Mario Bautista is not daunted by the prospect of fighting Umar Nurmagomedov and is confident he has a methodology to put the second blemish on the pro MMA record of the Dagestan-based fighter. Bautista appeared on MMA Junkie Radio leading into his UFC 321 fight against Umar Nurmagomedov. That high stakes bantamweight clash will emanate from Abu Dhabi and will transpire on October 25th. This bout will put the number two ranked Umar Nurmagomedov against the number eight ranked Bautista.
The victor of this bout would be well positioned in the title shot queue as the UFC 320 bantamweight title fight between reigning champ Merab Dvalishvili and Cory Sandhagen looms ever closer. Speaking to his preparations for this looming matchup in the coming weeks against Nurmagomedov, Bautista said,
"I completely have all the trust and faith in my team... the MMA Lab, we're pretty good grapplers. We have grapplers from everywhere. NCAA finalist Bryce Meredith, Ezra Elliot who's killing it in jiu-jitsu and grappling. We have some of the best strikers, like Marcus McGee who went three rounds with Peter Yan. I have complete faith we're going to come up with a good game plan for this."
"You just have to be a great grappler yourself and actually threaten the grappling back, so I think that kind of evens things out. If a wrestler is just being offensive the whole time, he's winning... You kind of have to put that in their head too. It's very taxing on their body and we've seen it with
Mario Bautista fighting someone here who "came close to beating the champ"
As he kept further expounding upon his thoughts on this huge bout at 135 pounds, Mario Bautista continued,
"The higher you climb up, the better they're getting. So, I'm happy with it. And you just fought a guy that about a year ago many people were saying could be the best bantamweight in the world. Patchy Mix... This sport's unforgiving in the sense that no disrespect to him, he hasn't been part of the UFC. Umar has and he came close to beating the champ. So just that climb, that competitiveness in your division, is amazing."