had more tools to get the job done. He did just that by picking up the unanimous decision victory, with this being his first fight to go to the scorecards.
Despite the impressive debut win, Parkin believes that he could’ve performed better and has more to show the UFC fans. “I haven’t watched the fight back yet so I’ll have to watch it back before I talk about that too much but I feel like I definitely could’ve done better.
“It’s heavyweight MMA so I don’t take too many big shots early. I feel like I’m a lot fitter than most heavyweights so getting out of the first round is probably key to me winning a lot of times. I felt he [Pogues] did slow down, but I didn’t, but I didn’t do enough to finish him really.
“My coach was saying it was tight so I knew it was tight going into the third he was saying ‘just think there might be one or two there that were tight’ and then I thought the last 30 I’d make a little statement,” Parkin said.
Watch the full UFC London post-fight press conference with Mick Parkin above.
