Renato Moicano: UFC Fortaleza stoppage was ‘a bit early’

Renato Moicano suffered the first knockout loss of his career on Saturday and he’s wishing he’d been given more of a chance to avoid that fate.

The featherweight contender went toe-to-toe with two-time UFC champion Jose Aldo in the co-main event of UFC Fortaleza before Aldo found his range in the second round and unleashed a torrent of strikes that led the fight being waved off.

On Sunday, Moicano provided an update on his condition via Instagram and suggested that referee Jerin Valel may have jumped the gun on the stoppage.

“I came here to say I’m alright,” Moicano said in a video (Portuguese-to-English translation by MMA Fighting’s Guilherme Cruz). “The fight was stopped by technical knockout, but in my opinion the referee stopped it a bit early. But it’s okay, life goes on.

“I was doing good, I think I won the first round and came back more active in the second round. I don’t remember the strike, I didn’t see the strike that started that explosion, and I think the referee stopped it a bit early.”

Moicano was still on his feet when Valel stepped in for the save, but Aldo had landed several unanswered strikes by that point. That closing assault was convincing enough for some observers, including Moicano’s own manager Alex Davis.

Answering a journalist on Twitter, Davis said Valel took “the correct action.”

“Moicano is my guy, and I simply love him to pieces,” Davis wrote. “But he was [not] reacting. The ref took the correct action and stopped the fight. Simple as that.”