Salt Lake City, UT – For at least the first round of his fight UFC middleweight Roman Kopylov seemed to have his hands full with Claudio Ribeiro at UFC 291 on Saturday night.
Then he put the pedal down in the second and sent Ribeiro home early.
“I feel great. I’m ready to keep moving forward, and regarding the fight, yeah at the end of the first round I kind of stood around and had fun with him for a little bit,” Kopylov told reporters including Cageside Press at his post-fight scrum.
“Kind of gave the audience a little bit of an intrigue, you know, make sure they keep watching. Then in the second round I did exactly what we planned and finished the fight.”
Now was it planned to let Ribeiro hang out longer than needed or did Kopylov get caught by surprise?
“Obviously I didn’t plan to be missing a lot of shots, but it’s because I stood in front of him, and that was my mistake and that’s why he was successful with a couple of punches,” he said.
That didn’t answer the most highly-asked question, the question that has bothered fans for so many years now, the question that might itself save humanity.
Are Roman Kopylov and Chase Hooper the same person?
“We finally chatted on Instagram, and I saw that he’s here in the building, but I haven’t run into him yet. It would be great to see him,” Kopylov said with a smile.
“I thought I was going to see him somewhere backstage, and I would love to take a photo with him just to show how similar we are.”
Watch the entire post-fight scrum with Roman Kopylov above.
