Chicago, IL — “We drilled that right hand consecutively for three months,” Brendan Loughnane revealed after a somewhat controversial TKO win over Pedro Carvalho at PFL 3 on Friday.
To many, the stoppage came quick, with Carvalho not yet out of the fight when the ref intervened. Loughnane, not surprisingly, saw it from another angle.
“That was the best stoppage ever,” Loughnane (28-5) exclaimed following the bout, speaking with media outlets including Cageside Press. “Me and that referee and Pedro are three people in there. Pedro was done. I’m so glad he stopped it when he did. Because listen, we all want to get paid and go home to our families. It was a great stoppage.”
It’s all part of the job, Loughnane would go on to explain.
“I just seen his wife and his coaches out there give him a hug and a kiss. This is a ruthless business. He’s going back to SBG and John Kavanagh who’s a good friend of mine and Conor [McGregor], and all these people. It’s not ideal that you fight these people, but this is the game that we’re in. It’s prize fighting. Me and Pedro got matched up, and now it’s been left here, and good luck to him in his career.”
Asked about the rest of the featherweight field in the 2024 PFL season, which includes names like Adam Borics, Kai Kamaka III, and 2023 champ Gabriel Braga, Lougnane didn’t appear to be all that impressed.
“I’ll be honest, I didn’t really see too much this year,” he stated. “I was watching the screens thinking, it’s wide open for me again. It really is. That’s no disrespect to anyone else, I’m being honest.”
Brendan Loughnane feels as if people forgot about him after his knockout loss to Jesus Pinedo last June. The setback had the British featherweight questioning if his time in MMA had come to an end.
“I was half considering ‘can I really do this anymore?’ after that knockout,” revealed Loughnane. “I suffered from it. I was knocked out 15 minutes, didn’t know where I was, I was watching that knockout back like ‘wow, that was weird.’ Imagine that, in over 50 contests, I’d never been dropped, knocked out, anything.”
“I had to really think, is this me anymore? Then I started hard sparring, realized the chin still worked, and then the rest is history.”
Watch the full PFL 3 post-fight press conference with Brendan Loughnane above.
