Tony Ferguson claims Charles Oliveira “was mentally broken” in the first round of their fight

Tony Ferguson believes Charles Oliveira broke mentally in the first round of their recent lightweight fight.

Ferguson and Oliveira met in the co-main event of UFC 256 last weekend. After three rounds of action that unfurled mostly on the ground, Oliveira was named the winner by unanimous decision.

Given that Ferguson has long stood out as one of the sport’s premiere lightweights, and that he was recently on a 12-fight win-streak, Oliveira was widely applauded for his win. Ferguson, however, doesn’t seem all that impressed with his foe’s performance.

In fact, after rewatching the fight, Ferguson claimed that Oliveira broke mentally early in the fight, which led to him getting “lazy” in the later rounds.

Ferguson made this comment during a recent Instagram live appearance, which was captured by unBROKEN MMA on Twitter. See what he had to say below:

Tony Ferguson talking a little about the Oliveira fight on his IG pic.twitter.com/yp7QeH6C4m

— unBROKEN MMA (@richiemgr) December 17, 2020

“Right here, we’re not going to waste energy here—you guys shouldn’t either in jiu jitsu matches,” Ferguson said in the video, highlighting a segment from the third round of his fight with Oliveira. “Just be patient. Wait for the opportunity for him to get so lazy that, in the third round, he doesn’t even advance to mount anymore. What he does is he stays controlled in the side position, looking for something completely different—a different move—because he was mentally broken first round.

“I went back and watched film, without the commentary like ‘oh he got dominated,’ this and that,” Ferguson added. “Ok, to the untrained people in jiu jitsu: advancing positions in traditional martial arts, you will get points and advantages and different types of points. But the judging and the scoring in terms of the commission [in MMA], I don’t even know if it’s there.”

What do you think of these comments from Tony Ferguson?