Renfro closed out 2021 with more hype than almost any fighter on UFC FIGHT PASS. With viral knockouts, viral interviews and an infectious personality, he had all the tools to give Dana White’s Contender Series the most viral microphone moment in the show’s history. Unfortunately, it just didn’t work out.
After a monstrous first round against Jonny Parsons, it was all going Renfro’s way, or so we thought.
“In the first round I dropped him twice and got a takedown,” Renfro said. “Also in that first round, something that no one knows happened except for me and my team, is we thought I had broken my hand. I might have broke my left hand in the first round – my left thumb to be exact – and it’s still swollen right now. It’s gigantic if you could see it. It looks like there’s a marble in my thumb, that’s how big it was during the fight.”
An errant body shot that landed on an elbow was Renfro’s assumption on how the injury took place. The struggles weren’t over, however, as Renfro took a cosmetic blow, as well. That million-dollar smile when he bogeys a hole he used to double bogey will never be the same.
“A week and a half before the fight I’m doing a light drill in sparring and I got my tooth knocked loose and I went to the dentist and they were like, ‘You can’t get hit for a few weeks. We can put some glue on it but that’s all we can really do.’” Renfro explains. “I’m like, ‘Well, I have to obviously fight so I can’t not get hit.’ As soon as I got in the fight it came loose at some point and I spit it out. I don’t know exactly what round it happened in, but I want to say it was in the third I spit it out.”
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With all the damage Renfro sustained, he is hard-pressed to find a way in which he lost the fight. Renfro also acknowledges that the judges disagreed with him and that he should have found a way to finish the fight.
The often-jovial welterweight found himself in a position he’s never been in before. Sure, he had suffered a loss before, but the 8-2 record seemed a lot lonelier with the loss coming in front of the most important power trio in combat sports.
“If you work hard and really do what you’re supposed to do, you’re going to win,” Renfro said. “Well, that doesn’t necessarily happen all of the time. In a way I kind of felt betrayed by the sport; it was tough. I never didn’t want to be around fighting more than after that happened. My hand was all messed up, I had just lost my tooth, I lost the fight that I felt like I won and I guess it was just weird for it to happen like that.”
The heavy weight the loss put on Renfro’s shoulders may have been far too much for most people and, at the time, it seemed like too much for Renfro, but as we all know it takes far more than a pothole to derail Solomon Renfro. One big finish and “The Black Dragon” is back in action.
“Had I finished him and did what I was supposed to I wouldn’t be dealing with any of this s***,” Renfro said. “I have to go finish everybody else, man. I still love this sport. This is what gets me up in the morning, keeps me up at night. I’ve planned my whole life because of this sport. It’s given me a purpose and it’s going to take me places that I can’t even imagine, so I’m grateful for this sport and grateful for the platform it gave me.”
A finish in front of Dana White would have almost guaranteed a punched ticket to the UFC, but an equally impressive performance at LFA 125 could do the exact same thing.
Catch the return of Solomon Renfro at LFA 125 Friday, February 25, ONLY on UFC FIGHT PASS!
