Bruno Silva isn’t happy with the way Chris Weidman and referee Gary Copeland acted at UFC Atlantic City.
“Blindado” was poked in the eye in the second round Saturday night at Boardwalk Hall and another couple of eye pokes forced him to fall to the canvas in pain. Weidman followed up with punches until Copeland called for the TKO finish. Silva immediately protested and the replay showed the Brazilian was poked in the eye twice during Weidman’s final attack.
“The referee was bizarre,” Silva said in an interview with MMA Fighting on Sunday. “He f***** up, and then f***** up on top of that. The least they could do is a no-contest. No way. He put his finger inside my eye.”
Instead of ruling it a no-contest, the commission deemed the result a technical decision in favor of Weidman. All three judges gave the former champion a win in both rounds, plus a 10-9 for the 2:18 that lasted the final stanza. Silva felt that the New Jersey commission unfairly favored the New York native with their calls, and will file an appeal with the commission.
“We think it’s hard for Chris Weidman to accept a rematch but the no-contest would be fair,” Silva said. “Let’s see what the UFC does. I just want things done the right way, the fair way. I went there and fought and you didn’t see any malice from my part.”
“I thought the referee was stopping it because of my eye, but then I saw [Weidman] celebrating,” he continued. “I was like, ‘No f****** way this m*********** knocked me out. I was never knocked out in my career. I went back up so angry, telling the referee to look at the big screen. I want to beat him up but I knew that would f*** my career. I had to control myself there.
“I went to the medical backstage and my cornerman said they has changed the result and I felt relieved because there was no knockout. I thought they were going to rule it a no-contest, but then he said it was a unanimous win. I didn’t understand it. He poked me in the eye in the second round, poked me in the third, and it’s still an unanimous decision win for him?”
Silva said he wasn’t mad at Weidman at first, but changed his view of the situation once he re-watched the bout back at the fighter’s hotel.
“Chris Weidman acted in bad faith,” Silva said. “It’s said [by the referee] at the locker room that you can’t fight with your fingers pointing straight, it should be either up or with your hands closed. He spent the entire fight with his fingers pointing at my face, and still celebrated as he had knocked me out.”
Weidman said at the post-fight interview that it was Silva’s fault because “you can’t drop to the ground like that if your eye gets poked. You’ve got to stand. You can’t just drop. He did that three times and it caught up to him.”
“What did he want me to do, to smile at his face?” Silva responded. “He put his finger inside my eye. It was my eye, not his. To be told off by the guy that is in the wrong if unbelievable, right?”
Silva was respectful towards Weidman as a legend of the sport on last week’s episode of MMA Fighting’s Trocação Franca podcast, but wouldn’t be so nice if they are paired up for a rematch one day.
“I never liked Chris Weidman because of how he handled Anderson Silva’s leg break, but I always try to see it as a professional,” Silva said. “I didn’t know him personally. We see each other a day before the weigh-ins and I wasn’t going to talk to him, but he came to me and shook my hand, wished me good luck. There was no animosity during the fight, we were there to fight, and I was angry at the referee when the fight was over.
“But when I got to the hotel and watched the fight, f***, he was very disloyal. He knows what he did, but being a man is at risk of extinction. No way he would say he’s wrong, that we could do a rematch. He won’t do that. I don’t even expect that. Only men would do that, people with character. I won’t stay here disrespecting him either but when we fight again, it’s going to be different. There will be no loyalty anymore.”
