BOSTON – For as much as Brad Tavares respects former UFC middleweight champion Chris Weidman, the fact of the matter is that they were locked inside a cage Saturday night.
And for all 15 minutes of their UFC 292 encounter, Tavares (20-8 MMA, 15-8 UFC) had no reservations about attacking Weidman’s surgically repaired leg with kicks as he won a clean-sweep unanimous decision in their featured prelim.
“At the end of the day, I don’t think he’ll feel bad, in the moment, trying to break my leg,” Tavares told reporters, including MMA Junkie, backstage at TD Garden. “Obviously that’s not what I wanted to see happen, but that is the intent behind it. When I am kicking somebody, it’s bad intentions. I do want to hurt them. This is fighting.”
But don’t get it twisted. Weidman, who sat out more than two years because of his broken leg suffered at UFC 261, is someone Tavares admires, and the bad intentions were meant for only inside the octagon.
“Huge for me,” Tavares said of the win. “I didn’t want to give him too much credit leading up to the fight. I didn’t want to put some air in his sails more than he needed to be. But I told him right after, ‘Bro, I really look up to you.’ One of my all-time favorite fighters is Anderson Silva, and for him to dethrone Anderson (in 2013), who I see as the GOAT of MMA, that says a lot about him. So I told him, ‘Bro, you’re a living legend.’ I told his kids, ‘Your pops is a living legend. He came up short tonight, but be proud of this man because of what he’s accomplished.'”
Given Weidman’s long layoff and his age (he’s 39), the prevailing notion Tavares felt heading into the fight was that Weidman was being written off. That bothered Tavares and despite mostly dominating, he gave a tip of the cap to Weidman for his performance in a losing effort.
“You guys were just treating him as if he’s done, and he showed tonight that he wasn’t,” Tavares said. “I hit him with some crazy leg kicks. In the second round, I hit him with one and I told his corner, ‘Hey, throw in the towel.’ Because I thought for sure one or two more of those and he was done. His leg is gonna be damaged. But he kept going, he switched stance, he made the adjustment. Like, dude, that impressed me. He made the adjustment to southpaw, and that kind of threw things off for myself. At one point in the fight I kicked him in the leg and he’s like, ‘Come on, do it again. Come on.’ I was like, damn, see? Don’t write this dude off.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 292.
