Jiri Prochazka walks away from UFC 320 with another exciting win on his record, although it was a close thing. For two rounds, Khalil Rountree picked “BJP” apart on the feet, making the former light heavyweight champion pay for being a bit too unstructured and hesitant in his striking.
But in the third round, Prochazka turned on the heat and came hard at Rountree, hitting him with numerous power shots to the body before head hunting his way to a knockout win with just two minutes left in the fight
(watch the highlights here). During the post-fight press conference, Jiri discussed the turnaround and what went right after so much was going wrong.
“My coaches told me, ‘Man, you have to win this round. You have to knock him knock him out,'” Prochazka said. “And then I started to realize how to do that.”
“I was too patient. That was something I didn’t realize, that I waited too much for a counter. Too much waiting for a counter because I thought that will be there. I’m on the place, I will catch him really clearly with the counter, but his technique and his attitude was just waiting for for my attacks. Good defense and go back, good defense and go back. So I needed to change it, and I changed it in the third one.”
“I saw he have not good condition, like cardio,” Prochazka continued. “So I started to work more. What started to work more, I start to believe in my defense, in my hands up. Man, I didn’t understand that that works. So I’m happy that was the thing in the third round, what make me happy, why I’m happy. Because first two rounds was bad, man.”
In the main event of UFC 320, Alex Pereira won his light heavyweight title back from Magomed Ankalaev. With Prochazka down 0-2 against “Poatan,” you’d think the Czech fighter would be sad to see Pereira take the belt back. Instead cameras caught Prochazka crying tears of joy to see trash-talker Ankalaev lose.
“Alex and his team, Glover Teixeira and all all of these guys, we have good relationship with them, with my team,” Prochazka explained. “And and I really wished him to win because because all these bulls–ts, what Ankalaev wrote [online] before and all these nonsenses, what he thought about himself, about others.”
“So that was why I was happy, because I saw [a] really angry Alex going forward through Ankalaev. And that was something what I needed to be in my fight too. More pressure.”
Prochazka is convinced that he’ll still get a third chance to fight Pereira for the 205 pound strap, and that he can win this time.
“Yes, I believe I’m in a position to get the belt,” he said. “Doesn’t matter how. I will find a way. I will find a way. I will take all these two fights, what I’ve learned from, and I will not repeat my mistakes.”
“I will be just better. I will find a way.”
