On Saturday, a highly-anticipated debut ran astray when Dean Barry was disqualified for an eye poke, shortly after a groin strike to Mike Jackson, who was returning to the Octagon for the first time in more than four years.
Over the weekend Barry tweeted about the incident on his Twitter account, which as of Monday, has been deleted entirely.
“To be honest with you, I thought he took the easy way out there,” Barry said in a video according to MMAFighting. “Didn’t want to stay, didn’t want to continue fighting. Even when I kicked him low, he was talking on the ground to me for ages. Like, if you get hit in the nuts, you can’t be talking like that. Same with the eye poke. Straight after the ref called the fight off, he was fine. Both eyes open perfectly. He said he can’t open his eyes. Look, I’ll take the rematch in a heartbeat if they give it to me, or just let me go back down to my weight division and fight. I thought I showed enough out there. Sorry about that. … It’s not a loss for me, I was destroying him and I got a DQ for an eye poke. What can you do?”
Jackson replied to the tweet and the deletion of his account on his own Twitter account.
During Jackson’s post-fight interview he said Barry wasn’t a dirty fighter and spoke highly of the opponent, but after the video slight, Jackson changed his tune.
