Seattle, WA — Austin Vanderford jumped on the UFC Seattle card on all of four days’ notice, pounded out a win over Nikolay Veretennikov, then was shoved well after the bell by his opponent to add a little controversy to the mix.
As recently as Monday, Vanderford (13-2) believed he wasn’t going to be on the card, after his unnamed original opponent fell through. That led Vanderford and wife Paige VanZant to cancel their flight plans, though on a hunch, they rebooked on a later flight.
“Thank God I got another call saying this guy could make it at a catchweight. And I was like ‘let’s go,'” Vanderford said following the fight at the Climate Pledge Arena, speaking with media outlets including Cageside Press. “It was a whirlwind for sure.”
The post-fight push by Nikolay Veretennikov, apparently unprovoked, caught everyone by surprise. Coming well after the bell, officials were already in the cage and quickly separated the pair; Vanderford threw up double middle fingers as a result.
“Funny enough, I had dropped the nickname ‘The Gentleman’ for this fight, and I guess now there’s a picture of me with the double fingers up,” quipped Vanderford. “It was kind of weird, I thought he was coming up to say ‘good fight,’ but I didn’t really understand. He was never going to get out of the position he was in unless time ran out or the ref stopped him. I had a good grip on him, and he got saved. He was going to get hurt even worse. I was landing some shots, but I was getting everything back and I was going to go in for a hard one.”
Asked whether he felt Veretennikov would be cut for the infraction, Vanderford show a little bit of sympathy, but doesn’t expect his UFC Seattle foe will stick around.
“Yeah I mean, I think it’s tough. For me, no hard feelings. I know the sacrifices in what we do to go out there and perform, I know the dreams and aspirations we all have. I feel for the guy, but yeah, you go out there and get dominated and throw a fit like that, you probably don’t deserve to be here.”
Vanderford, a former Bellator MMA middleweight title challenger, took Saturday’s short-notice scrap at a 175lb catchweight, but welterweight will be his home for the foreseeable future. The former Contender Series winner, infamously snubbed of a contract despite securing a finish on the show, noted that making 170 is now easier than making weight as a middleweight. “I had some success, I had some good wins against quality guys at 185, but I think at 170, you’ll really be able to see a guy who can go out there and make a push at this,” he told Cageside Press.
Watch the full UFC Seattle post-fight appearance by Austin Vanderford above.
