S\u00c3O PAULO \u2014 Caio Borralho is cleared to resume training after a rib injury forced him to go under the knife and cancel a planned fight with Joe Pyfer at UFC 330, and he\u2019s now aiming to be part of the upcoming UFC 334 card in New York on Nov. 14 to re-enter the discussion for a shot at the middleweight belt.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think I\u2019m around 90 to 95 percent, but I\u2019m full training right now,\u201d Borralho told MMA Fighting. \u201cI\u2019m doing everything, doing grappling, wrestling, striking and everything. I think a day for me to start a camp will be like in three, four weeks, and I want to fight in MSG, so this is the perfect date for me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Borralho said it was \u201ca little bit frustrating\u201d to have to cancel the Pyfer fight due to an injury, a first since he\u2019s joined the UFC in 2021, but it gave him a chance to work on \u201csome improvements\u201d to his game and \u201ctake care of my body.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was a great match-up against Joe Pyfer, he was one of the top guys in the world,\u201d Borralho said. \u201cI think it will be a great fight with him. I think we\u2019re going to do this fight sooner or later, but I needed to pull out and do surgery and all this stuff. But I feel ready already. I feel that I\u2019m getting the best shape of my life right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Borralho said he\u2019s open to facing Pyfer next, a man who stopped former UFC champion Israel Adesanya in his recent octagon appearance to improve his winning streak to four, but isn\u2019t locked on it. All he wants is \u201canyone from the top 10\u201d to add on his recent victory over Reinier de Ridder in March, when he rebounded from a decision loss to Nassourdine Imavov.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just waiting for the UFC to give him a name and then we\u2019re going to accept right away, doesn\u2019t matter who,\u201d said Borralho, who is 8-1 in the UFC. \u201cI just need to make sense for me, for the company, and for the division. I had like seven straight wins and then I lost. Now I have a good win against de Ridder, that did very good last weekend [against Roman Dolidze]. I think one or two more on the way to the belt. I\u2019m just waiting for the name.\u201d<\/p>\n
The title picture at middleweight is still unresolved, with Khamzat Chimaev campaigning for an immediate rematch after losing his belt to Sean Strickland. Strickland upset Chimaev in May, edging him for a split decision to hand \u201cBorz\u201d the first loss of his MMA career.<\/p>\n
\u201cActually, I was surprised with something that people are not surprised,\u201d Borralho said. \u201cI was surprised at how he stood up and strike with Strickland. I knew that he was going to shoot in the first round, I knew that he was going to take Strickland down, but I already trained with both guys, already trained with Strickland and he\u2019s a hard guy to keep on the floor. And very good mentality when he\u2019s on the bottom, to get up and not rush anything. We know that Khamzat in a few fights already got tired and all this stuff. I wasn\u2019t surprised about how Strickland managed to get out of the back positions, but I was surprised about how Khamzat stood up and strike with him and traded punches and was a close fight.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Borralho, Imavov would be the rightful contender, not Chimaev.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think Imavov deserves the title next,\u201d Borralho said. \u201cHe already has a history with Strickland, that he lost in a light heavyweight fight, in a short-notice fights for Strickland, and I think he did everything that he needed to deserve the title shot, so I think he needs to be the one next. But we have Pyfer, we have Brendan Allen. Both of them I can fight. They can fight between two of them, or I can fight both of them. I think we\u2019re in the top of the division so anyone that wins the next fight maybe is the one next for the title shot.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"S\u00c3O PAULO \u2014 Caio Borralho is cleared to resume training after a rib injury forced him to go…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":875469,"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-875468","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\/875468","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=875468"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/875468\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/875469"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=875468"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=875468"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=875468"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}