Roy Nelson blames Fabricio Werdum’s loss on the pressure of the Brazilian crowd

Fabricio Werdum lost the UFC heavyweight title when he was knocked out by Stipe Miocic at UFC 198.

The event was in front of a sold out crowd in Curitiba, Brazil with 45,000 people in attendance, and Roy Nelson thinks that had to do with Werdum’s loss.

Nelson spoke on the MMA Hour about how the pressure likely played a factor in how Werdum fought that night.

“You’re like, ‘Dude, I want to make some things happen,” Nelson said (transcribed by MMA Fighting). “I want to make fireworks.’ And when you do fireworks for the fans, you want to put a show for the fans, you just kind of sometimes get a little over anxious. I know that feeling.”

Nelson says that Werdum didn’t fight with the best strategy, and looked to put on a performance in front of his people.

“No, I think if Werdum just played it, I don’t want to say safe, but played the point fighting game too, I think he was already outpointing Stipe anyways,” explained Nelson. “He was just like, ‘You know what, I want to hit him.'”

Nelson doesn’t discredit Miocic’s win but admits that he didn’t predict the fight would go that way.

“I was impressed that he knocked Werdum out because I didn’t see that coming, but at the same time, when you got a 240-pound man running at you, and you just stick your hand out, you’re definitely going to hurt somebody.”

“The thing is that anybody in the heavyweight division can be champion any day just because of one punch. That’s definitely how top tier that’s just exactly how it is.”

Video | Stipe Miocic
[ooyala code=”c4a25kMjE6DuwmWUij4noVn033zUN3f8″ player_id=”bd214e34cfad476984102de4bf5e8da2″ auto=”true” width=”1280″ height=”1280″ autoplay=”true”]