Salt Lake City — Bantamweight Mario Bautista earned the biggest win of his career at UFC 307, extending his current win streak to seven— then was booed mercilessly by the crowd at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City for his efforts.
Bautista (15-2) used his wrestling to pin the legendary Jose Aldo to the fence in their main-card fight, but failed to complete a single takedown. It was, in the terminology of “just bleed” style fans, a whole lot of “wall and stall,” similar to complaints of “lay and pray.”
There might be a nugget of truth to the criticism— more than once, the ref either appeared ready to restart the action, or in fact did. Still, Bautista put the blame solely at the feet of Jose Aldo himself.
“The performance, it is what it is. I had to do what I had to do,” Bautista told media outlets including Cageside Press following the fight. “Got cut in the second round, I got hit with something pretty good. Then I was able to drive him to the fence. He has pretty good takedown defense, but he cannot get off the cage. That’s not my fault. If that was me, I’m able to circle off the cage.”
“Whatever the crowd thinks, whatever everyone thinks, that’s on him,” Bautista added.
When it came time for the scorecards to be read, Bautista believed he had done enough to secure the win.
“I thought I did enough. Striking-wise, he was getting after it a little bit, but like I said, he just gave up a lot of time on the cage, so that’s on him.”
Turns out, he was right. Two of three judges scored the fight 29-28 for Mario Bautista, with the dissenting judge returning the opposite score for Aldo. Yet while it may be the biggest win of Bautista’s career in terms of name value, Dana White’s own reaction to the fight doesn’t bode well in terms of where it leaves him moving forward. White was critical of both the judging and the referee’s work in the bout, a common theme at UFC 307.
Watch the full UFC 307 post-fight press conference appearance by Mario Bautista above.
