After years of slugging it out against the nastiest dudes in the backyard, ring and cage, Jorge Masvidal scored a massive win Saturday night when he pounded Donald Cerrone on his way to a stoppage early in the second round.
The win—one the MMA world exploded over but Masvidal was reticent to accept as the biggest of his career—catapulted the Floridian onto the fringes of title contention.
"I'll let the fans say that [this is the biggest win of my career]," he told UFC Correspondent Megan Olivi after the fight. "Maybe the biggest win in UFC, but I've been all over the world kicking butt for a long time before I got here. So in my book, no, it's not the biggest."
With slick boxing, good scrambling and grappling, and years of honing his craft at the highest levels, Gamebred is now making his run as a relatively newly minted welterweight.
Yet despite his hardened visage and nasty outlook on the fight game, it appears the newest contender in the 170-pound division has a heart.
After he had gunned for Cerrone on his way to securing their meeting in Denver, made his disdain for his opponent known the whole way through the lead-up and then dispatched the iconic Cowboy in vicious fashion, it was an unforeseen meeting on the way back to his locker room that melted Masvidal.
He crossed paths with Cerrone's grandmother.
Among his biggest fans, Cerrone's grandmother has followed him to fights all over the country and remains close to one of the UFC’s most active stars. Masvidal said of the meeting: "She killed me, man. That was like a hard blow. She just came up to me and she said, 'That's my grandson, and you’re a great fighter, and nobody has taken out my grandson like that.'"
He went on to consider the idea he may be the "bad guy" in the lead-up to his fights, as his game face and the need to do harm push his heart to the back seat. Yet after talking to Cerrone’s grandmother, Masvidal was reflective: "Things like that, they get me. I don't wanna beat nobody in front of their mom or grandma. I have kids, I couldn't imagine seeing my kids going in there. So that hurt a little bit, you know?"
With the fight over and the knockout officially on the books, Masvidal was respectful of Cerrone's toughness and grit—something that will surely leave Nana Cerrone with a smile on her face, even despite her grandson's loss.
"The couple shots that I hit him with on the ground, not a lot of dudes would get back up and want to keep going," he said. "He gave it all he had, so he's got all my respect in the world."
There is no word on Masvidal's next matchup, but UFC President Dana White was highly impressed, so one could expect another high-profile bout is on deck.
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