Nelson: Herb Dean was afraid to stop the Kimbo fight and lose his job
Q: At one point when you were mounted on him in the first round, I think Kimbo had you off-balance…
Q: At one point when you were mounted on him in the first round, I think Kimbo had you off-balance briefly and he came close to an escape, but you shut the door on him. What do you think Kimbo could have done to scoot out of there at that point?
A: For him to keep going out, he would have to go out the back door (i.e., sliding under the mounted opponent) and go kind of in the north-south position. But once I had my lock he wasn’t going to, because I used my hip to put him back down on the mat.
I could have stayed in mount and finished him there with elbows and punches, but my game plan was to get to the crucifix, and once I got to the crucifix, finish the fight there.
First round was 44 punches to the face, and then (referee) Herb Dean doesn’t know how to ref, but we’ve seen that before. And then the next round was 22 punches.
Q: That touches on my next question. You pretty much spent the last 30 seconds of the first round hitting him with your left hand, with him helpless underneath you; it was a little reminiscent of the James Thompson fight. How surprised were you that the fight wasn’t stopped in the first round before the bell?
A: I was surprised. You could even see me yelling at Herb Dean, “Come on, ref.”
But the thing is, there’s a lot of people; there’s a lot of money. Kimbo’s the only one that I know that had an entourage there; he actually had his family there, his management, while the rest of us kind of had to suffer. The UFC made, we’ll say, different concessions for Kimbo. I think he had a media room.
Kimbo’s definitely, I guess we’ll say, special. I don’t see the specialness fighting-wise, but more for TV-wise. He puts butts in the seats.
So I think it was more that Herb Dean was afraid to lose his job, because there’s a lot of people with a lot of money that can have a lot of influence with his career.