It will have been over a year since the last time featherweight Ricardo Lamas fought when he enters the Octagon on February 1, 2014 for his UFC title fight against Jose Aldo.
A lot has happened over the past year in terms of the UFC – Anderson Silva lost his championship to Chris Weidman, Jon Jones had his toughest test against Alexander Gustafsson and Georges St-Pierre almost lost his welterweight title against Johny Hendricks. Aldo also defended his title in August when he finished “The Korean Zombie” Chan Sung Jung via TKO.
Aldo has not lost a fight since 2006 and is currently riding a sixteen-fight winning streak. Since coming over from the WEC, “Scarface” has defended his UFC featherweight championship five times. The Brazilians tend to fly under the radar – unless your name is Anderson Silva. However with sixteen wins in a row, Lamas believes that many fighters who fight him have lost mentally before they even step inside the Octagon and that he does have that Anderson Silva type stigma.
“I definitely think that. I think a lot of guys that have fought him and have lost against him have lost the fight even before getting in the Octagon with him – they’re already mentally beat before getting in there.”
That does not bother “The Bully” one bit, in fact he feels as if he is very mentally prepared for his upcoming title fight. Lamas is also a WEC veteran and has been tested against top talent under the UFC banner, in fact he has been the underdog in almost all of his UFC bouts.
“I’m not going to have a problem with that. Mentally I’m a very strong person and my goal is to show the world that Jose Aldo is a human being and he can lose just like anybody else.”
As mentioned, Weidman was able to defeat the so-called unbeatable Silva at UFC 162 via second round knockout and Lamas wants to be the next to beat the unbeatable.
“I definitely want to be the Chris Weidman of the 145-pound division.”
UFC 169 goes down on February 1, 2014 from the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey and will be headlined by a unification bout between UFC bantamweight champion Dominick Cruz and interim champion Renan Barao.
(Quotes are from an interview that MMASucka.com conducted with Lamas. You can watch the entire interview HERE.)