Bryce Mitchell will surely enjoy re-watching his latest win—even if he’ll be experiencing some it for the first time.
In his UFC bantamweight debut Saturday at UFC Abu Dhabi, Mitchell overcame adversity in the opening round to battle back and earn a hard-fought unanimous decision win over Said Nurmagomedov. Nurmagomedov rocked Mitchell badly with a knee and the Arkansas native later told reporters he doesn’t remember that moment.
“Good thing is if you get kneed in the face, a lot of the times you don’t feel it,” Mitchell said in a backstage scrum following his win. “A lot of times you don’t even remember it. Somebody told me he kneed me. I believe you, I just wasn’t there for it.”
Mitchell was coming off of a second-round submission loss to featherweight contender Jean Silva, a result that prompted Mitchell to drop down to 135 pounds. This was Mitchell’s first win since he made offensive comments on a podcast this past February in which he stated he supported Adolf Hitler and questioned the existence of the Holocaust.
Nurmagomedov entered Saturday with a 7-3 UFC record and Mitchell praised his opponent for giving him a difficult fight.
“I didn’t expect to be in that much pain, to be honest,” Mitchell said. “I knew it was going to be hard, but I didn’t think it it was going to be that hard. He’s tougher than I thought.
“Like, everything on my body hurts. Everything. … Just kind of like, everywhere hurts. But I don’t think it’s nothing serious. Tomorrow, we’ll know more.”
The knee Nurmagomedov struck Mitchell with in Round 1 landed with such impact that Mitchell admitted he also forgot much of what happened in the first five minutes of the fight. He credits his faith with getting him through, what he called “my hardest fight ever” in his post-fight interview.
“I think that I have better cardio at ‘35,” Mitchell said. “That was a really, really hard fight. I think he was tired, too, and he hurt me real bad in the first round. I don’t even remember half of the first round. So if you take away that one shot, maybe I wouldn’t be as jacked up as I am, I don’t know. It was just a really, really hard fight. I wish it had been more exciting for the fans, but I was just fighting for my life. I really was praying during the fight, like, ‘Jesus, just keep me alive.’
“The fight felt like death. I remember fighting for air. I remember getting hit and seeing lights and I remember coaches telling me between rounds, ‘You can do this, you can do this, just dig.’ It was a really, really hard fight, and if you ever get in one of those, I just recommend you pray, because that’s literally what I was doing.”
