Things didn’t go according to plan Saturday for [autotag]Kazula Vargas[/autotag].
The Mexican fighter suffered a disqualification loss at UFC on ESPN+ 25 after landing an illegal knee on opponent Brok Weaver. The knee was clearly outside the rules, as Weaver was sitting against the cage when Vargas’ knee connected on his chin. Weaver was rocked and was clearly hurt from the shot. The referee called the fight off a minute into the first round, thus awarding the win to Weaver.
Vargas is not happy with the result of the fight in Rio Rancho, N.M.
“I feel a little embarrassed,” Vargas told MMA Junkie. “I apologized to Brok and his team because it wasn’t something that I planned or intended to do.
“This is the first time something like this happened in my career. I’ve never had a disqualification and I don’t have a past of being a dirty fighter. So yeah, there was nothing I could do but apologize to Brok, his team and the UFC for everything that happened. I’m not a person that looks for that kind of path or way of doing things. I’m not a dirty fighter, I always look to fight clean.”
Vargas said the illegal knee was result of miscalculation. The knee in that situation was part of the plan, but hitting him in his head while he was down was not.
“I was following the game plan, and from my point of view, I was winning the round no problem,” Vargas explained. “I was fighting well on top and mixing in the levels well.
“So what happened was that I studied Weaver so much I saw that he always stood up the same way against the cage – with one arm and leaning on the cage, and actually, he did it once and I dragged him back down. So my plan was to take away pressure, let him stand up, and that’s when I would shoot my knee to his chest, but he didn’t stand up. I’m not sure if maybe since I was hitting liver on the right side a lot, perhaps that had affected him and he wasn’t able to fully stand up.
“If you watch his videos, he always stands up using the under hook,” Vargas continued. “So, for example, in this case, he’s sitting down, gets the left under hook gets off to a side and does the stand up leaning against the cage. He does it well because in many fights he’s able to get up quick, even in his Contender Series fight he stood up several times like that and he does it very quick. So that’s what I thought, I thought he was going to stand up quick and that’s when I’d can catch him. I didn’t think the knee would put him away anyways. It was just to wear him down, but it didn’t come out right.”
In real time, Vargas actually thought he connected to Weaver’s chest and that’s why he followed up with a couple of shots after the knee.
“I thought I hit him on the chest, I didn’t even realized he was knocked down, I just threw the shot out of pure reflex,” Vargas said. “When the referee pulls me off and sends me to the other side of the cage, that’s when I realized something weird was going on. And when I see the replay on the screen that’s when I said, (expletive).”
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Vargas is disappointed on how things played out in his second UFC bout and so far in his overall UFC run. The 34-year-old fighter entered the UFC accepting a short-notice bout against Alex da Silva for UFC Montevideo in August. It was a tough ask to begin with, but outside factors made it even harder.
“My grandmother passed away and she had just been diagnosed with cancer three week prior,” Vargas said. “It was cancer on terminal phase and it was hard because she was a very active person and in three weeks her health decayed rapidly. She wans’t eating and they sent her home because there wasn’t much they could do for her. She did recover a little for a week.
“So she passed away on Sunday, we buried her on Monday at 10 a.m. and that same day at 1 p.m. I traveled to Uruguay, so it was from the funeral straight to the airport for fight week. I got to Uruguay on Tuesday because it was like 20 hours of travel. It was tough, she was like my mother, she was the one who raised me. I had a lot of contact with her and we were very close, so it was rough. My run in the UFC hasn’t been easy, but I didn’t expect it to be easy. But I also didn’t expect all these things to happen, but well, that’s part of life.”
Vargas is open to whatever course the UFC wants to take, but he hopes to get rebooked against Weaver, who wants the rematch.
“I hope the rematch is made for Brok, myself, the UFC, and all the fans that wanted to watch the fight,” Vargas said. “I know after our faceoff there was a lot of anticipation for the fight, we both come from warrior cultures, so it was panning out to be great fight.”
Either way, Vargas just hopes to get another bout in the UFC, as he knows fans have yet to see his full skillset.
“I haven’t been able to show what got me to the UFC,” Vargas said. “I’m an explosive fighter that’s aggressive and I’ve changed a lot of things to be more strategic. I feel like I haven’t been able to show what I got. The circumstances have been difficult, and everything has been so quick – two fights in six months and there was a third fight I couldn’t accept because I had to deal with a cut. But yeah, I haven’t been able to show what got me to the UFC and why they decided to sign me.”
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