Luiz Gustavo earned a shot at the RIZIN lightweight title after a vicious knockout over Taisei Sakuraba in March, and he wishes the son of legendary Japanese star Kazushi Sakuraba wasn\u2019t that hurt from his strikes.<\/p>\n
\u201cKiller\u201d Gustavo, who challenges Ilkhom Nazimov for the RIZIN lightweight belt this Sunday in Kobe, Japan, told MMA Fighting he felt bad when he learned that he fractured Sakuraba\u2019s son jaw with his second-round knockout.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe want to win no matter what, but not in a way that seriously harms the other guy,\u201d Gustavo said. \u201cOf course losing already hurts, but I mean injuries, like someone needing jaw surgery. We don\u2019t want that for anyone. We want to win and only hurt the guy the minimum necessary [laughs]. We want him to recover quickly and come back as soon as possible because this is our job, and we can\u2019t afford to stay out of work.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gustavo trains under Andre Dida in Curitiba, the longtime coach of former PRIDE champion Wanderlei Silva, and saw RIZIN build a narrative for his clash with Sakuraba\u2019s son off the rivalry between \u201cThe Axe Murderer\u201d and \u201cThe Gracie Killer\u201d. In the end, much like in the 2000\u2019s, Brazil came out victorious.<\/p>\n
\u201cJapan doesn\u2019t really have rankings,\u201d Gustavo said. \u201cThey usually go with the guy who sells the fight and puts on good performances. All my fights are wars, there\u2019s always a knockout, never a boring fight. That last fight was really good, and because of the names involved, Sakuraba and Wanderlei, it sold really well. It got a lot of attention. And the way the knockout happened, the way the fight played out, gave me credibility to fight for the belt.\u201d<\/p>\n
The hype around that finish awarded Gustavo a shot at the RIZIN belt, his second attempt to winning gold less than two years after challenging Roberto Satoshi. Nazimov, who now holds the title, dethroned Satoshi in just 13 seconds this past December, even quicker than Satoshi\u2019s 21-second win over Gustavo.<\/p>\n
\u201cI deserve the belt,\u201d Gustavo said. \u201cI\u2019ve been in this promotion for a long time and I\u2019ve had a lot of fights to earn this title shot. Unfortunately, I lost the first one, but I earned another opportunity and I deserve it. I\u2019m definitely bringing this belt to Brazil. Ever since I stepped into that promotion I said I was going to be champion, and now the time has come.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody watched PRIDE and dreamed of having that picture on the wall at home, being able to say they fought in Japan,\u201d he continued. \u201cThat\u2019s where it all started. I used to watch Wanderlei fighting in PRIDE when I was 9 and say, \u2018One day I want to fight there.\u2019 I\u2019ve been there for eight years now, and the Japanese fans are different from everyone else. The energy there is incredible. This is a dream coming true, especially now that I\u2019m going to win this belt.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gustavo said that \u201cif two guys fight 100 times there\u2019ll be 100 different results,\u201d so he won\u2019t let \u201cMMA math\u201d take away any confidence ahead of his shot against the man who beat his nemesis.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnything can happen in there,\u201d Gustavo said. \u201cUnfortunately Satoshi lost quickly and couldn\u2019t really show his game, just like I lost quickly to Satoshi and couldn\u2019t show mine either. That\u2019s the magic of MMA. Anything can happen. It\u2019s a great matchup for me. I\u2019m a striker, he\u2019s also a striker, so I\u2019m sure it\u2019s going to be a great fight. It\u2019ll be a really good fight as long as he doesn\u2019t try to hold onto me, right? Usually these guys are strikers, but when they fight me they want to take me down and just hold me there. But if he really wants to strike, then it\u2019s going to be an amazing fight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luiz Gustavo earned a shot at the RIZIN lightweight title after a vicious knockout over Taisei Sakuraba in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660443,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[570],"tags":[64,63,786,1347,785,15804,85],"class_list":["post-660442","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mma","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-fighting","tag-latest-news","tag-mma","tag-rizin","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660442","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=660442"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660442\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660443"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660442"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660442"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660442"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}