Two months ago at UFC 123, lightweight grinder Nik Lentz upped his Octagon record to 4-0-1 with a split decision victory over former top-ranked competitor Tyson Griffin.
The win was undoubtedly the biggest achievement of Lentz’s UFC career to date but also one that stirred a bit of a frenzy among pundits and fight fans who thought the decision should have went to Griffin.
In fact, UFC President Dana White himself publically stated after the bout that he felt Griffin was robbed by the judges and wasn’t going to cut the Xtreme Couture fighter, who had just lost three straight, because of it.
Regardless of what you’ve read online, the fight was much closer than it has been made out to be.
It could have gone either way and Lentz isn’t quite sure what all the commotion was about. Before the score cards were read, he felt he had done enough to earn the decision.
“I thought so and truthfully I think Tyson thought so too,” Lentz told Mitch Ciccarelli on Crouching Tiger Hidden Leprechaun MMA Radio.
“Obviously when you lose, it’s something you don’t want to happen and your emotion gets the better of you so he went into the back and they created a fuss. Him and Randy [Couture] ran to the back and kind of told on me, I guess.”
Complaining about decisions seems to be a growing trend with fighters in MMA. When you aren’t finished in a fight it’s easy to say you truly didn’t lose because everyone views the outcome differently in fights that go the distance.
Lentz notes that it’s natural to feel robbed when you’re on the wrong side of a close decision but making a big ordeal out of it in public doesn’t help matters.
“If it wouldn’t have gone my way, I would have thought that I got ripped off but I would have kept my mouth shut and been a man about it,” Lentz said.
“Because if you have a fight that’s close enough to go to a split decision, it’s not like we are talking about a crazy [one-sided] decision here, it was razor thin the entire time.”
For Lentz, the criticism doesn’t affect him much. At the end of the day, he got his hand raised and moved one step up the divisional ladder.
A product of the Minnesota Martial Arts Academy, Lentz is one of the toughest rising stars at 155 lbs. However, as talented as he is, he has several detractors who view him as a "boring" fighter but Lentz believes that is all based off of one fight.
It was a Spike TV preliminary bout with Andre Winner back at UFC 118, before the Pay-Per-View broadcast, and Lentz insists the dull wasn’t even his fault.
“As far as people saying I’m not exciting or whatever, they base that off the one Andre Winner fight and I’m never going to change my mind on this but I believe Andre Winner is the person who made that fight boring,” Lentz said.
“Even though I was trying to take him down, I just knew in my head that he was going to try to open up to do something and I was going to counter it and he just never did. I couldn’t contemplate that until the very end because if it was me being pushed up against the cage, I would have tried anything to get away.”
“I mean flying arm bars, jumping knees, I would have tried anything and he was just kind of sitting there thinking ‘oh what am I going to say at the press conference?’ I still don’t understand what he was thinking but besides that, what can I do?”
Prior to the Winner bout, Lentz’ previous UFC fights were actually quite exciting.
From his debut at UFC 103 against Rafaello Oliveira to his draw with Thiago Tavares that many felt Lentz rightfully won to his three rounder with Rob Emerson, they were all entertaining affairs.
However, they were all preliminary match ups that didn’t air on television whereas the Winner bout was displayed on Spike TV in millions of homes across the country.
Most fans—the very same ones who said the decision was controversial—didn’t even actually watch his last fight with Griffin either that opened the UFC 123 preliminary card.
Fans are only basing their opinion of Lentz off of that one slow paced bout with Winner but Lentz isn’t bothered by it.
He realizes that fans tend to be forgetful of “boring performances” if you continue putting on and winning great fights in the future.
“A lot of people have short-term memories and a perfect example is Tyson Griffin. People have kind of worshipped that guy and rightfully so he’s a super exciting fighter but there was a long time there when he was considered boring,” Lentz said.
“People were saying he couldn’t finish a fight to save his life, you know, ‘he’s no Kenny Florian’ and people forget about these things. You have Gray Maynard who was also considered one of the boring fighters and then he goes out and has an amazing fight with Frankie Edgar, one of the best I’ve ever seen so people have short term memories and it’s my job to fix that opinion and it will be fixed soon.”
Lentz’ next fight isn’t scheduled yet and while he doesn’t have any particular opponent in mind, he is hopeful for an exciting match up.
“I don’t have any specific fighter picked out because I don’t think that way. I don’t have anything against anyone in the sport, you know, I’ll go out there and try to beat the crap out of the guy but after the fight we can be friends or whatever it doesn’t matter to me,” Lentz said.
“But the people that I want to fight are also people that want to fight an MMA style fight, they want to grapple, they want to strike and do everything. One of my most exciting and best fights to date and actually one of the toughest guys I’ve ever fought was Rob Emerson.”
“That’s someone that I like to fight, someone that legitimately wants to fight. He wants to really hurt you, he doesn’t want to dance around, and he just wants to fight. I like competing against people to where we can clash in the middle and fight it out.”
One fighter in the lightweight division that fits that description perfectly is Matt Wiman. Fresh off a dominant win over Cole Miller, Wiman would be an ideal candidate to give Lentz the type of fight he’s looking for.
When I asked Lentz about that match up, he definitely seemed interested in it but also noted that he would be happy fighting anyone the UFC put in front of him.
“Oh I agree, I would love to fight him. I would love to fight anyone they put me against but you make a good point. That is someone that likes to fight, I didn’t see his last fight but from what I heard it sounded like he just took Cole Miller down and pounded him and that’s the kind of fighting that I like.”
To listen to the entire interview, click the link to listen to the latest episode of Crouching Tiger Hidden Leprechaun MMA Radio.
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Mitch Ciccarelli is the sexiest columnist in MMA. A staff writer for Heavy MMA, featured columnist for B/R and host of Crouching Tiger Hidden Leprechaun MMA Radio, Ciccarelli is also a future United States Airman beginning basic training this March. He is also engaged to Eva Mendes and Jessica Simpson.
Follow Ciccarelli on twitter, unless you have herpes. @MitchCiccarelli
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