wrestling training in Oklahoma<\/a>. He didn\u2019t need that aspect of the game in his most recent victory, a knockout over Jean Silva in a UFC main event in September, but could be helpful this weekend in Australia.<\/p>\n\u201cI never really pursued wrestling specifically to improve for a particular fight,\u201d Lopes said. \u201cIt\u2019s genuinely been about improving as an athlete and as a person, you know? Like, I don\u2019t go into a wrestling gym and tell the coach, \u2018Help me defend this takedown this way for MMA.\u2019 And they don\u2019t try to teach me MMA-specific things either, you know? They teach me real wrestling. And that\u2019s given me a lot of confidence too because I know that when it goes to the ground, in the movement and the scrambles, I can be confident that I can win any scramble against those guys. And it definitely gives me even more confidence knowing that I can keep wrestling, or do jiu-jitsu, or stay in the grappling exchanges without any problems.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne of the things wrestling gives you is that mindset of never stopping, never stopping, never stopping. I think that helps me a lot, you know? And of course, it also gives me confidence for this fight against Volkanovski. If I have the opportunity to take him down, I will. It\u2019s definitely a set of weapons that I\u2019ve been improving for myself, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n
The Brazilian featherweight said he \u201clost count\u201d how many times he has rewatched the first Volkanovski bout, and admits he was surprised by his opponent\u2019s strategy. Lopes will rematch \u201cThe Great\u201d nine months later, this time in enemy territory, and vows to be ready for whatever comes from the blue corner.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe expected Volkanovski to be more in front of us In the first fight, just switching stances, and we never expected him to move so much to my left side,\u201d Lopes said. \u201cNothing is new to me now. Anything he presents inside the octagon won\u2019t be new to me. It\u2019s just about going in there and having fun, right?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he\u2019s going to try to apply more pressure and try to finish the fight quickly,\u201d he added. \u201cHe\u2019s been saying that too, but I think when he sees that it\u2019s not going to work, he\u2019ll end up going back to the plan he had in the first fight, which is something we\u2019re already expecting. I already know what to expect from him.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diego Lopes came up short in his first attempt to win the UFC featherweight title in April 2025,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":449955,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,85,787,1396],"class_list":["post-449954","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449954","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=449954"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/449954\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/449955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=449954"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=449954"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=449954"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}