Esteban Ribovics says King Green’s camp tried to push him around before their UFC 332 fight. He responded by putting Green on the canvas three times in Round 1. Ribovics singled out the win as the most satisfying of his career, Sherdog reported Thursday, and he tied that feeling directly to what he described as an attempt by Green’s team to bully him before the bout.
MiddleEasy also ran Ribovics’ account of the confrontation with Green’s people. In it he explained how he kept his composure in the lead-up and then went out and got the first-round finish. Sherdog’s post on X put it bluntly: they tried to bully him, and he dropped Green three times in the first. Ribovics did not name individual team members in the reports available so far. There’s also a Getty photo from the Delta Center, run by MMA Fighting, that shows Ribovics being held back against Green, so the bad blood clearly made it into the building.
The fight itself took place Oct. 3 in Salt Lake City. Cageside Press wrote that Ribovics finally found his mark late in the opening round. Referee Herb Dean waved it off after the third knockdown. Green protested, though MMA Fighting described the complaint as fairly mild. That outlet also noted Green looked lucid and capable of defending himself when Dean stepped in. Dana White said afterward that Dean is “having a rough f*cking year,” but he didn’t think this particular stoppage was terrible. Henry Cejudo used his Pound 4 Pound podcast to call for Dean’s removal, and even he admitted, “I’m not so mad at this one.” MMA Fighting’s own Morning Report summed it up this way: if you get dropped three times in a round and fall the way Green fell, you can’t be upset about the stoppage.
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The loss ended a four-fight winning streak for Green. He’s now 17-13-1 with one no contest in the UFC, a run that dates back to 2013. Cageside Press pitched Michael Johnson as his next opponent. Johnson is 16-16 in the promotion and was most recently finished by Drew Dober, the same man who stopped Green in the second round in late 2022.
For Ribovics, the payoff was immediate. He debuted at No. 15 in the updated UFC Meta Rankings at lightweight, sitting just behind Grant Dawson. MMA Fighting’s Mike Heck and Alexander K. Lee spent part of their On To the Next One show sorting through possible next opponents for him. His knockout also counted toward a strange night in Utah. UFC 332 produced 11 knockouts across 14 bouts, including seven straight first-round stoppages, which Cageside Press says is a UFC record. Natalia Silva won the vacant women’s flyweight title over Wang Cong in the main event.
My take: I don’t price trash talk. Pre-fight shoving matches have never told me a thing about who wins, and I’ve lost enough money backing guys who supposedly had something to prove to know it. What I do price is a guy who keeps throwing until something lands. Ribovics spent most of that round searching, and then he scored three knockdowns before the horn. The Herb Dean debate is a sideshow, because a fighter dropped three times in one round isn’t getting robbed. If Green’s people really did try to rattle him, they picked the wrong guy, and now Ribovics has a ranking number and the most satisfying win of his career to show for it.