Phumi Nkuta: Adriano Moraes ‘pulled a Rousimar Palhares on me,’ adamant he was not unconscious at final bell
Phumi Nkuta knows he should have left the debut MVP MMA event with a win over a former ONE champion but instead he’s back home with a controversial loss on his record.
After accepting a short notice fight against Adriano Moraes on the Ronda Rousey vs. Gina Carano card, the flyweight prospect put on a stunning performance in his biggest step up in competition to date. Based on the scorecards, he was up 20-18 on two cards and 19-19 on the third so even if he dropped the final round, at worst Nkuta would have left with a split-decision win.
Instead, Nkuta got caught in a late rear-naked choke attempt by Moraes that he was fighting right up until the final bell. Moraes actually held onto the choke for a few seconds longer as referee Herb Dean pried him loose and when the submission was released, Nkuta was unconscious.
“Obviously, I had my little Max Holloway moment,” Nkuta told MMA Fighting about the conclusion of the fight. “I was into the fight, the crowd was having fun. I’m just like let’s bang out here. I felt I had the fight in the bag, but at the end of the day, I love to scrap. I’m screaming let’s go, and I throw the cartwheel kick, my standard kick I wanted to throw. I threw it a little slower than usual because it’s towards the end of the fight. That’s why if you see my hand is down, I throw it and he throws the flying knee at the same time, I’m not going to lie, it’s almost some Goku-Fajita, superhero Dragonball-Z thing. He’s throwing his finishing move with the flying knee, I’m throwing my cartwheel kick at the same time.
“He does a good job taking the back, trapping the arm, great job to him. Obviously, the choke happened. I heard the 10-second clapper, I’m fighting it with everything I’ve got. I hear the bell and then I wake up. As soon as I wake up, I’m like there’s no way I got knocked out. In my mind, I’m like I just heard the bell, what happened?”
The cageside officials decided to go to instant replay to determine what exactly happened and ultimately Dean made the call that Nkuta fell unconscious before the final bell. That resulted in a technical submission win for Moraes, although it appeared that Nkuta was still holding onto his opponent’s arm when the bell sounded and he seemed to go to sleep only after the choke was still applied after the fight was already over.
“You look at the instant replay, and he kind of pulled a Rousimar Palhares on me,” Nkuta said. “It is what it is.”
Of course, Palhares was admonished several times during his career for holding onto a submission too long even with the referee trying to break the hold.
As much as Nkuta wants to believe that Moraes was just locked in the heat of the moment, he watched enough replays to show Dean trying to drag him off and the choke was definitely still applied.
“I thought Adriano was more of a clean fighter,” Nkuta said. “I get he’s just doing everything he can, heat of the moment and all that, but I guess when I rocked him in the first round, I did everything I could to really not to hit that guy in the back of the head. It’s like looking at this now, should I have just not really cared and just struck the guy anyways? I pride myself on being a clean fighter and in that moment it was for sure dirty.
“Especially because you see Herb trying to pry him off. It wasn’t like Herb touched the guy, and he let go. Herb’s pulling the guy off, and he’s still choking me. Look, I guess it could be heat of the moment but at the end of the day, every second counts and I believe I got Rousimar Palhares’d out of that but it is what it is. I’m just happy with the experience. I’m happy the fans loved the fight.”
For his part, Dean stated in a separate interview that he was confident in his decision to declare the fight a technical submission, and Nkuta isn’t interested in getting into a war of words with the referee.
Because he heard the final bell before being choked unconscious, Nkuta knows he wasn’t out when the fight actually ended but Dean obviously believes he saw something different.
“That’s the thing. Every second counts when we’re talking about a choke. Every little millisecond counts,” Nkuta said. “I’ve watched it from a bunch of different angles. You can see me fighting the choke with one arm. If I went limp, my arm would have let go. I’m not going to sit here and say anything bad about Herb. He’s just trying to do his job as a referee and I’m trying to do my job as a fighter.
“However he feels about, he can feel about it but I’m not going to sit here and talk trash about Herb. I’m not going to make him the Keith Peterson to my Dominick Cruz and start holding a whole bunch of stuff against him. But at the end of the day, how am I limp if I’m fighting the choke with one hand still?”
The conclusion was understandably disappointing, especially because that now serves as the first and only loss on Nkuta’s professional record.
Nkuta’s team already filed an appeal with the California State Athletic Commission, and he’s hoping further review shows he wasn’t unconscious when the bell rang, which means the fight should have gone to the scorecards.
No matter the decision, Nkuta believes he showed he’s a legitimate threat to anybody in the flyweight division and thanks to MVP paying all the fighters a flat fee, he didn’t lose any money — and also went home with an extra $100,000 for Fight of the Night.
But ultimately, Nkuta hopes the loss gets erased from his record because he knows the referee made the wrong call that night.
“Isn’t it funny the only way I can get beat is off some controversial hoopla?” Nkuta said. “Off a fight that I took on a week and a half’s notice and up in weight.
“This was a cool experience. I had the time of my life. A no-contest would be cool. Obviously because he’s holding on a little too long. That’s the tough part, because he’s holding on every second counts and I go out. It sucks, but at the end of the day, in the court of public opinion, everyone knows what happened. I can sleep at night knowing that.”
