Post Fight Statement from Matt Hamill

I’d like to take a minute and thank everyone for their unbelievable support. The outpouring of concern has been overwhelming.

I know it looked bad Saturday night but it looked a lot worse than it was. Aside from a few stitches in my nose and a sore shoulder I feel fine.

I give all the credit to Jon Jones. He caught me by surprise with an awesome trip and I dislocated my shoulder when we hit the ground. I knew it was probably over at that point but I will die before I tap so I did the best I could under the circumstances.We train to wind up in bad positions and it paid off because I felt I was still able to defend even though I knew I couldn’t get up.

Jon’s young and full of so much talent. Aside from making a mistake he did his job and he did it well. He definitely didn’t lose this fight and I definitely didn’t win, but I guess the rules are there for a reason. It is what it is.

I went into this fight feeling like my record was actually 9-1 so with this so called win I will now consider my record 9-2… LOL I wish Jon all the best and I’d like to thank him for the professional and respectful way he has handled himself. I felt bad for him since a simple mistake caused him to lose a win bonus but as I know first hand, Dana, Lorenzo and the rest of the UFC take great care of their fighters. I’m sure Jon received a win bonus and more.

As for me, you know I’ll be back. Fighting in the UFC is my job and I’ll be back to work very soon. I feel my performance before I was taken down was going well. I was able to get to him, land some solid strikes and get my hands on him. More importantly I was able to avoid all of his crazy strikes which is something we worked very hard on. I was in the best shape ever for this fight and I was completely prepared. It’s always a disappointment when things don’t go your way but I will take all the positives that I can from this. I’m just waiting on MRI results so we can rule out any further damage and I plan to be back in the gym right after the holidays.

Thank you to my team, family, friends and amazing fans.