Khalil Rountree has made it pretty clear that if he's going to leave UFC 307 on October 5 with the light heavyweight title, and he's going to do it with his striking skills.
The title challenger is a very skilled and dangerous stand-up fighter who has finished four of the five wins on his current streak.
However, standing with most opponents and standing with Alex Pereira are two extremely different prospects.
The current 205-pound champion and former GLORY kickboxing legend is one of the best strikers that we have seen inside the Octagon, meaning that if there's a best path to victory against him, it's to avoid the striking range altogether.
Rountree wouldn't even consider this as a potential backup plan because it's not who he is as a fighter.
Khalil Rountree Says Coaches Asking Him To Grapple Would Show Lack Of Confidence
In a recent interview with former middleweight champion Michael Bisping on his YouTube channel, "The Count" posed a question to Rountree about his strategy for this fight.
Bisping asked what his thoughts would be if his coach were to come to the title challenger and suggest that for this fight, they implement a grappling-focused game plan because it's the weaker part of Pereira's game.
Rountree responded by saying that even just this idea would make him have serious doubts in his coaches because of how much time they have spent working on his striking.
Whilst he may be able to grapple when he needs to, this would mean completely going against what it is that he does best. which would show a lack of faith in his ability to get the job done.
If it were my coach, I'd say maybe I need to look for another coach man. Yeah I mean, it doesn't make sense, I'm not a wrestler. Yes, I'm a mixed martial artist, I'm able to do a lot of different things.
"My grappling's good, my wrestling's decent but that's just not me, that's not my instinct and so like why would I put myself in harm's way to try to secure this victory when that's just not me, that's just not my style.
So it would just show me that if my coach were telling me, 'Hey this is the way', I'd be like man, who are you coaching because this has never been the game plan so why at the height of my career would we switch everything that we've ever done to secure some victory? Like where is your belief in what I do? So it would make me question my coaches if anything.