Anthony Hernandez went from getting stopped by Sean Strickland at UFC Houston earlier this year to training with him and his team ahead of his follow-up fight.<\/p>\n
Hernandez returns to the octagon six months after the loss to the, now, two-time middleweight champion to face Gregory Rodrigues in the main event of UFC Sacramento. \u201cFluffy\u201d was asked about what he took away from the Strickland fight, and was able to move on from it pretty quickly.<\/p>\n
\u201cDon\u2019t lose,\u201d Hernandex told MMA Fighting. \u201cNo, I had to make some adjustments, I mean, but, yeah, shit happens. Train with better guys, sharpen some shit up, and then make sure that I\u2019m not doing dumb shit. \u2026 But yeah, I\u2019m good, man. It is what it is. I really don\u2019t give a f*ck to talk about that fight, man. I\u2019m not going to lie. I\u2019m sorry, but like I really don\u2019t give a f*ck about the past.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m focused on Gregory Rodrigues right now, that\u2019s all I can think about.\u201d<\/p>\n
From there, Hernandez spent most of his summer in Las Vegas, leaving Sacramento, training partners, and even his family behind to chase his ultimate goal. Getting to work with Strickland and the team at Xtreme Couture, along with getting to utilize the UFC Performance Institute as much as he did was a huge eye-opener and game changer for Hernandez.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was great, man,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cIt was a f*cking blast. \u2026 It kind of re-sparked that [love for] martial arts for me, and I mean, I\u2019ve been doing this shit for a long time. And to be honest, I was kind of getting sick of Sacramento anyways. So going out there was f*cking exciting. It was new. It was fun.<\/p>\n
\u201cA lot of the guys I fought, and there\u2019s a lot of new guys there so it\u2019s just like a lot of hungry guys, and they\u2019ll take your head off if you f*cking let them. So for me it was like about jumping in the fire and f*cking having to sharpen all my tools with guys with multiple layers, you know what I mean? And it was a f*cking great outcome for me. I had a great camp. Being at the [UFC] P.I., it was fucking amazing having everyone there \u2014 from f*cking Charles and Hannah with the meal preps and like just overall it was, I just made everything about fighting and I f*cking left home all summer. My wife, thank God for her, and the grandparents because they\u2019ve been f*cking holding it down for me while I\u2019m able to chase this dream and go out there and take full advantage.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the interview, Hernandez seemed different. More locked in than ever before.<\/p>\n
After dozens and dozens of conversations over the years, they\u2019ve all been quite similar \u2014 laid back, loose, laughing and smiling. This time, it was a much different demeanor. The smiles were fewer, the focus was at an all-time high.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t really feel like I\u2019ve changed, to be honest, but I don\u2019t know,\u201d Hernandez said. \u201cI\u2019ve always been a hothead, so I don\u2019t know, maybe I\u2019m just getting older and I\u2019m sick of people\u2019s shit. I don\u2019t f*cking know, man. I really don\u2019t know, but I\u2019ll tell you what, I\u2019m focused as f*ck. I\u2019ve been working my f*cking ass off. I\u2019ve been chasing this f*cking dream, I\u2019ve done everything it takes. So now let\u2019s just go out there and have fun and fight, the rest will handle itself. We\u2019ll see where the world takes us after Saturday.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hernandez is 8-1 in his past nine fights, including stoppages against the likes of Roman Dolidze, Roman Kopylov and Michel Pereira, while also picking up a big win over Brendan Allen along the way.<\/p>\n
Rodrigues looks to get his first UFC main event victory. In his first octagon headliner, \u201cRobocop\u201d was stopped by Jared Cannonier at UFC Vegas 102 in February 2025. Since then, Rodrigues has gone 3-0, including a first-round knockout of Brunno Ferreira in their rematch at UFC 326 in March.<\/p>\n
For Hernandez, this is more than just a fight against a guy he has a lot of respect for.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew who he was and he like he called me out, so it\u2019s like, if you think you can take me out, perfect. Let\u2019s f*cking do it,\u201d Hernandez explained. \u201cI know he\u2019s dangerous. I\u2019m not sleeping on him.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know he\u2019s a really cool guy. I\u2019ve met him and talked to him for like an hour before, but at the end of the day, this guy\u2019s got to take care of his family and so do I. So let\u2019s f*cking get it, see who the most violent man can be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Anthony Hernandez went from getting stopped by Sean Strickland at UFC Houston earlier this year to training with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":438431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1979,121,123,122,18873,152122,50925],"class_list":["post-438430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sacramento","tag-latest-news","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-headlines","tag-sacramento-news","tag-ufc","tag-ufc-news","tag-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=438430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/438430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/438431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=438430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=438430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=438430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}