Newark, NJ — Bouncing back from a loss to Bobby Green at UFC 302, lightweight Grant Dawson put on a dominant performance against Joe Solecki on Saturday night.
Dawson (21-2-1) used dominant wrestling to overpower Solecki, whose jiu-jitsu just didn’t cut it in a grappling-heavy affair.
“Same as always, glad to be back in the win column,” Dawson told media outlets including Cageside Press following the fight, before breaking down some of his game plan.
“We wanted, the flying knee was mainly to get him shooting first. We wanted to get him to engage, clinch, work.,” explained Dawson. “We were planning to do a little bit more striking, but when I got in that first exchange and took him down, it was so easy to take him down. We kind of had to make a quick change on the fly— if it’s going to be this easy to get the takedown, we have to take advantage of this.”
Dawson felt Solecki looked strong on tape, but “when we actually got in the cage, I could tell I was just levels above him with strength and durability. You’ve got to take the easy out, so we got the takedowns easy, we got them down. I thought at some point, he’s gonna try to get up, he’s going to give up his back to get up and then that’s when I’ll get the finish, and then it just kind of never happened.”
Still, Grant Dawson will take the decision win, and now look to throw down with Jalin Turner. Why Turner? Aside from wanting to get back in the rankings, a bit of MMA math in a sense. Turner beat Bobby Green, who is the man that served up Dawson’s first loss in the UFC.
“He beat the guy that beat me. There’s an easy way to get over Bobby without actually having to fight Bobby again, [which] is to beat the guy that beat him.”
Watch the full UFC 302 post-fight press conference with Grant Dawson above.
