Melissa Gatto is giving her side of the most controversial moment of UFC Vegas 115.
Early in the second round of her flyweight fight with Dione Barbosa this past Saturday, the action took a turn after Barbosa landed a soccer kick
that appeared to connect with Gatto’s chin while Gatto was in a downed position. Gatto fell to the mat and was apparently out, but officials allowed the fight to resume after she recovered.Barbosa was deducted a point, but ended up winning the enough rounds on two of the three
scorecards for a majority decision victory. Gatto returned home Monday and told MMA Fighting everything was going according to plan up until the illegal strike.
“I think that kick really changed the course of the fight for me,” Gatto said. “It made a difference, and it happened right at the beginning of the second round. What we were expecting was that as her performance dropped, mine would rise, which is what usually happens in my fights as I tend to perform better as the rounds go on.”
Gatto doesn’t think Barbosa’s foul was intentional, but that she had to know throwing the kick had a high risk of being illegal depending on where it connected.
“After that, I only remember sitting down and talking to the referee,” Gatto said. “They asked me a few questions, like, ‘Do you know where you are? Do you know what you’re doing?’ Yes, I’m fighting [laughs]. But I really went out. I went out when I got hit by the kick, and after that moment I was sitting there while they asked if I was OK. I didn’t want to say that I wasn’t OK because I thought, ‘If I say I’m not OK, that I don’t want to continue, I don’t even know what will happen. If she’ll win or what’s going to happen.’”
The 29-year-old Brazilian, now 3-3 under the UFC banner, criticized the fact that the decision to continue fighting was put in the hands of an athlete who had just been knocked out moments before.
“A fighter fights, right?” Gatto said. “I traveled across the world to be there and fight. Maybe that decision shouldn’t have been mine. I went down unconscious, and I think it should have been the commission, the referee, or the doctors to make that call, not me. I’ll always choose to fight.”
“I know I wasn’t normal [after the foul],” she added. “My coach said that when we went back to fighting, her corner said, ‘Take advantage of the situation and go all out on her.’ And she did come forward. I managed to take her down, just out of survival instinct. In a way, that kick definitely affected me, getting knocked out and then going back to fighting. I’m not saying I would have won if that hadn’t happened, nothing like that. I’m just saying that it did affect me. And it wasn’t my place to decide whether I should continue or not, because I will always want to continue, I will always want to go out there and do my best.”
Gatto has faced some criticism for the situation even though she was on the receiving end of the brutal illegal strike. UFC flyweight Charles Johnson, for example, posted on social media that “she faked passing out for the point.” For Gatto, pretending to pass out would only make sense if she never returned to the fight and chased a disqualification victory instead.
“Why would I fake a knockout and then go back to fighting? That makes no sense,” Gatto said. “I was so disoriented at the time that I just wanted to fight. I didn’t want the result to go against me, you know? I wanted the chance to fight for my win until the very end, regardless of the situation I was in or the condition I was in.”
