Coach: Bryan Caraway's fishhook didn't alter outcome of Erik Perez fight

Here’s how Bryan Caraway’s Wikipedia page describes his latest win over Erik Perez, which came this past Saturday at UFC Fight Night 42:

“After controlling the majority of the bout with his grappling, Caraway won the fight via rear-naked choke submission in the second round. Preceeding the finish, the in ring referee missed Caraway’s brief fish-hook of Perez, a move deemed illegal by the unified rules of MMA.”

According to an article on one site, it was a “questionable illegal maneuver he used to assist in choking out his opponent.”

Never mind that the fishhook happened midway through the first round of the FOX Sports 1-televised main-card bout, while the choke came in the second.

It’s this kind of thing that’s been bothering Robert Follis, Caraway’s coach at Xtreme Couture in Las Vegas. He doesn’t deny that the fishhook happened, or that it was illegal. But he does object to those who would attribute the outcome of the fight to it, and he thinks it has at least something to do with how people viewed Caraway before this fight.

“I think if it happened to anybody, it would’ve gotten a mention,” Follis told MMAjunkie. “It’s an abnormal thing. But if a guy gets kicked in the groin in the first round and then gets knocked out in the second, you don’t see people writing headlines like, ‘Groin kick comes before knockout.’”

But that’s exactly what Follis saw when he looked at one story, he said. “Bryan Caraway Fish Hooks Perez Before Choke,” read the headline. It’s not technically untrue, in a purely chronological sense, but it’s also a little like saying that the glove touch at the start of a fight came before the knockout in the third round of that fight.

“It is accurate, but it’s very misleading,” Follis said. “Had it led to the choke, then yes, it’d be a very different discussion. But it didn’t.”

And that is an overlooked point in the post-fight furor. Whether you think the first-round fishhook maneuver was intentional or not (Follis, not surprisingly, comes down on the side of not), you’d have a hard time arguing that it played a role in the second-round choke that ended the fight. So why has that uncalled foul overshadowed Caraway’s win?

The way Follis sees it, it all comes back to the broader perception of Caraway, which in turn might make people more likely to assume he did it on purpose.

“But how do you attribute a motive to something like that?” Follis said. “How do you ever know if you’re right about that? How do you prove that a guy didn’t kick someone in the nuts to get some rest. How do you prove that Jon Jones isn’t sticking his hand out knowing that an eye-poke might deter the guy? We can’t guess at intent. You just have to have the rules and penalize people when they break them.”

According to Follis, some of the perception problems Caraway has might be the result of his appearance alongside girlfriend/fellow UFC fighter Miesha Tate as a coach on “The Ultimate Fighter 18.” Some of it might also be just because he’s dating Tate in the first place.

“I think there’s some jealousy to it,” Follis said. “You look at the comments and, right below the fishhooking stuff is someone going, ‘How is that guy dating Miesha?’ That’s just some insecurity and some jealousy from those people.”

As far as Follis and the rest of Team Caraway are concerned, the submission win over Perez (14-6 MMA, 4-2 UFC) is a well-earned victory that should only push him further up the ranks. Caraway (19-6 MMA, 4-1 UFC) might not win any popularity contests, but he has won four out of five in the UFC.

“I see this fight as putting him in the top 10,” Follis said. “I’m looking at it like, who’s next? Who can we go and get another win or two against and be fighting for a title? I think Bryan’s an extremely talented guy, and whether fans like him or not, he’s going to win a title.”

For complete coverage of UFC Fight Night 42, check out the UFC Events section of the site.