Seattle, WA — Light heavyweight Ion Cutelaba might have been the only person inside the Climate Pledge Arena at UFC Seattle on Saturday that expected a submission in his fight with Ibo Aslan.
The fight even played out as anticipated, right until the end — a wild brawl filled with power shots.
“I knew he was going to have a hard punch, but I also don’t have a weak punch. And I have a pretty good jaw, I can [take] a punch really well,” Cutelaba (19-10-1, 1NC) told media outlets including Cageside Press following the fight, which ended rather surprisingly not with a knockout, but an arm-triangle choke. “But the fact is, I might have made a mistake, and he got me. He got me good. And I felt that, I felt his power. And I realized that that’s the moment where I had to make a decision.”
“I had a split decision where I had to go and make an adjustment. Do something different. Realize that that is a lot of power, and I need to adjust to the situation as it’s happening, not later.”
Then came the moment where Cutelaba had his opponent hurt. A key takedown followed, and Ion Cutelaba was suddenly in position for the arm-triangle. All inside of a round.
“I knew there was going to be a submission, I just didn’t expect it to be in the first round,” he stated, asked if the finish was what he had envisioned ahead of time. “We weren’t going to work too hard in the first round, we weren’t going to grapple in the first round, we were going to see how it goes, maybe let him work a little bit, feel him out. But after the brawl that ensued, what I realized was that he was tired. I could see that he was tired. So I went for it.”
Cutelaba said post-fight that he didn’t care about being the underdog, nor about who he fights next. Still, he did have one name to mention, a former title challenger.
“Brother I don’t f*cking care. Favorite, underdog, I don’t f*cking care. After this, I told everybody, I don’t f*cking care who is next. I need to fight everyone. But I give a chance to [Khalil] Rountree for revenge with me,” Cutelaba exclaimed. The pair first fought in 2019, with Cutelaba earning a TKO win. “He needs to show that he’s better, so I’ll give him a chance.”
Watch the full UFC Seattle post-fight press conference with Ion Cutelaba above.
