UNIONDALE, N.Y. – Gian Villante said he was going to take a more careful approach to his UFC on FOX 25 fight with Patrick Cummins on Saturday.
Now, after taking a split-decision loss to a gritty and resilient Cummins (10-4 MMA, 6-4 UFC), Villante (15-9 MMA, 5-6 UFC) thinks he may have been a little too careful.
“I had him hurt,” Villante said. “I should have finished it – a couple of times. And when I did have him hurt, I’d land another big shot, and I’d kind of wait for him to come back. I should have just poured it on.
“Just (an) unfortunate decision. I never want to keep in the judges’ hands. It’s not what I do. It’s not how I fight. I try to finish fights. This time I just wanted to finish with something clean, instead of pouring on. I just waited too long.”
Villante did cause some damage – as Cummins’ mess of a face can help corroborate – especially in the first round, when a punch and some hammerfists looked like they were about to put “Durkin” away. After a headbutt that split Cummins’ head open, however, there was a break in action that helped the light-heavyweight recover.
When it comes to that, Villante says he has no interest in inserting himself in yet another refereeing controversy. But that didn’t stop the light-heavyweight from expressing his bewilderment with the timeout after what he maintains was an accidental head clash.
“I was what – severely? Profusely? What’s the word I’m looking for? Give me a big one,” Villante said. “Very confused? Extremely. I don’t know what the hell was going on. I know I was hurting him with those hammerfists. He was wobbling, and then he went to get on one knee and I’m like, ‘Alright, good.’
“And then we clinched up and I guess we collided heads, but it wasn’t intentional by any means. And I didn’t know you stopped fights for a head collision and then give you five minutes to recover? That was really weird to me. I had never seen that before.”
Villante is now riding the first two-fight skid of his octagon career, following a UFC Fight Night 106 loss to Mauricio “Shogun” Rua in Brazil in March. Cummins, in turn, is on a two-fight winning streak after building on yet another gritty decision win over Jan Blachowicz at April’s UFC 210.
The typically aggressive Villante takes part of the blame for letting the scrap even go to the judges’ scorecards in the first place. And he takes solace in both his intact health after the grueling scrap and the huge win that teammate and best friend Chris Weidman had over Kelvin Gastelum later that night.
But he’s also not comfortable with the final decision.
“It was a weird fight, man,” Villante said. “I don’t know where I lost. I don’t know what part of any round I lost. If I was hit, it was one shot and then I was fine. Nothing went through clear, clean or anything like that. Weird.”
To hear more from Villante, check out the video above.
And for complete coverage of UFC on FOX 25, check out the UFC Events section of the site.
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