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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Pat Barry bounced back from a disappointing loss to Mirko Cro Cop last June with a win over Joey Beltran at UFC Fight for the Troops 2 this past Saturday. But while he badly damaged Beltran's lead leg with kicks by the end of the fight, the overall performance left much to be desired from his fans, and gave ammunition to his detractors after the fight. For Barry, it's just par for the course.
“I've already had bad things said to me as soon as I got out," Barry said at the night's post-fight press conference. "[I've had people say] ‘Hey man, good fight, but what happened in round one?' I'm getting bad text messages already. That's always going to happen. No matter what, some people are just going to hate your guts. It's impossible to make everyone happy."
The first round of the fight was a very tentative round, with Beltran circling the outside and content to work the clinch on the cage, while Barry remained hesitant to engage throughout the round. But Barry said that was all part of the plan.
"That was an absolute strategy on his part and my part," Barry said. "Joey Beltran, statistically on paper, I'm the better stand-up guy. He's the better wrestler, jiu jitsu, maybe all-around guy, but I'm the better stand-up guy. So when the bell rang, he walked backward toward the cage. That's a trap. I don't know if anybody noticed that, but I was supposed to run at him, take him to the ground, put him against the cage, so I stood on the circle. That was the gameplan: I'm going to stand on this blue circle in the middle of the octagon, and you're going to have to go to me."
"For the first part of the fight, the first round, he didn't come to me. I could have either gone to him and broken my gameplan, or he could have walked straight to me and broken his. It was kind of a tossup. Sorry it turned out to be a slow start, but we both had a strategy."
Barry picked it up in the second round, beginning the assault on Beltran's lead leg with kicks, mixing in high kicks along the way. But while he continued that into the third round, he also allowed Beltran to continue clinching and landing strikes, and nearly gave the fight away until a late surge in the final minutes of the fight. Barry, however, isn't going to let the criticism get him.
"Everybody has a bad day eventually," he said. "Certain things just build up, build up, build up. I hadn't had a cranky fight in a long time. Do I feel it's behind me? No. I'm still hearing about kickboxing matches that I lost 10 years ago. It's never going to go away."
"Am I past that? I'm fine with it. Am I still gonna hear about? Of course, but that's just how it goes."
Penick's Analysis: Barry, who was very emotional after the fight as he detailed his family's military past, had a lot on his mind in this fight. He can be a bit erratic at times, and hasn't been the most impressive in his fights in the Octagon, but when he's on his game and is using his kicks and strikes effectively he's a lot of fun to watch. He allowed Beltran to get far too much offense in after hurting him badly, especially in the third round, but he still did enough to get a win. Hopefully the next time out he's at his best for more than just a few minutes of the fight, as he can still do a lot of damage to a lot of people in the sport.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
STAFF COLUMNISTS: Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
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