Before I get into the meat and potatoes of this interview, please allow me to take a few lines of text to explain what “The 5 o’clock spotlight” is all about.Our intentions are to provide the best and most insightful interviews in Mixed Martial Arts to our readers on BJPENN.COM and we will release these interviews everyday at 5:00PM Pacific Time like clockwork Mon. - Fri. for as long as BJPENN.COM is in existence.
This will be a feature you can rely on day in and day out without fail that will spotlight your favorite athletes in MMA as they discuss their fights and current events within the MMA landscape.
Make sure to come back here every day at 5:00 PM to get your insider fix. (Check the bottom of the article to see who will be featured tomorrow)
In the first installment of “The 5 o’clock spotlight” I caught up with UFC fighter Joey Beltran to discuss his fight last Saturday with Pat Barry. It was a back and forth battle that the judges saw in favor of Barry and Joey had some things to say that he wanted to get off his chest…
“I am very happy and very proud with my performance against such a highly touted opponent as Pat Barry. On paper I had no business striking with Pat Barry, or many would think even being in the same cage as Pat Barry. I went out there I proved myself and I feel honestly after watching the fight multiple times on replay, with the sound off, that I won that fight. I felt that in the middle of the fight I was winning and I felt that after the fight, even though I took a hard beating after the eye gauge for that last minute and thirty, I still feel like I won the fight. But that’s what happens in MMA when you let the fight go to the judges, people will get screwed sometimes. “
The fight Metric numbers show in favor of Beltran. On paper, these statistics show that Joey out-struck Barry with Joey landing 104 strikes to Pat’s 58 in the 15 minutes of contested competition. You can check these out here for yourself.
While I was on the phone with Joey I asked him if he had a chance to check out the fight statistics to see if they back up his claim of victory, he stated…
“No, but I imagine there were a lot of leg kicks for him and a lot of punches to the face for me. Especially against the cage, even in the open mat I did more than survive. I was on the offensive most of the time and landing combinations to the face and to the body. I even landed a few inside leg kicks I threw a head kick out there and landed a body kick. I was more than holding my own with a K-1 kick boxer which is pretty awesome considering where I’ve come from and where I’ve progressed in such a short amount of time. “
Going outside of the box, fight results aside there was another aspect to this contest that may or may not have been overlooked by fight fans and onlookers and that is the refereeing job done by Mario Yamasaki. It would appear, if you saw the fight, that the restarts were quick and often when Beltran was trying to implement a common and smart game plan against a high level striker. Joey had this to say about his game plan and the fact that Yamasaki really did him no favors last Saturday night.
“During the fight, I didn’t have time to complain or to even think about the refereeing, I was just fighting. I remember thinking the restarts were happening pretty quick.
I knew going into the fight what my game plan was and that was to smother him against the fence. Just like Randy Couture beat up Gabe Gonzaga. I must have watched that fight ten times per week before we went to Texas and I knew, ‘that’s my game plan, that’s how I’m going to win.’ Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to do that. I navigated the fight, I thought, very intelligently on our feet. I mean ya, his leg kicks were landing, but I was always coming forward when they were landing so they weren’t really hitting with full force.
I was able to get the fight to the fence and start to do work. I made sure to stay busy, mixing strikes with knees, foot stomps, punches and mixing takedown attempts. Just because I knew in my head that I cannot just hang out here because they will restart me and it seemed like the second that I would stop striking, maybe 2 seconds would go by and they would restart us.
You know, a lot of my friends and family are upset and they are on conspiracy theories like ‘Oh they wanted him to win’, but I don’t get too much into that. But the more and more I think about it, it does upset me that I wasn’t allowed to fight my fight.
It was not a kickboxing match, it was a cage fight, a cage fight… and please let me say it again, IT WAS NOT A KICKBOXING MATCH, IT WAS A CAGE FIGHT and I was not allowed to fight and use the cage. Which the funny thing to me is I wonder if they are going to do the same thing to Randy Couture when he fights Machida? And I think we all know the answer to that… No they are not.”
Interesting take on events isn’t it? I think so… Whenever there is any sort of controversy in competition the other side will often take insult, so before our interview starts to make waves I wanted to clear some things up with Joey on his thoughts on Pat Barry so the world knows he isn’t mad at Pat, in fact, he likes Pat.
“Pat is an awesome dude, we hung out and had some really good times with me and him and “Showtime” (Pettis). Even me and Mitrione squashed some of the beef that we had coming into the fight. So it’s all good, I actually think I might go out and train with those two knuckleheads because they obviously have something good going on out there. But absolutely, Pat’s a good guy, he is a true competitor and in no way shape or form do I think the eye poke was intentional. It’s a traditional Muay Thai technique where you push off and go for the kick. Shit happens in fights so what can you do, but Pat is definitely cool. “
Now, before Joey and I sat down to do this interview we had a casual discussion about the fight, in all honesty, I was reading reviews online via cagepotato.com on Joey’s fight when he rang my phone to do a little homie venting with me. It was in this initial discussion that he had mentioned to me the possibility of dropping down to 205 since he is one of the smaller heavyweights on the roster.
So while our interview was winding down, I asked Mr. Beltran what is next for him. If you remember in our pre-fight interview Joey thought that his fight between Pat was a “loser leaves town” fight.
“Honestly, at this point, I’m back in the gym already, I am back training. I can’t do any contact because of the stitches over my eye that is a result from the eye gauge. But I am lifting hard using kettle bells, hitting the road with my bike again and staying active. My weight will probably stay around 230 and honestly at this point I’m going to do whatever my boss asks me to do. If Joe Silva says he wants me to go to 205 than I will make the drop, if Joe Silva says that they no longer need my services at the Ultimate Fighting Championships than we will cross that bridge when we come to it. But right now I feel really strong; I definitely felt the stronger of the two fighters in the Octagon on Saturday night. So I guess it’s just waiting and see in terms of making the weight cut and just stay in the gym and stay in shape. I worked really really hard to get in shape for this fight and I don’t want to lose it because it sucks to have to get back into shape.”
Lastly, Joey just had one more message …
“I’d just like to thank BJPENN.COM for all the coverage leading up to the fight. I really appreciate being on an awesome site that gets the amount of hits that BJPENN.COM does and that’s about it.”
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