Daniel Rodriguez on Belgrade Loss: We Knew the Risk
Daniel Rodriguez used an Instagram post to explain for the first time what happened in those thirty seconds against Uros Medic, and announced his return after eight months in a Tijuana jail.
While Uros Medic spent the time after the card celebrating with Aleksandar Rakic and the Serbian basketball players who had come to Belgrade Arena, the man on the other side of the cage headed off for a medical check. Daniel Rodriguez lasted 30 seconds in the night’s main event. That is all it took for Medic’s right hand to close the show and hand Serbian fighters their fifth win of the night.
He stayed quiet until morning. On Sunday, August 2, before noon, a post went up on his Instagram account, d_rod_ufc, the defeated American’s first reaction, and Serbian outlets picked it up within hours.
What Rodriguez said happened in those thirty seconds
He did not reach for an excuse in the referee’s call or in the stoppage itself. He explained it in strictly technical terms, the way a fighter sees it from inside the cage: he was loading up his own jab, left himself open doing it, and Medic beat him to the punch.
“I loaded up the jab and he beat me to it. S**t happens, I guess,” Rodriguez wrote.
The rest of the post was longer and more personal. In it he goes back to the year he spent outside the octagon and to the shape he was in when he walked into camp.
“Whatever just happened, I can still say I’m proud of myself for getting through everything I went through last year. I was completely out of shape when I got out of prison. We knew the risk of coming here to fight this guy in his hometown, and we took it anyway. I’ll be in a lot better shape next time.”
That is the most interesting part of the post. Rodriguez does not say his opponent caught him off guard. He says he knew exactly what he was walking into, and agreed to it regardless.
A 20-6 record and a snapped streak
The American is now 20-6 as a pro after Belgrade. The loss at the Arena snapped a run of three straight wins, a stretch that included a knockout of Santiago Ponzinibio, a decision over Alex Morono, and a win over Kevin Holland.
After the Holland win came a stretch he has called the hardest of his life. He was arrested at the border crossing into Mexico after marijuana was found in his car, and he spent eight months in a jail in Tijuana, until this past April. He kept training even behind bars, using equipment supplied by a cartel leader he shared a cell with.
There is also a piece of math that nobody in his post spelled out, and it speaks for itself. From his release in April to the main event in someone else’s city, less than four months passed. For a fighter who, by his own account, walked out of prison completely out of shape, that is a short runway to get back to top-15 welterweight form. We covered this same point last night, when the fight had only just ended and all anyone knew was what had happened inside the cage.
Rodriguez is 35, grew up in rough parts of Los Angeles, has served a doping suspension in the past, and that backstory is exactly why the UFC brought him to Belgrade in the first place, as a name the main event could be sold on.
When he could be back in the cage
American outlets that cover MMA are already floating dates. He is being considered for UFC 331 in Los Angeles, or a week earlier for Noche UFC 4, provided he clears the medical, which after a knockout is not a formality but a deadline set by the commission.
If that happens, Rodriguez would return to the cage in his own city, in front of his own crowd, the exact reverse of what he signed up for in Belgrade.
His post reads better than the average fighter statement after a knockout. No blaming the referee, no talk of fate. Just one mistake he named himself, and one line about a risk that was already on the table before he ever stepped in.
