There is some friction between Jennifer Maia and Casey O’Neill after their UFC 286 fight last night in London, England, because things were apparently too smooth inside the Octagon during their pay-per-view (PPV) showdown.
Maia handed O’Neill her first-ever professional mixed martial arts (MMA) loss, taking her undefeated record with a solid unanimous decision win. And during her post-fight interview, Maia took a bit more, accusing O’Neill of greasing to gain a slippery (and illegal) advantage.
“I really wanted to show you guys my ground game, but Casey was very greased up — very oily, very slippery — and that really threw me off,” Maia said through a translator. “Listen, I don’t want it to just call shots like this. [It could’ve been] skin moisturizer, but definitely it was not just sweat.
Maia was blanked (0-4) on her takedown attempts and had just 123 seconds of control time during the fight. She revealed that she abandoned her grappling gameplan once she felt O’Neill’s slick skin.
“The first time we locked bodies,” Maia explained. “As soon as I locked her body against the cage…. It felt extremely difficult to get a hold of her and keeping a hold of her because she was so slippery, so I had to abandon go back to boxing.
“I definitely wanted to show grappling skills and my wrestling skills,” she continued. “But, once I felt the difficulty [because] she was extremely slippery. I didn’t want to force that. I adjusted my game plan and went back to what I was doing well, moving my head and boxing.”
It didn’t take long for O’Neill to hear Maia’s accusations and take her to task immediately. In a since-deleted tweet, O’Neill denied having any grease and bluntly stated that Maia’s wrestling … just sucks.
— CFU (@justantherburn) March 19, 2023
“Really? Jennifer Maia, you can’t be classy in victory?” O’Neill wrote. “Now you have to lie and say I was greased? No b—ch your wrestling just f—king sucks. Book it again and let’s do it. You know it was [starting] to go my way.”
Maia is now on a two-fight win streak and has successfully defended her Top 10 ranking in both outings. As for O’Neill, the 25-year-old will go back to the drawing board and regroup — her future remains bright.
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