City Kickboxing’s Carlos Ulberg looks to earn his seventh win in a row inside the Octagon this weekend when he returns in Macau to face former title challenger Volkan Oezdemir. The #10-ranked contender at light heavyweight is one of many fighters from his gym and on the UFC roster as a whole that came into the sport with a background in kickboxing.
Kickboxing has always been a well represented skill set in MMA but for a long time, a lot of these specialist strikers tended to have a cap on their capabilities. It was only the ones that were able to really improve their overall game who achieved a lot of success at the highest level.
The likes of Ulberg’s teammate Israel Adesanya and the champion of his weight class, Alex Pereira, have shown what is possible for elite level strikers that are able to adapt their games for the Octagon. In a recent interview with Kevin Iole ahead of his return this weekend, Ulberg spoke about the growing number of kickboxers and the success they have in MMA.
He believes that the main difference is that there is far more emphasis now on creating a skillset for MMA, rather than being a striker with some wrestling and jiu-jitsu added on. This can also be seen with Adesanya saying that other kickboxers from his gym like Navajo Stirling are more well-rounded than he is because they’ve adopted this approach earlier on.
“A lot more attention is going to MMA in particular. There is not one particular where everyone’s just got a few more tricks now to present themselves with and I feel like if you don’t have the full package then you’re not going to go very far in the division.
“It’s a universal language when it comes to MMA right now where you kind of have to build all of your skill set in terms of your grappling as well as your stand up game.”