Zak Cummings ended 2018 exactly how he wanted to.<\/p>\n
The former welterweight moved up to middleweight at UFC Milwaukee and defeated Trevor Smith by decision. Yet winning this fight wasn’t easy.<\/p>\n
“It was a tough fight. I thought I won every round, it wasn\u2019t easy. He fought me different than I thought he was going to,” Cummings told BJPENN.com. “I had expectations that he was going to try and take me down and grind me up against the fence, and I was going to be fighting off the takedowns. I think cause he cracked me off the bat, he got a little trigger happy and wanted to make it a stand-up fight. Or if he respected my ground game, that he didn\u2019t want to wrestle or what. He is a tough, gritty opponent but I was expecting that. I felt like I landed more volume, the harder shots.”<\/span><\/p>\n When Smith ‘cracked’ Cummings early in the first, that punch resulted in Cummings losing vision in his eye. He then was fighting with one eye for the majority of the fight, and that was a real struggle. He didn’t have any depth of perception and couldn’t tell exactly where Smith was for most of the fight.<\/p>\n “I have to deal with this eye thing,” Cummings said. “That first punch broke my orbital, I had surgery on Wednesday and we will go from there.”<\/span><\/p>\n At one point in the fight, Cummings dropped Smith but because of his eye, he couldn’t tell where he was, so he couldn’t go ground and pound him to get the finish. Instead, he just had to stand there and try and look for him.<\/p>\n