Despite not getting a finish, two-time PFL champ Lance Palmer happy with overall performance

NEW YORK – The only way Lance Palmer could outdo his overall dominant past performances over Alex Gilpin was to take him out.

Palmer (22-3 MMA, 11-0 PFL) won the featherweight tournament and $1 million for the second straight year by defeating Gilpin (14-4 MMA, 2-3 PFL) for the third time in a row at the 2019 PFL Championship on Tuesday at Hulu Theater at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Palmer’s original opponent, Daniel Pineda, failed a drug test, which forced him out of the final. He subsequently was replaced by Gilpin.

Palmer beat Gilpin by unanimous decision all three times they fought, and while he admitted he would have liked to score a finish this time around, he was happy with his performance.

“I really just wanted to get a finish in this fight, and it didn’t accumulate the way I wanted to,” Palmer said. “So the way any fight can go, you just have to adapt while you’re in there. I felt that my striking was cleaner and better than his, but at the same time, I wanted to show that I can out-grapple him, since he had two finishes over guys who were high-level guys during the season. I didn’t get the finish like I wanted to, but I still felt that it was a good performance overall.”

Having mirrored his performance in 2018 by going undefeated once again in the regular season and playoffs, Palmer said the only real difference was what he expected out of himself.

“I think the pressure was different this time on myself,” Palmer said. “I think I put a lot more pressure on myself to get the job done. Especially – it’s hard fighting the same guy three times in six or seven months or whatever it is, so that was all different things that added into it. But winning is always going to be important to me, so just getting it done and getting another belt is – it was cool. So, not much else to say.”

Coming from a wrestling background, Palmer is accustomed to activity in a tournament-style format. He said that is a model that helped him find success in the PFL.

“It’s definitely something that not everybody can do, just going through five fights in a seven-month period of time,” Palmer said. “But I feel like it’s something that I was bred to do, coming from a wrestling background and being able to grind and have seven and eight wrestling matches in one day, and go through 150 matches in a year growing up – like, that stuff, it’s all prepared me for this.”

Palmer relied on his strong grappling once again and was able to fend off a few submission attempts from Gilpin. It was more of the same from their previous two meetings in May and October, though.

“I didn’t feel like he brought anything different, which I was kind of surprised because from the first to the second fight, he kind of tried to bring a couple of different tricks and things,” Palmer said. “But he pretty much stayed with his same game plan from the first fight. I didn’t really see any improvement or changes. But also, in that short 10-week period from the semifinals to (Tuesday), there’s only so much you can do to change when you’re fighting the same guy. So I’ve been training for Alex since April, so I was pretty much prepared for anything that he could have brought to me.”