Gillian Robertson recently appeared on an episode of The MMA Hour with Ariel Helwani, and naturally the conversation turned to her recent controversial submission win at UFC Kansas City. Robertson is a top UFC fighter with fantastic Jiu-Jitsu skills, and she put them on full display in her last fight against Piera Rodriguez. Unfortunately for her, the finish came under scrutiny as fans watching were unclear on whether or not Rodriguez had actually tapped, and whether or not she had attempted to use a ‘fake tap‘ to gain an advantage. Robertson addressed the controversy surrounding the fight during the interview:
“I have rewatched the fight. The ref said verbal submission. That was what it was deemed. You can’t see her face, you can’t see her mouth. I don’t know what the ref heard. Literally all I’m looking for is the ref to stop the fight. I’m not looking for her tap, I’m looking for the ref to pull me off.”
It’s a real shame that the win over Rodriguez has become known for the controversial submission, because in reality it was a perfect display of offensive Jiu-Jitsu by Gillian Robertson. She was very clearly winning the fight up until that point and the technique behind the armbar that she secured was beautiful. Robertson is well aware of that herself:
“I think most people acknowledged what I was able to do. I was dominating the fight anyway. On the scorecards, I won the first round. The second round I might have got a 10-8, if it finished. So unless she came out and knocked me out in the third, there was no way she was going to win that fight.”
The real story coming out of that fight should have been that Robertson made an impressive return to the strawweight division. Although she had a pair of strawweight fights early in her career, she quickly decided that she would be a flyweight and has spent her entire UFC career fighting there until now. She also explained what led to her making the move to the strawweight division for UFC Kansas City:
“I was just walking really small. In my last five fights, I walked under 130 pounds. So last March I did a bone density scan with the UFC PI and they determined that I do fit in strawweight better. I’m too small for flyweight. They deemed I would be able to the cut safely, so I just worked with the PI and worked with their nutritionist and it was actually almost as easy of a cut to 115 as it is to 125.”
Naturally fans might be wondering if that cut is sustainable, as many fighters have attempted to drop down a weightclass and only ended up doing so temporarily. According to Robertson though, she’s found a way to make the strawweight limit relatively comfortably:
“All camp long I was saying I want to suffer through camp so I don’t have to suffer the week of. So I added a lot of cardio and a lot of sauna time throughout camp, and the week of, I woke up about two days out and I was 117 pounds. So it was really easy to make the cut.”
The full interview with Gillian Robertson where she addressed her controversial submission win at UFC Kansas City was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of MMA Fighting:
