Heavyweight Johnathan ‘Leglock Monster’ Ivey recently shocked and amazed the MMA world during a fight vs. Travis Fulton at Colosseum Combat 45 on Saturday in Kokomo, Indiana. He feigned injury, knocked Fulton to the ground, was pounding him out, then stopped and tapped out.
MMAjunkie‘s Ben Fowlkes can be counted on, always, to take the reader below the obvious surface. He spoke with Ivey about what was really going on.
For example, this is not Ivey faking a heart attack:
https://twitter.com/Grabaka_Hitman/status/1013275694913159168
That’s just silly, said Ivey.
The crowd went ‘oooh!’ So I acted like it hurt me. I’ve seen people say I was faking a heart attack, or I was disrespecting him by doing that, but that wasn’t what I was doing. I like having fun in there. I’ve done stuff like that in 50 or 60 of my fights. I like playing it up for the crowd.
Fulton is Ivey’s role model – a guy who will actually fight anyone anywhere. And he didn’t want to hurt his hero. Who would?
After the second left, his eyes rolled back in his head, said Ivey. I turned to the ref and said, ‘OK, he’s done ref.’ The ref said, ‘No he’s not. Keep fighting.’ So I switch it up and throw a couple straight rights, thinking he’s fixing to jump in there. Then Travis comes back to, and he’s not defending himself but he switches his hips. I moved around and put my knee on his head, and then I started throwing some real light rights hands. He’s not defending himself. He’s defenseless. So I say to the ref, ‘Come on, this is it.’ And the ref says, ‘Keep fighting.’
If this had been some guy who’d been a real jerk to me, I’d have kept hitting him. But this was Travis Fulton, ‘The Ironman.’ So I hit him a couple more times, and I looked at the ref like, don’t make me keep hitting him. But the ref was adamant. So I stood up and backed away. The ref said, ‘What are you doing?’ I told him that if he wasn’t going to stop it, I would.
It was a split-second call. I’m just not going to stand there and hit Travis Fulton unnecessarily. I’d already hit him 15 or 20 times, and he wasn’t throwing anything back. He was defenseless.
I’m OK with my decision. It cost me the title, and it cost me the win, but I don’t mind that. I’ve lost lots of fights. Obviously, I always want to win, but it’s not worth that if it means I have to keep hitting my hero that way. They can have that title. I don’t mind.
Mixed martial arts needs more men like Johnathan Ivey.
