PHILADELPHIA – Hometown advantage unfortunately wasn’t a thing for Dustin Stoltzfus.
Philly fans cheered his opponent, Mansur Abdul-Malik (9-2-1 MMA, 3-2-1 UFC), more than Stoltzfus (17-8 MMA, 4-7 UFC), who’s from Lancaster, Pa., during their middleweight bout at Saturday’s UFC 330. It was something that surprised and annoyed Stoltzfus, more so than people and oddsmakers giving him little chance to win the fight.
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“I can’t be too mad about it,” Stoltzfus said at the UFC 330 post-fight press conference in regards to his underdog status. “I know my record here in the UFC is not very good. If people just look at the numbers and not at the actual performances, I can totally get why people count me out a lot. I get it. But I know I’m good enough to hang with anyone in the division on a good day.
“The biggest thing that sort of offended me is that the Philly crowd was cheering for a guy from Pittsburgh and not from right outside of Philly. Don’t know what that was all about.”
Stoltzfus was able to snap a two-fight losing skid with his second-round submission of Abdul-Malik. It was a much-needed win that was in part aided by a nose surgery he had before the fight that cleared his airways.
“I was definitely able to recover really quickly between the rounds,” Stoltzfus said. “I was really exhausted. It was a hard fight, and getting clipped really takes a lot of the wind out of your sails, so I was definitely feeling it. But in the break between the rounds, I was able to recover super fast, which is one of the main things that I’ve really noticed. Getting the airway cleared up has got that recovery time up a lot.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Dustin Stoltzfus annoyed Philly fans didn’t cheer for him at UFC 330
