meet with UFC matchmaker Sean Shelby<\/a> after his latest knockout. Instead of sitting and waiting for a call, he opted to keep the momentum going in 2025. His previous opponents were riding long winning streaks, and UFC veteran Kamaka enters the cage off of two victories, having gone 6-1 in Bellator and 2-1 in PFL.<\/p>\n\u201cThey told me they\u2019d call if someone got injured,\u201d Brandao said. \u201cI was anxious at first, but then I decided to focus on my life and my training. If it\u2019s meant to happen, it will happen. My name is already on their table. Everything happens in God\u2019s time.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy focus is on the UFC because I think I still have plenty of fights left in me. There are some guys I still want to face there but I\u2019m not going to mention names anymore because they think they\u2019re too tough. I got to the UFC first, I had better wins, more bonuses and awards than those guys. But I\u2019ll stay quiet. Let\u2019s just fight. When I get there, then I\u2019ll talk about them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Brandao competed in the UFC for many years, going 6-4 inside the octagon with high-profile bouts against Conor McGregor and Dustin Poirier. Training under Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn in Albuquerque, the 38-year-old veteran is confident he will do just fine in a UFC return.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s going to be emotional because if I come back,\u201d Brandao said, \u201cI\u2019m coming back for the championship. If I step foot in the UFC again, I\u2019m going to be champion. We\u2019ve got Steve Garcia and, Aaron Pico here at the gym, we train together, but if I return to the UFC, I think I have a better shot at the belt. Not because I\u2019m better than my training partners, but I think they still need to show a bit more to reach the top 13. If I get one good fight, two good fights in the UFC, I believe I can reach the belt faster.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Diego Brandao will feel nostalgic re-entering Palms Casino Resort on Saturday night to defend his Tuff-N-Uff featherweight belt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":238254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702],"class_list":{"0":"post-238253","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mma","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-fighting","11":"tag-latest-news","12":"tag-mma","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-ufc","15":"tag-ufc-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238253","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=238253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/238253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/238254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=238253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=238253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=238253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}