Payton Talbott and Henry Cejudo never thought they would be fighting each other, but now they will in\u2014what looks to be\u2014Cejudo\u2019s last hurrah.<\/p>\n
Cejudo faces Talbott in a bantamweight main card matchup at UFC 323 this Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Talbott admits he was a bit surprised the UFC went in this direction with the matchmaking, but there was no way he could turn it down.<\/p>\n
While Cejudo is known for having a bit of fun, and riling up his opponents during his fight weeks, Talbott says he\u2019s ready for anything Cejudo brings in his direction since he has familiarity with the Olympic gold medalist.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe kind of know each other,\u201d Talbott told MMA Fighting. \u201cWe\u2019re pretty familiar, so it would take a lot to like really surprise me, I think, and I think he knows that. So we\u2019ll see what happens because I\u2019m pretty chill, but yeah, I don\u2019t know. I\u2019m also interested to see what happens during fight week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Cejudo makes his fourth appearance since ending his first MMA retirement at UFC 249 in May 2020 following a successful bantamweight title defense against Dominick Cruz. \u201cTriple C\u201d ended his hiatus after three years on the sidelines, dropping a decision to then-champ Aljamain Sterling at UFC 288 in May 2023. From there, Cejudo dropped decisions to current champ Merab Dvalishvili and, most recently, Song Yadong in the main event of UFC Seattle in February.<\/p>\n
But it was prior to the fight with Dvalishvili when Talbott got to know Cejudo, and received advice from the former two-division champion that continues to stick with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe hung out together for a couple days straight,\u201d Talbott said. \u201cHe gave me a lot of like career-changing advice and tried to mentor me quite a bit because, I mean, he was supposed to retire. It was leading up to his Merab fight, he was supposed to retire after that, so it was like, we\u2019re never going to fight each other, and here we are.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe gave me a lot [of advice] actually. Without getting too specific, it was just, you know, how to structure your camp to mimic competition, in terms of mentality, what the body can take and just how important it is to have security outside of fighting \u2014 which I always knew, but he just had his whole life based around long-term security, like financial security. And he seemed to be very, very adamant about like, \u2018You have no idea what\u2019s going to come later on in life. You always need to make sure you\u2019re good financially because everyone will try to f*ck you.\u2019 And yeah, it takes somebody telling you that and seeing it to really know, and now I\u2019m in a position where he was really trying to do right with by me, and he was right.\u201d<\/p>\n
Talbott came out of Dana White\u2019s Contender Series as a highly-touted prospect, and someone the UFC likely saw as poised for stardom. After finishing his first three opponents, Talbott began the year by taking his first career loss to Raoni Barcelos at UFC 322 in January. The 27-year-old bounced back with an impressive decision win over Felipe Lima at UFC 317 in June.<\/p>\n
A ranked opponent seemed to be in the cards, according to Talbott, who says multiple opponents turned him down. But with Cejudo saying yes, and Talbott getting an incredible litmus test so early in his career, he couldn\u2019t be more thrilled.<\/p>\n
Not to mention, what it means to be Cejudo\u2019s final mixed martial arts opponent.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s amazing, [and] that\u2019s a big reason of why I took this fight,\u201d Talbott said. \u201cI think you\u2019re not really gonna get an opportunity like this again, and I\u2019m not really here to try to get the belt and pick my way up to the top. Like I just want to fight the toughest dudes and somebody like Henry is just a special person in my weight class and that kind of legacy, I\u2019m not really going to find anywhere else right now. So I want to see what I can do in there. I want to see what I\u2019m made of in there a little bit with a stud like that. I want to see what I got in me.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an honor [to be his final opponent]. That\u2019s also why I was so for the fight, because it\u2019s just, it\u2019s very rare that you get to do that, and to walk somebody out of their love and passion, and what they do in life, it\u2019s an honor because he\u2019s going to show up in that fight unlike how he\u2019s ever shown up before. And I think I\u2019m all about ringing them like a wet rag and getting every last drop out, so I think that that is going to be entirely possible in the fight because it is likely his last one.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Payton Talbott and Henry Cejudo never thought they would be fighting each other, but now they will in\u2014what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":321589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[444],"tags":[49,48,641,701,638,82,640,702,3194],"class_list":{"0":"post-321588","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","16":"tag-videos"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321588","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=321588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/321589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}