HOUSTON – After an impressive display at Saturday’s UFC Fight Night 104 event, Chas Skelly took his good mood backstage.
Following the one-sided performance that ended with a second-round rear-naked choke of featherweight Chris Gruetzemacher (13-2 MMA, 1-1 UFC), Skelly (17-2 MMA, 6-2 UFC) got some laughs from the reporters at Houston’s Toyota Center with a few of his pearls of wisdom – like this brutally honest breakdown of the win.
“I’m a guy that comes out and gets punched in the head for a living,” Skelly joked. “So the only thing I know how to do is to throw punches and squeeze things hard. That’s what I did.”
Clearly, Skelly, whose prelim aired on FS 1, is OK with using his camera time to show a little personality, which, at least in his case, seems quite different than turning the spotlight into a smack-talking competition.
“So you’re saying I can fight good but I’m dumb?” Skelly joked when asked about his discrete approach to pre-fight hype. “You’re saying I can’t talk? I’m not a good talker? I’m just kidding. I like to talk trash. I love it. But to me this is a sport. This is how we make a living. I’m not going to verbally attack somebody who’s just trying to make a living out doing the same thing I am.
“Now, if somebody wanted to do a (expletive)-talking battle with me, I’d love it because I actually feel like I’m a better (expletive)-talker than I am a fighter. But for me, that’s just not my style. I just get in there, I grind it out every day, I work hard, and I expect the person who’s fighting me to do the same. I think we can make fireworks in the cage. There’s no reason to try to degrade each other outside of it.”
Skelly’s post-fight spirits were certainly justifiable after what was a pretty breezy night at the office. Now with back-to-back UFC wins following a decision loss to Darren Elkins that snapped a four-fight winning streak, Skelly is quite optimistic about his own game.
“Overall, I thought it was a really good fight,” Skelly said. “I thought I fought a complete fight and I won everywhere. That’s the main goal – it’s just to dominate. These guys don’t understand they need to fight me now because I’m improving every single time I come out. I’m improving, man. I’m gone, and I made the move to Florida, and I’m doing the right things. I’m putting everything together. I’m putting my heart and soul into this.
“I get better and better every time I step in there, and you’re seeing it. I felt like I could have stood up and out-struck him the entire time, because the only thing he hit me with, I think, was a body kick the entire fight. I decided to make it a complete fight, take him down, do a little bit of work on the ground.”
His performance was so complete, in fact, that Skelly seems to have other issues to address when it comes to his next octagon outing.
“I’m trying to work on my tan, to be honest,” Skelly said. “I am white. Like, pasty white. It’s almost embarrassing. I’m from Texas training in Florida, so there are beaches all around me. And I’m the whitest dude around. It’s just embarrassing.”
Other than appearing a little less pale, Skelly has another request. A proud native of Azle, Texas, he would like his next fight to be in Dallas, where the UFC is holding an event, UFC 211, on May 13.
And, if he gets his wish granted, he promised a very unique sight in return.
“These tickets are expensive,” Skelly said. “These hotel rooms are expensive. These guys can’t come out and make the drive and pay all the money for the tickets and come and see me, so I want to fight in Dallas, where I know some people who aren’t able to make the trip to watch me fight in other places can come out there.
“If I fight in Dallas, you’re going to see more people with sleeveless shirts screaming ‘Kick his ass, Chas!’ than you’ve ever seen in your life, I promise you.”
But just because he’s proud of his roots doesn’t mean Skelly was particularly broken up about watching his fellow Texans Daniel Jolly and Alex Morono lose their respective bouts before he stepped into the Toyota Center octagon for his own scrap.
Nothing personal, he clarified. After all, he would have cared just as little if they were his friends.
“I’ve had fights where guys came back mangled up, crying in the corner right before I get out there, and I’m like, ‘Dude, pick yourself up. Put yourself together. I’ve got to out (to fight) – this is terrifying,'” Skelly joked.
“I don’t care what happens in fights before me, and I don’t really care where they’re from or if we’re friends at that point, because it’s not about them. It’s about me. I’m about to go out there and do my job.”
To hear Skelly’s full media scrum, check out the video above.
And for complete coverage UFC Fight Night 104, check out the UFC Events section of the site.
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