Chris Kelades

By Kelsey Mowatt

Chris Kelades returned to the win column at UFC Fight Night 74 last weekend, but one judge that was cage side, didn’t see it that way.

Kelades took on Chris Beal at the August 23rd event, and after falling behind early on, he battled back and appeared to outscore the latter for the final two rounds. After the competitive and entertaining fight, two of three judges scored the fight in Kelades’ favor, and handed him his second UFC win.

“I was pretty confident that I did enough to win and that was just being from in the fight,” Kelades said in a recent episode of Full Contact Fighter’s podcast. “I felt like, ya, I did enough and I felt like I was dictating a little more, but then when that first scorecard came and it was 30-27 for him, I was like ‘oh snap’. This could be bad.”

“I felt like I was just getting in my groove halfway through the second and then in the third round,” Kelades furthered, while discussing what he might say to those who didn’t score the fight for him. “I could have kept that pressure and that pace, and I think it was only a matter of time before I would have finished him, if I had the time, but, given that I gave that first round away, I forfeited that opportunity right?”

And what kind of response has Kelades received from fans and critics? Since the entertaining bout went down?

“The people who like you and want you to win are all positive, and everybody else is negative, so I mean you have to take it with a grain of salt,” the 34 year-old, Nova Scotia fighter said. “You can’t concentrate (on that) too much. At the end of the day it doesn’t matter how these fights go down. I have a W and he has an L, and that’s just the way that it is. Looking forward that’s what people remember.”

Kelades left UFC FN 74 with a record of 9-2, while Beal’s sits at 10-2.