Changes are coming for \u201cMalhadinho.\u201d<\/p>\n
Top Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Heavyweight contender Jailton Almeida returns to action on short notice<\/a> when he collides with Russian prospect Rizvan Kuniev in the \u2018featured bout\u2019 of UFC Vegas 113<\/a> this weekend (Sat., Feb. 7, 2026) inside the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada.<\/p>\n Almeida addressed those critiques during UFC Vegas 113 media day.<\/p>\n \u201cI think people need to see the entire journey and actually watch my fights from the start,\u201d Almeida told MMAMania.com<\/a>. \u201cWatch what I did on the Contender Series. There were many fights where I went out there and wasn\u2019t even struck. I\u2019m not going to let one fight define me. People need to actually watch the fights and see that my journey in the UFC has been pretty good.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Almeida, the issue wasn\u2019t his skill set \u2014 it was his mindset.<\/p>\n \u201cIt all comes back to aggressiveness, which is something I\u2019ve mentioned before,\u201d Almeida added. \u201cI was trained and ready for Alexander Volkov, but the aggressiveness wasn\u2019t there. You need confidence, and I didn\u2019t have it to execute my ground-and-pound. It\u2019s more of a change in mentality \u2014 being more aggressive.\u201d<\/p>\n That shift is already underway. Almeida revealed he has placed a renewed emphasis on developing his ground-and-pound rather than relying solely on submissions, an area where he already owns four UFC wins.<\/p>\n He may need every bit of it against Kuniev, who brings a dangerous striking arsenal and a solid ground game of his own. For Almeida, UFC Vegas 113 represents more than just another fight \u2014 it\u2019s a chance to remind fans why he climbed the Heavyweight ladder<\/a> so quickly in the first place.<\/p>\n For the rest of the UFC Vegas 113 fight card and Paramount+<\/a> lineup click here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Changes are coming for \u201cMalhadinho.\u201d Top Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) Heavyweight contender Jailton Almeida returns to action on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459194,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,40762,785,85,1396,179146,14855],"class_list":["post-459193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-ufc-mma-news","tag-mma","tag-sports","tag-ufc-news","tag-ufc-on-paramount","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459193","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=459193"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459193\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}