Donald Cerrone Makes Interesting Admission About Win Over Al Iaquinta
Donald Cerrone makes interesting admission about his latest fight inside of the Octagon.
“Cowboy” put on one of his best performances in recent memory when he scored a unanimous decision win over Al Iaquinta. This fight served as the headliner of UFC Ottawa event (also known as UFC on ESPN+9) on Saturday night (May 4, 2019) at the Canadian Tire Centre in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and was broadcasted on ESPN+.
Following the fight, Cerrone made it known that he felt terrible starting the fight as he didn’t want to compete in the backstage area while trying to prepare for it. It wasn’t until the second round that he was ready to scrap it out with the former title contender.
In his mind, he felt doomed to put on a stinker of performance but was able to turn it all around.
“I was telling my corners, I felt terrible starting that fight,” Cerrone said in a post-fight media scrum (H/T to MMAFighting). “I couldn’t find it, back in the locker room I didn’t want to warm up. I didn’t want to get ready, I didn’t want to hit pads, I didn’t want to wrestle. I didn’t want to fight until the second round. People always say I’m a slow starter and, ‘What Cowboy are you going to get?’ And we train hard, we train so hard and we try and find for our opponents to beat us so that we can show up and beat them on our worst day. And today was my worst day.
“Thank God it’s been 41 fights in Zuffa that I’ve been here because I was able to, like, fake it ‘til you make it, ‘cause you fake it long enough and you find it. In the second round it was like, there it is and let’s go to work. It’s just tough, because I think the younger me would have quit. It’s just crazy, there’s like memes out there of lions with little cubs saying, ‘I would have quit until I realized who was watching’ and it was like, yeah, motherf*cker, let’s go.”
Following the fight, Cerrone made it known that he wants to either fight for the lightweight title or perhaps take on Conor McGregor in July during International Fight Week.
