Belfort: I Could Have Knocked Weidman Out

Vitor “The Phenom” Belfort (24-11 MMA) looked great during the opening minute of his UFC 187 title fight with Chris Weidman.

However, “The All-American” was able to weather Belfort’s early storm and eventually took the fight to the ground where he earned a first-round TKO victory.

Belfort recently sat down with Brazilian news outlet Combate, where he discussed what went wrong in his fight with Weidman at UFC 187:

“I spent too much energy there,” he said, as translated by Lucas Rezende for BloodyElbow. “If I had taken a step back, waited a little bit, I’m sure I would have knocked him out. I should have made better use of my experience. He is very tough on the ground, it was his day.”

“I had both my shoulders on the ground, I couldn’t turn sideways. It’s easy to talk about mistakes in a fight. The other guy deserves his praise. It’s a part of life. He felt my strikes, he was afraid of exchanging with me. He wanted to take me down right away. I spent a year and a half waiting for this fight, it felt like the camp would never end. I felt like I overtrained about four different times.”

Thoughts?