Coach: Alvarez’s illegal elbow was my 1,000% fault
Mark Henry: “I definitely wasn’t meaning to be cheap at all. I’m not stupid. I’ve been doing this a long time.”
Eddie Alvarez had Dustin Poirier in mount at UFC on FOX 30 when referee Marc Goddard stood the fighters up. It was believed the stand up was due to the vestigial prohibition on 12-6 elbows – downward elbow with an arc is allowed, while one that drops straight down is not. The elbow played in a role in the stand up, as did holding the fence, and an alleged wet willie.
A replay showed that immediately prior to the elbow, coach Mark Henry mimicked a downward elbow. Henry was indicating a down arc, but it ended up being a downward line.
https://twitter.com/MRussoKOB/status/1023394894042353664
On a blame scale of 1 to 10, it’s 100 on me, said Henry to Steven Marrocco for MMAjunkie.
He definitely did what he saw me do. Definitely my fault. I definitely wasn’t meaning to be cheap at all. I’m not stupid. I’ve been doing this a long time. I know he can’t do a top elbow. Out of the hundreds and hundreds of fights that I’ve done, every single time they say you can’t do that elbow.
Maybe I should have went over different ways to do something.”
I’ve done a ton fights with [Goddard] as a ref, and if Goddard was in the [Octagon] again, I’d have 100 percent faith in him. He’s a great ref.
That’s the way these two fight. Those two never do anything bad when they’re fighting anybody else. But when these two are scrapping, that’s how it comes down. Dustin did his stuff, but it had no relevance to what was going to happen, anyway, and same with the elbow. I didn’t mean to be cheap.
