After UFC Fight Night 50 KO win, Matt Mitrione not about to start calling out people

LEDYARD, Conn. – Perhaps the heavyweight division in the UFC should be on notice: If you call out Matt Mitrione, he’ll answer, and you might not like what winds up being the voice on the other end of the receiver.

On Friday, that voice came in the form of a fairly vicious 41-second knockout of Derrick Lewis, who used his first-round knockout win over Guto Inocente at the TUF 19 Finale in July to call for a fight with Mitrione.

Mitrione took offense to the way in which Lewis asked for the fight, but ultimately saved his response for UFC Fight Night 50 and became the first fighter to stop Lewis, dispatching him in quick order.

“The only thing that really fired me up was that the dude was going to call me out by name,” Mitrione told MMAjunkie at the post-event news conference at Foxwoods Resort Casino in Ledyard, Conn. “We’re going to go at it if you’re going to do that.”

Mitrione (8-3 MMA, 8-3 UFC) was supposed to have a fight with Stefan Struve in July, the night before Lewis (11-3 MMA, 2-1 UFC) called him out. But Struve had a backstage medical issue and was pulled from the fight, just hours before they’d have stepped into the cage.

A win over an opponent like Struve likely would’ve moved Mitrione up the heavyweight ladder. Now he hopes to fight a bigger name to make the climb after brutal knockouts of Lewis and Shawn Jordan, whom he finished with one second left in the first round in March for a “Performance of the Night” bonus.

“I’ve tried to limit my stupid positions outside the cage, for the most part, trying to get my life a little bit more in order, and I think I’ve done a better job of that,” Mitrione said. “But also, let’s call a spade a spade: I haven’t been fighting the top-tier talent. When I did, I dropped the ball a little bit. So hopefully this will garner me another shot at somebody who’s worth their salt and I can come out and perform the way I should, and the way I believe I should. How I do against them will decide how much of a tear I’m on or not.”

Mitrione said he’d have loved a fight with Alistair Overeem, had Overeem won his fight against Ben Rothwell in Friday’s co-main event. But Overeem was upset and now has three knockout losses in four fights.

Now he’ll wait to see what the UFC decides for him, while hoping it’s an upper-echelon heavyweight. But there’s beef with him and Overeem thanks to Overeem’s time with the Blackzilians camp in Florida, where Mitrione does portions of his training.

“It’s unfortunate: I was really hoping I was going to be able to score a fight with Overeem,” the former NFL defensive lineman and college football standout from Purdue said. “I’m unranked, and if Overeem won, it would’ve been a completely different conversation. But I have no idea what his future holds, and I have no idea what my future holds. There’s obviously personal grudges there with my camp and him, and me and him, as well. I hope he’s healthy, as far as being a human being, I hope he’s doing all right. But we’ll see what the UFC has planned for me, and for Ben, and for Overeem.”

One thing Mitrione does know for sure: He won’t be using the same kind of call-out methods Lewis used on him to ask for his next fight. That’s not his job, he said.

“I’m interested in that fight (with Overeem) for sure, absolutely,” Mitrione said. “But they’re my boss. They don’t pay me to make matches. Whoever they put in front of me is who I deserve. They’re not going to give me somebody I don’t deserve. (UFC matchmaker) Joe Silva’s not going to feel any pressure from stuff I say in a press conference.”

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 50, check out the UFC Events section of the site.