Alex Oliveira’s Manager Says He Will Appeal No Contest Against Tim Means

In an interview with MMA Junkie, Alex Davis, the manager of Alex Oliveira (16-3-1 MMA, 5-2 UFC), said that Oliveira will try to appeal his no contest against Tim Means (26-7-1 MMA, 8-4 UFC) at UFC 207. He said it should have been a disqualification win for Oliveira because Means hit him with illegal knees and admitted to intending to throw them. Here are highlights:

On the official decision: “This is wrong, and these thing have to be straightened out. It costs too much of these guys’ lives to let things go like that.”

On what they plan to do: “The knees were intentional, so we will appeal. This is wrong.”

On trying to appeal the NSAC: “You know how things go with the commission – they always think they’re right, but they’re not. This part of the sport has to change. Things happen, we’re all human beings and we all commit errors, but they have to man up and face it.”

Oliveira’s coach Otavio Duarte on not getting the win: “We’re outraged that they didn’t give the win to ‘Cowboy.’ If it was the other way around, they certainly would have given the win to the other guy. Everyone saw it was illegal, and (Means) said it himself during the interview, that he threw the strike intentionally. So there’s that. And Cowboy was semi-knocked out and people were saying that they didn’t want to go back to make a scene? He wanted to come back, the commission wouldn’t let him. They asked me to translate, to ask him to sit down. If the UFC wants to make this fight, we’d be more than happy to do it in Fortaleza. Because Cowboy is dying to fight. His plan was to beat Tim Means here and then fight in Fortaleza.”