Raul Rosas Jr. has never been finished in MMA, winning six of seven fights in the UFC en route to his first UFC main event Saturday in Las Vegas, but Raoni Barcelos plans to expose him Sept. 26 at the Meta APEX.<\/p>\n
Barcelos was already a professional MMA fighter before Rosas Jr. celebrated his eighth birthday, claiming the Shooto Brazil and RFA belts on his way to the UFC. On a five-fight winning streak now against the likes of Cody Garbrandt and Payton Talbott, the 39-year-old veteran believes he brings more to the table than Rosas Jr. has had to deal with in his career so far.<\/p>\n
\u201cI believe all the opponents he\u2019s faced so far, Rob Font and others, have been extremely tough athletes, without taking anything away from anyone,\u201d Barcelos told MMA Fighting, \u201cbut I think he still hasn\u2019t faced a guy who could really complicate his game. He\u2019s never faced a guy with good wrestling; he\u2019s never faced a guy with good jiu-jitsu, someone who can disrupt his game. That someone is me, that guy who can make things difficult for him in any area he wants to take the fight. To answer your question, he\u2019s never fought someone like me. Not trying to be better than others, but it\u2019s a style that can complicate his game more.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rosas Jr.\u2019s sole UFC setback came in a decision against Christian Rodriguez in his second octagon appearance at 18 years of age, and since then he\u2019s defeated more experienced opponents, including Rob Font and Vince Morales. Barcelos expects the Mexican prospect to look for grappling and wrestling exchanges in the octagon, and that happens to be his bread and butter.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have a very good no-gi jiu-jitsu team. I\u2019m not going to be uncomfortable,\u201d Barcelos said. \u201cIf the fight goes in that direction, we have all the time; we have five rounds to get tangled up and end up working our jiu-jitsu in the best way possible. The whole team is very much on the same page about that, and we\u2019re going in there to finish this fight before 25 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barcelos will have longtime friend Glover Teixeira in his corner for the first time in nearly six years, reuniting with the man responsible for pushing him to make the transition from jiu-jitsu and wrestling to MMA rings and cages in Brazil in the early 2010\u2019s. Barcelos spent three weeks training with the former UFC champion in Danbury before starting his camp in Rio de Janeiro, and said he feels \u201csafer\u201d with Teixeira next to his father and mentor Laerte Barcelos, as well as coaches Davi Ramos and Andre Felipe.<\/p>\n
\u201cGlover is a guy who inspires me a lot,\u201d Barcelos said. \u201cI\u2019ve always told him that. He always said that age is just a number, that it\u2019s in our heads, and he proved to everyone that it\u2019s possible to make it there. Through all the work and dedication, he was able to make it. I consider Glover my godfather in MMA. He was the one who introduced me to the sport. I have a lot of respect for him. We talk a lot. Whenever I can, I talk to him, and we exchange ideas. I\u2019m very happy to be able to have Glover back in my corner again after, I don\u2019t know, six years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barcelos was over the moon when the UFC called with an offer to be the main event for the first time under the brighter lights in Las Vegas, and it was \u201clike a movie played in my head.\u201d Although he seeks an emphatic finish Saturday, a potential 25 minutes of action could be an edge over a less experienced opponent.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe UFC gets an opportunity to see my performance getting better and better,\u201d Barcelos said. \u201cFive rounds is nothing new for me. I\u2019ve fought three or four times, if I\u2019m not mistaken, back in my RFA days. I believe this might be something new for Raul, but that doesn\u2019t mean much either because he\u2019s 21 years old, so he\u2019s very young. I\u2019m sure he\u2019s going to come very prepared for it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Barcelos has two names in mind for a callout to \u201cshine\u201d even brighter next and a win Saturday could boost Barcelos up towards the top of the bantamweight class, but he knows \u201ceverything depends on my performance in the cage.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMario Bautista would be a very good fight,\u201d Barcelos said, \u201cespecially because he\u2019s now ranked No. 4 in the division and had an excellent fight in his last bout [against Cory Sandhagen]. And there\u2019s David Martinez. I think those are two very strong names. Those are the two athletes I think I\u2019m going to ask for up there in the cage.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Raul Rosas Jr. has never been finished in MMA, winning six of seven fights in the UFC en…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":905539,"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-905538","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\/905538","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=905538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/905538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/905539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=905538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=905538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=905538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}