Removing gloves after a fight is typically the sign that someone is about to call it a career.
That’s exactly what it looked like Clay Guida was doing after he lost a lopsided decision to Rafa Garcia in the opening bout on the UFC Kansas City main card. Guida pulled off his gloves and stayed in the cage during Garcia’s interview, which led to Daniel Cormier approaching him under the assumption that Cormier was about to allow the UFC Hall of Famer an opportunity to announce his retirement from the sport.
Instead, Cormier heard exactly the opposite.
“I tricked you guys,” Guida said to the crowd. “There ain’t no way I’m walking away yet. I want to congratulate this young man Rafa Garcia and I want to ask Rafa Garcia to trade gloves with me because that was a heck of a performance by him.”
Guida then went onto offer several happy birthday messages, including one directed at his mother, who was in attendance for his fight on Saturday.
That heartfelt message may have made Guida look like a good son, but it didn’t exactly endear him to Dana White, because the UFC president was not the least bit happy that the broadcast got hijacked under false pretenses.
“That pissed me off actually, to be honest with you,” White said when reacting to Guida’s fakeout. “No, that pissed me off.
“I like [Clay Guida], he’s a nice guy, but you’re faking your retirement so you can say f****** happy birthday to somebody?”
Guida wasn’t alone, because Bill Algeo also did something similar just before taking a shot at the crowd in Kansas City.
In his case, Algeo just finished T.J. Brown with a rear-naked choke submission, which capped off a Fight of the Night performance, so he was already being afforded a post-fight interview.
Algeo, who is from just outside Philadelphia, used his microphone time as a slight bit of payback after his Eagles lost to the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl.
Meanwhile, Guida only got the chance to talk because all signs pointed towards him hanging up the gloves, and instead he was just trying to score an interview of his own.
“We’re running a live event here, you know what I mean?” White said. “I was not happy about that.
“He was saying happy birthday to somebody or something. That was not good.”