Matt Mitrione Believes His Fight Night 81 Fight Should Have Ended After Eye Pokes

Matt Mitrione spoke with MMAjunkie about his loss to Travis Browne at UFC Fight Night 81 and more. Check out the highlights:

On the fight continuing after he was poked in the eye: “The fight shouldn’t have ever got to the third round. I shouldn’t have had to worry about fighting with double vision and one eye.”

On his belief that the fight should have been called off: “I need five minutes to train my eyes, and they said they couldn’t give it to me, but they could continue to check me out to buy more time.”

On getting his orbital bone fractured in the third round: “That punch wouldn’t have landed if I didn’t get poked in the eye twice. I’ve never been punched like that in my life. I don’t get punched flush in the face like that. I move too much.”

On the fight hurting his next contract talks: “I’m getting punished for me having balls. If I was just like, f-ck it, just go ahead and shut it down, it would be a no-contest and it wouldn’t be counted against me. So that’s a really interesting situation because I can damn near guarantee it will be used against me that I have two losses in a row.”

On heading into the open market: “All I want to do is get paid what I’m worth. I don’t care who pays me that. I’ve only been in the UFC; I don’t know any other madness from any other company. I know about the UFC’s madness, and I’m comfortable with that madness. I just feel like I’ve been underpaid for a while, and I feel I’m one of the best in the world and I think I showed that on Sunday. I just feel like I need to get paid appropriately. I cannot call myself a professional athlete when I live in a Midwestern town, I have one car from 2002, and I’m always worried about where my money is coming from and where it’s going. So I just want to make sure I’m paid appropriately. I don’t want to be paid like I’m the best in the world; I want to be paid like I’m amongst the best in the world.”