Las Vegas — Featherweight Andre Fili was sure to give UFC Hall of Famer Cub Swanson his dues following their Fight of the Night effort at UFC 303 on Saturday.
He was also showing the damage of the affair in the aftermath of the fight, which “Touchy” Fili (24-11, 1NC) won via split decision.
“The guy hit me dude, a couple times. I wanted him to stop, but he just kept on keeping on,” Fili exclaimed, speaking with media outlets including Cagesdie Press following the fight at the T-Mobile Arena.
Despite the obvious bruising and cuts, Fili never felt close to being finished. “I didn’t feel in danger, there was nothing that hit me to the point where I felt rocked,” he stated. “He’s got weird timing. He’s got a really weird style, some shots got in that I didn’t expect. I felt I was countering basically everything he threw in the first.”
“My coach calls him a snake charmer, he’s got this weird style, he’s either like stopped, or gone. He never cruises. He hit a couple okay shots, but I felt good.”
Fili planned to fight a technical fight, and feels he did that in the opening round. As the second and third rounds progressed, however, he found himself in more of a brawl. “He’s really good at pulling you into a dog fight. He’s known for that. I was surprised at how well he did it. He pulled me into a brawl, I still won the brawl, but that’s Cub Swanson. He’s good at what he does.”
When it came time for the scorecards to be read, Fili was confident, though the dissenting judge did throw him for a loop.
“I was really confident. I thought I did plenty to win the fight, and then I heard the split. I had one second where I was like ‘I hope they don’t do the thing they always seem to do.’ And thankfully they didn’t. I think they got it right. I won the fight, I felt real confident that I won the fight. It was just a weird one. But that’s kind of what you get when you fight Cub. That’s what I signed up for.”
In a firefight with an opponent like Swanson, Fili later told Cageside Press that he actually has to turn his mind off. “I’m someone who is very analytical, I like to think, I like to problem solve, I like to reverse engineer things. So during my camp, I’m thinking a lot, I’m talking a lot, my coach Danny Castillo will tell you I never shut up during training. But when it’s time to fight, you turn all that off.”
“You don’t attach yourself to thoughts or feels,” Fili added. “The closer I get to a fight, the less I feel, the less I think. I completely autopilot, just seek, destroy. And I feel I did a really good job of that.”
Fili also gave his reaction to actor and former wrestler Tyler Mane returning to the role of Sabretooth in the upcoming Deadpool & Wolverine, with Deadpool himself incorporating some MMA-related lingo into the latest trailer.
“It’s really cool to see MMA seep into pop culture in a way that makes sense. It’s not like hokey and gimmicky, they actually kind of get it. The people that make movies like that, obviously you can tell when they love comic books, because the movies are good, but you can also tell that they love fighting and they love all these other cool things. It’s a good time be a f*cking nerd. We’re going to have a good summer.”
Watch the full UFC 303 post-fight press conference with Andre Fili above.
