Roosevelt Roberts put a stamp on his grudge match with Brok Weaver last Saturday when he submitted him in Round 2. Roberts improved to 4-1 in the UFC and 10-1 overall with the win.
“It was a good win,” he told MMASucka. “I felt like I went out there and showed a lot of my skill-set. There are some things I need to work on, but overall, I feel good with my performance.”
Roberts and his team knew Weaver’s boxing would be solid, but they had confidence in his own hands, too. Once he found his range, Roberts found it easy to connect on Weaver. After much of the first round was spent in the clinch, Roberts felt what Weaver had to offer in the position. At the 3:26 mark of the second round, he secured a rear naked choke.
“Whenever he pushed me up on the cage, I didn’t really feel threatened in that position,” Roberts said. “For a lot of time, I was just giving it a second to let myself calm down a little bit. We knew he was going to come forward and push the pressure, so we had an idea he was going to push me against the cage. But I didn’t think I was going to be on the cage as much as I was. I think I just got a little too relaxed, because he wasn’t really doing a lot of damage on the cage.”
Roosevelt Roberts vs. Brok Weaver: Bad Blood
Roberts says the bad blood between him and Weaver stemmed from his opponent’s reaction after Weaver weighed in at 157.5 — 1.5 pounds over the lightweight limit.
“It wasn’t even the fact he missed weight,” Roberts said. “It was more the fact he missed weight and came back there with this fucking attitude. Staring at me like he had a real problem. Then when we get off the stage, he’s telling me I need to take the fight and shit like that. Don’t come up to me telling me what I need to do after you just missed weight. What you needed to do was go cut weight.
“If you’re the fourth or fifth person who’s on the scale, he didn’t even try to cut the weight,” Roberts continued. “He just went, ‘Oh, I can’t do it, ohh, so I’m not going to do it.’ It wasn’t even like he put fucking effort into it. I had a hard weight cut, and my coaches woke me up at 6 a.m. on Friday to get my ass up and cut the weight. I didn’t want to, but I did it.”
Next Man Up
After finishing Weaver, Roberts turned his attention to fighting again in mid-July or early August. Fight Island, Las Vegas, somewhere else; the location doesn’t matter. However, he does have his eye on fighting Matt Frevola. The two were originally scheduled to fight on April 25 before the coronavirus stopped the bout from happening.
There’s no bad blood between him and Frevola, Roberts said. But Frevola did defeat Jalin Turner, and Roberts said he wants to get that win back.
“It’s nothing like ‘Oh, he did something to me’ or ‘He said something to me.’ Nothing like that,” Roberts said. “We were set to fight. I still want it. He did fight my brother Jalin, and I didn’t like the outcome. I need to get that back, too. But it’s nothing like, ‘Oh, I really hate the guy.’ I don’t feel like how I felt when I fought Brok. With Brok, going into the fight, I felt bad blood. It doesn’t feel like that with [Frevola].”
Frevola does have a scheduled fight against Frank Camacho on June 20. Roberts is rooting for Frevola so the two can dance, but he said he’d lose interest in the bout if Camacho were to win.
“If Frevola loses, I don’t think I would take a step backwards to fight him. If he wins and he’s still heading in the same direction I’m in, then I think it’d be a great fight for both of us to show who the real contender is. I hope he wins. I really want him to go in there and do his thing and get this win, because I’m really looking forward to this fight with him.”
Climbing the Lightweight Rankings
Roberts doesn’t have a contingency plan in mind for who he’d like to fight next. All he wants is a fellow up-and-comer on his way to being ranked. Roberts believes he’s two or three wins away from getting a top-15 lightweight himself.
“Even this next one, if I go in there and do the same thing I did [against Weaver], I hope I’ll be able to get a ranked fighter after that,” he said. “But if not, then it’s definitely gotta be two or three and then I’ll be up in there. I feel like I bring a lot to the table with my skill-set. I’m well-rounded. I definitely think two or three more wins would be good for me to get ranked.”
Roberts also holds UFC wins over Darrell Horcher, Thomas Gifford and Alexander Yakovlev. His lone set back is a close decision loss to Vinc Pichel.
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