UFC Fight Night 272<\/a> won’t be the first time Ribeiro (17-9 MMA, 2-4 UFC) has entered the underdog, and he plans to once again upset the oddsmakers.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
“I’ve fought guys with hype. I’ve fought guys who were undefeated,” Ribeiro told MMA Junkie and other reporters through a Portuguese-language interpreter at a pre-fight news conference Wednesday. “Myself, I had a little hype. I was undefeated once. I’m going to show people with a win on Saturday why I’m here and why I deserve to be here. I’ll show that to people Saturday night.”<\/p>\n
Ribeiro will face highly-touted Turkish light heavyweight Abdul Rakhman Yakhyaev at Meta APEX. Yakhyaev (8-0 MMA, 1-0 UFC) is forecasted by many to be a future title contender, showing off a versatile attack of finishing abilities. But that doesn’t change much as far as Ribeiro is concerned.<\/p>\n
“I’m not going to run away from him,” Ribeiro said. “I’m never going to run away from anybody here in the UFC or in other promotions. Again, I fought when people were hyped. I fought people who were undefeated. I’ve been undefeated myself. There’s a big difference. He wants to win. I need to win.”<\/p>\n
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There is pressure, Ribeiro admits. In fact, his back might be up against the wall having lost back-to-back fights and four of six. Still, Ribeiro doesn’t just want to pick up a safe win. He wants to generate buzz with a big knockout.<\/p>\n
“I want people to be talking about me when the fight is over,” Ribeiro said. “I want people to remember. I want people to say, ‘Look at the performance he had.’ I know there will be a main event and a co-main event and everything, but I want people to remember. I want people to say, ‘Hey, listen, Brendson had a great performance.’ That’s what I came here for and that’s what I’m going to look for.”<\/p>\n
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Brendson Ribeiro not scared despite UFC Vegas 115 opponent hype<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LAS VEGAS \u2013 Brendson Ribeiro is aware he’s being counted out \u2013 and he likes that. UFC Fight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":582026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,285145,786,785,3169,285146,85,787],"class_list":{"0":"post-582025","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-brendson-ribeiro","11":"tag-fighting","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-mma-junkie","14":"tag-ribeiro","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-ufc"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582025","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=582025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/582026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=582025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=582025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=582025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}