Youssef Zalal made quick work of Josh Emmett with an armbar submission at UFC 320 but before he celebrated his win or made a callout for his next fight, he first decided to use his time on the microphone to apologize for a past performance.<\/p>\n
Prior to his win over Emmett in October, Zalal defeated veteran featherweight Calvin Kattar by unanimous decision in February but it definitely wasn\u2019t his most impressive showing. In fact, Zalal faded late in the fight and while there was no doubt in his victory, he just didn\u2019t make a great impression for somebody trying to get bigger and bigger opportunities in the UFC.<\/p>\n
It turns out, owning that lackluster moment played a huge part in Zalal turning to UFC CEO Dana White and the matchmakers sitting cage side to address that fight just after submitting Emmett in less than two minutes.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m still learning,\u201d Zalal told MMA Fighting. \u201cI\u2019m still learning in this sport. In a way, I\u2019m young but in a way I\u2019m very vet in this game. You\u2019re like the 20th person [to say] \u2018You don\u2019t need to do that,\u2019 Youssef.\u2019 That was kind of the thing. You can\u2019t make everybody happy and stuff like that. It was just a moment for me, it was the biggest fight of my life, it was the biggest arena I\u2019d ever been in. I think the most crowd I\u2019ve ever been in.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo for me, that\u2019s what I felt in a way. Looking at it now, obviously, I don\u2019t need to [apologize for my performance]. Even my team, my coaches and all that, [David] Onama was hyped, he was like \u2018where are the boos at now?\u2019 I was like it\u2019s OK! I don\u2019t need to get riled up! It\u2019s all good. It is what it is. It\u2019s a learning experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
While it\u2019s not that uncommon for a fighter to detail how injuries, a bad weight cut or even personal problems have led to bad performances, Zalal didn\u2019t want to fall back on excuses in response to a less than stellar third round against Kattar.<\/p>\n
That played a part in Zalal\u2019s decision to address the fight head on before turning his attention towards the future.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no problem going out there and saying it,\u201d Zalal said. \u201cBecause why not? Why do I need to hide anything? There\u2019s nothing to hide.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe third round, just everything hit me. The nerves, the top 10, oh my god this is a big moment, this and that. Use the experience during fight camp, you start feeling the pressure and all that. I learned so much from that. That\u2019s not me in the third round. I took that Kattar fight and took it from that experience and go from there. It\u2019s the best thing that ever happened to me and I\u2019m glad that it happened on a win. That\u2019s the most important thing. Again, same with this, I\u2019m happy it\u2019s happening with a win, not on a loss.\u201d<\/p>\n
Putting that Kattar fight behind him now, the win over Emmett has Zalal firmly cemented in the UFC\u2019s top 10 rankings at featherweight and he\u2019s anxious for his next assignment.<\/p>\n
During his post-fight interview, Zalal called for a matchup against Lerone Murphy despite constant rumors that he\u2019s potentially going to get the next title shot against reigning champion Alexander Volkanovski.<\/p>\n
While Zalal is ultimately open to any higher ranked opponent, he\u2019s still holding out hope for the Murphy fight considering the UFC hasn\u2019t actually announced that he\u2019s getting Volkanovski.<\/p>\n
\u201cLerone fought, had the best performance of his lifetime [against Aaron Pico] and Volk posted \u2018see you in December,\u2019 they\u2019ve got a fight, awesome,\u201d Zalal said. \u201cThen Diego [Lopes] goes in and beats Jean Silva, which is a big win. That changes everything. Then I saw an interview with [Volkanovski] in Perth saying \u2018well, I don\u2019t have an actual opponent yet.\u2019 How is this not a done deal yet?<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like hey, I know Lerone is ready to fight, I\u2019m ready to fight. We could fight in December if he doesn\u2019t get a title shot. If he does, that\u2019s a different story but if he doesn\u2019t, I\u2019d love to get that fight.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Youssef Zalal made quick work of Josh Emmett with an armbar submission at UFC 320 but before he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272807,"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-272806","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\/272806","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=272806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}