Igor Severino will compete for the vacant Oktagon MMA bantamweight championship Saturday in Cologne, Germany, when he battles PFL Europe champion Khurshed Kakhorov.<\/p>\n
The local star missed weight, and isn\u2019t eligible to claim gold if victorious, but Severino doesn\u2019t plan on giving him any chances.<\/p>\n
Known in the MMA world as the fighter that bit his opponent Andre Lima in the UFC octagon in March 2024, Severino has been waiting for his shot at Oktagon for quite a while now.<\/p>\n
The Chute Boxe athlete beat Jonas Magard in a back and forth war in his promotional debut to earn the shot, but Jack Cartwright pulled out of the title bout in April due to an injury. Oktagon re-scheduled the match for August, but Cartwright again withdrew. Elvis Silva stepped in for the vacant strap, but also suffered a last-minute health issue.<\/p>\n
\u201cI see him as a tough fight,\u201d Severino told MMA Fighting of his latest opponent. \u201cThree fights were cancelled and I always expect tougher opponents to step in. [Kakhorov] won the PFL [Europe] tournament and I see him as a tough fight, as a great opportunity for me to show that I can compete and beat guys of that caliber. I\u2019m at the highest level of the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Severino was fired from the UFC after biting Lima in 2024, and eventually embraced the moniker with the \u201cHannibal\u201d nickname. He\u2019s not proud of what he\u2019s done in the octagon that night, but doesn\u2019t think it will prevent him from earning big opportunities going forward in his career.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re taking a bad situation and spinning it into a positive light,\u201d Severino said, referring to his nickname. \u201cFans love how I\u2019ve embraced this. I know that [the bite] is something I\u2019ll carry with me for the rest of my life, so I\u2019ll try to use that to my advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cartwright, his original opponent, is now fighting for PFL. A win over Kakhorov, a PFL veteran, will boost his MMA record to 10-1. Severino is confident that UFC doors will be open one day if he keeps collecting victories and belts around the globe, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany fighters have done bad things in the UFC, even worse than that,\u201d Severino said. \u201cI don\u2019t it was that bad, even. It happened, and that\u2019s life. I don\u2019t know what [Dana White] thinks about that, but I do think [I can go back one day]. I think he has forgiven worse things before.\u201d<\/p>\n
Severino will enter the cage \u201cready for five rounds\u201d. That said, he hopes to get the job done early.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have championship mindset,\u201d Severino said. \u201cI don\u2019t like to underestimate my opponents and I enter any fight as if I\u2019m going to a war, and this is no different. If it ends early, great. But I\u2019m going there ready for five rounds, and be sure that I\u2019m coming out with the belt.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s a striker, and I can fight on the feet, but I have other weapons. All he does is strike, and he only has one path to victory, and I have many. He\u2019s inactive for a long time, and I\u2019m one step ahead of him in all areas.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Igor Severino will compete for the vacant Oktagon MMA bantamweight championship Saturday in Cologne, Germany, when he battles…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":221460,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":{"0":"post-221459","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221459","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=221459"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/221459\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/221460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=221459"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=221459"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=221459"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}