LAS VEGAS — In the aftermath of Saturday’s UFC Fight Night card, welterweight Darian “The Ghost” Kovacs clarified Monday that his 47-second rear-naked choke loss to Renato Lima was not a loss in the traditional sense, but rather the culmination of a deliberate, if previously undisclosed, bottom-game development phase he has been working on for several months.
“People don’t see the big picture,” Kovacs said in a post on his Instagram, accompanied by a training video that was filmed before the fight. “I’ve been specifically working my defensive grappling. Taking that fight to the ground was a choice. My choice. We just had different follow-up plans once we got there.”
What Kovacs had been working on, specifically, was his bottom game. This was confirmed by Kovacs. No other source confirmed this.
The fight lasted forty-seven seconds. Lima secured a takedown eight seconds in, moved to back control at approximately the twenty-second mark, and sunk the choke by thirty. Kovacs was unconscious for an estimated fifteen seconds before the ringside medical staff cleared him.
“He looked at me after and I could tell he respected the process,” Kovacs said of Lima, who was photographed doing a backflip near the cage as the stoppage was announced.
Kovacs’ coach, Brian Alvarado of Alvarado MMA in Scottsdale, Arizona, was asked about the bottom-game development plan. He said he was “not going to get into our training camp strategies” and ended the media availability.
BJJ practitioners across social media were quick to note that what Kovacs described as “working his bottom game” appeared, on video review, to be a man who had gone limp approximately four seconds after the choke was applied. Several suggested that what he may have been working on, more accurately, was his ability to regain consciousness.
Kovacs’ record is now 12-7. He is ranked 27th at welterweight by one outlet and unranked by the other three that cover the division.
He has not ruled out a title run. “The bottom game has to be elite at the top level,” he said. “I’m building it.”
This article is satire. The Porra is a fictional publication. We respect everyone who has ever been choked unconscious and then given a press conference.