Yeah, we wouldn’t want to fight Gunnar Nelson either.
Credit to Alan Jouban, he actually did and represented himself well in his submission loss to ‘Gunni’ in London.
Jouban may have had his win-streak snapped by the Icelander via second round-submission, but the fact that he put up a fight against the dangerous welterweight means he can be proud of that performance. It didn’t go his way, but he could take a lot from that loss and come back as a better fighter.
There was zero animosity between the two warriors in the build-up to the fight and once that final buzzer sounded, there was nothing but respect, as Jouban explained on the MMA H.E.A,T. podcast, Jouban admitted that he jumped at the opportunity to fight Nelson.
“After the fight, we go to the bar, Gunnar came up and we had a really pleasant conversation. Just talking about strategies and gameplan… it was just a good conversation.”
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During their conversation, Jouban couldn’t get over how thankful Nelson was for him taking the fight. Eventually, he felt compelled to ask why he was so grateful. Gunni’s answer cleared everything up – hardly anyone was willing to accept the offer.
“Gunnar resaid (sic) the same thing. He was like, thank you for taking this fight.’ I was like, ‘Why are you saying that?’ He goes, ‘You were the fifth person.’ I was the fifth person that they tried to get to take this fight and finally I accepted. I accepted right away, but finally someone accepted. That kind of blew my mind, it was kind of encouraging in a way. I took it in a heartbeat, but a lot of other fighters weren’t.”
Although he admitted he wasn’t sure who exactly turned the fight offer down, Jouban listed some big names who he thought may have been contacted by the promotion. He added that if Masvidal rejected the offer, it would have made complete sense as he’s already booked a title-eliminator against Demian Maia, who has beaten Nelson.
“I don’t know who the other fighters were. I think he might have said (Jorge) Masvidal was one of them and maybe ‘Stun Gun’ or (Neil) Magny maybe could have been another one. So he named a couple of guys who said that it maybe didn’t make sense for them or they didn’t want the fight.”
One, two… hold on a second, who’s the fourth guy they offered the fight to before they called Jouban?
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