Riggs talks Saturday’s weird win
“When I was on top of him and landing those big shots, he threw a kick up. I thought it was his heel, but on the replay, it looks like the side of the foot going into my eye.”
Sometimes things happen to Joe ‘Diesel’ Riggs in mixed martial arts. He had a fight last year called off when he accidentally shot himself in the leg. On Saturday night at UFC 191, he got a DQ win over Ron ‘Choirboy’ Stallings, that was, well, weird.
Riggs lost the first round, and complained about pain in eye, that some attributed to an eye poke. An illegal upkick by Stallings in the second round further injured the eye, to the point he could no longer see, leading to a doctor stoppage and a DQ win.
I had surgery on my eye a couple years ago, said Riggs to Brent Brookhouse and Ken Hathaway for MMAjunkie. Sometimes I get poked in the eye when I spar. In the first round, he landed a couple jabs that weren’t hard. It was just kind of leather getting in my eye, so it was kind of bothering it.
Second round, when I was on top of him and landing those big shots, he threw a kick up. I thought it was his heel, but on the replay, it looks like the side of the foot going into my eye.
It’s just, my eye – it’s not swelling; it’s inside my eye. And then I couldn’t see out of it. I had the doctor look at it. I just couldn’t see out of it. He stopped the fight. If it had been the third round and I got up and couldn’t see out of that eye, I would have gotten knocked out by a fighter that shouldn’t knock me out.
It sucks the fight had to go that way, I wish it didn’t. I felt really, really good. I wasn’t tired. I was obviously dominant in the fight. He’s a tough guy. I hit him with some big shots. Hats off to him.
Riggs also suffered through what he called the toughest cut of his career.
A week and a half ago I was 198, said Riggs. I was shredded and in good shape. Then I got really, really sick where I didn’t eat or drink for two days – actually three days. People don’t know, when you lose weight, you have to eat to lose weight. I didn’t eat or drink, and I wasn’t peeing. So my body got flabby and all this s—. I went from 198 to 212 when I got back on Tuesday. And then the water I did drink, my body didn’t want to let go of it. I couldn’t lose it because I was so dehydrated from before. That was the hardest weight cut. It was bad.
And then when we got off the scale I didn’t pass out, but I was real lethargic. They had to give me IVs. It didn’t affect me today, I felt real good.
Riggs has been fighting with skill and valor for a long, long, long time, and in this sport, weird things really do happen, and to Riggs maybe even more so than average. He will get a fight in the UFC in a few months, and we will be watching. But something is clearly not normal about the eye, and it should get examined thoroughly first.
