Having shared the Octagon with Ian Garry,
Michael
Page believes the Irishman will never win an
Ultimate Fighting Championship title.
Page (22-3) faced a steep step up in competition when he took on
Garry (15-0) in his sophomore promotional clash at UFC 303 last
month. Despite getting dominated by Garry on the ground, “MVP” put
on a valiant effort in the striking exchanges en route to a
unanimous decision loss. While he doesn’t want to make excuses,
Page claims he wasn’t quite himself on fight night.
Advertisement
“There’s a lot of mistakes I made,” Page said on The MMA Hour.
“Don’t want to make too many excuses but there was a bit of a weird
build up as well. And I always tried to stay focused on what I need
to get done. But I had a few issues I needed to overcome in the
build up to the fight… Wasn’t quite myself.”
While Garry had vowed to outstrike Page, the former Bellator
MMA star was evidently faster and landed the more damaging
shots in the striking exchanges. While Page believes he could have
done certain things differently to rope in a decision victory, he
claims to be the kind who likes to finish fights.
“Ian said he’s this level of a striker, he’s this fast, he didn’t
want to strike with me. I told people the same thing all the time.
When I’m bouncing around in front of you, it’s a very different
game… There was a couple of decisions during the fight I could have
made and one better to maybe scrape the result but that’s just not
me. Like I prefer to go and get a finish and I wanted to knock him
out.”
Garry’s performance against Page failed to impress many, including
Dana White, who said the fight should have been scored a draw.
Judging by Garry’s stand-up game against a striker like himself,
Page also believes “The Future” doesn’t stand a chance against
elite contenders like Shavkat
Rakhmonov or the champ Leon
Edwards.
“Not at all, no [Garry will never be champion]. Cause if that’s the
game you’re going to go when you get a decent striker, then Leon’s
[Edwards] going to kill you anyway, then Shavkat’s [Rakhmonov]
going to kill you anyway. There’s a few guys in there that I just
don’t see him surpassing.”