Travis Lutter: ‘I tapped because of the choke'

It was the triangle choke — and not the questionable elbow strikes — that forced middleweight contender Travis Lutter to tapout in the second round of his non-title fight against 185-pound champion Anderson Silva at UFC 67, according to NBCSports.com.

Here's a snip from Lutter:

I tapped because of the choke. I was good for a long time, but then I started to go out. With the strikes, I was on my way out and he hit me with strikes so I might have moved my body positioning a little because of them. But I tapped because of the choke. I was going to sleep. I'm not beat up at all.

That's not the only revealing nugget in the exclusive interview with the submission specialist, who disappointed virtually everyone associated with the event, including himself, by failing to make weight for the bout.

Lutter also talks extensively about the moments leading up to the fight and the reasons he was "not motivated" to diet and cut weight for the biggest moment in MMA career.

Here's another snip from Lutter:

... six weeks before the fight, I was having trouble with motivation, and that's only because I'd been cutting weight all year. With six fights in a year, I'd fought on average once every two months, so it was like spending the whole last year in training camp. I admit that in the beginning of this training camp, it was difficult to eat perfectly.

So six weeks out, yeah I was finding trouble with motivation. But in the last four weeks leading up to the fight, I didn't. I need to talk to guys like Rich Franklin about his diet. It takes a lot of discipline. He seems to have it down to a science.

Unreal. I guess hindsight really is 20/20.

However, I'm still not sure that this clarifies things or makes them better as far as fans and the Zuffa brass are concerned.

Put simply, he screwed up HUGE.

We'll have to wait and see — apparently around five months according to Lutter while he takes a self-imposed break from fighting — to see if Dana White invites him back to the Octagon.

It's the smartest he's done since The Ultimate Fighter (TUF) 4 wrapped production.

I have zero desire to see him fight anytime soon.