Anthony Pettis on UFC 185 title loss: 'He got me right in the eyeball'

Anthony Pettis discusses his UFC lightweight title loss to Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 185 earlier this month.

Anthony Pettis is still trying to come to terms with losing the UFC lightweight title to Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 185. He dropped a lopsided decision to the new champ, which was at least partially brought on by an early shot that messed with his vision. Pettis gave his account of the fight to Ariel Helwani on The MMA Hour recently:

"He caught me with that big left. The first punch he hit me with, I couldn't see. I had triple vision. It was a great punch. He got me right in the eyeball.

"There were a lot of things that factored into that performance. I mean, having one eye doesn't stop the fact that I didn't stop any of his takedowns. It didn't stop the fact of me taking the wrong angles."

Pettis stated that he was only at '20 to 30 percent' that night, and that helps him deal with it to a degree:

"Yeah, I'm definitely upset with myself. I'm definitely down about losing my belt, but that wasn't the best Anthony Pettis. He didn't go out there and demolish my best performance. Then [I'd be] like yeah I need to figure out why I suck at what I do. I just didn't put it together. It just wasn't my night."

...

"I had a really crappy performance," he said. "I don't know what happened. My timing was off. I didn't have any strength out there. I felt weak. And it was just like something went wrong, so I gotta figure it out and we gotta fix it. I never felt that weak in a fight and it was the wrong night to feel like that."