Joaquin Buckley knows there are a lot of valuable lessons to take away from his lopsided decision loss to Kamaru Usman in the main event of UFC Atlanta, but that doesn’t change how he felt about his performance overall.
“You talk about every round he took me down, kept me there, I couldn’t get back to my feet,” Buckley said on his YouTube channel. “I’m looking at Mike Beltran like, ‘Bro, c’mon, stand us up at least one time. Let me get back up to my feet.’
“I’m not going to lie to y’all, I feel so embarrassed because of that loss. I feel so humiliated because of that loss. But at the same time, I have to bow my head: Usman showed me who he was. … That night, it really showed that there’s levels to this game.”
Usman dominated Buckley in the wrestling department — especially early on — getting takedowns at will, and once the former welterweight champ got Buckley down, he stayed on top for the majority of the round. Things began to change slightly in the championship rounds with Buckley finding more success on the feet, but the fifth round is where “New Mansa” found himself in desperation mode needing a finish to get his hand raised.
Buckley was able to defend all six of Usman’s takedown attempts in the final stanza, and believes that proves that it was more of him having an off night rather than having poor takedown defense.
“Y’all talking about I can’t wrestle, what are ya’ll talking about?,” Buckley said. “Y’all seen my last fight with Colby, and Colby is arguably a better wrestler than Usman. … So don’t disrespect me by saying I can’t wrestle, because you saw in that fifth round, my ass can wrestle. I just didn’t show up. I didn’t execute. That’s on me.
“And I allowed myself to be in that moment for too long. I was mesmerized, man. I’m seeing Francis Ngannou across the cage from Kamaru Usman, and I’m just looking like, ‘I get to show these guys how great I am. I get to show these guys that I’m that one,’ instead of just realizing that the man that’s in front of me right now, he’s trying to hold me down. And I paid for it.”
The loss snapped an impressive six-fight win streak for Buckley since moving down to welterweight. Buckley went 4-0 in 2024, including stoppage wins over Colby Covington, Vicente Luque, and Stephen Thompson.
Despite the setback, Buckley is still confident he can win UFC gold.
“It was Usman’s night,” Buckley said. “I’ve just got to give all respect to that guy for actually taking this fight and giving me an opportunity. But, yet again, the focus doesn’t change. We taking the throne. Period. We taking the throne — it’s just not today.”
