Joaquin Buckley is still shaking from his defeat to Atlanta’s Kamal Usman.
Five-winning wins, “Newmantha” headlined last Saturday, and decided to get the biggest win of his career, taking pole position for a shot at the UFC welterweight championship. Needless to say, things weren’t moving along with plans.
Instead, “Nigerian Nightmare” easily shut down Buckley’s attack, earning a takedown of will and a dominant unanimous decision victory.
After defeating him four times and surrendering to Usman for nearly 13 minutes of control time, Buckley was left “embarrassed” by his performance.
“All the rounds he let me down and knocked me out there,” Buckley said of Usman on his YouTube channel. “I couldn’t get back to my feet. I’m looking at Mike Bertrand, like, “Bro, get up at least once, get up and get up.” I’m not going to lie to y’all, I feel so embarrassed for that loss.
“I feel very humiliated for that loss, but at the same time I have to bow my head. Usmann told me who he was – honestly, I understood so many excuses about this fight that I couldn’t make.
Joaquin Buckley focused more on the future than on the task at hand.
He doesn’t want to make excuses for his poor performance, but Buckley has a pretty good idea of what went wrong.
“It was the first time I’d been in a fight and I didn’t kill that or my mind was killed. That’s what led to my downfall,” Buckley said. “I’m almost looking at the next move, and how big we get, how big we get. This is our show-out moment and it’s okay to have that type of mentality, but you always have to remember that it’s just a different fight.