Rafael Fiziev had quite the night before his big win over Rafael dos Anjos.
Rafael Fiziev scored the biggest win of his career in the main event of UFC Vegas 58 recently. There he TKO’d former UFC lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos to fire himself up the 155 lb rankings, placing him behind only former champions and title challengers.
However, according to Fiziev’s team, things almost didn’t go to plan. When he appeared on The MMA Hour recently Fiziev’s manager Sayat Abdrakhmanov described a chaotic night before the fight which involved Fiziev forcing himself to throw up.
“The night before the fight, he cannot go to sleep, so he took one melatonin pill,” said Abdrakhmanov (ht MMA Fighting).
“Then he took second [pill]. Third. Then he still couldn’t fall asleep, then he took another, some CBD gummy with melatonin. He take it, and then he ask me, ‘Oh, did I take too much melatonin? Is it going to affect me during the fight?’ I was like, ‘Why do you do something and then think about what you’re doing [after]?!’
“So he went to the bathroom — and then he made himself throw up all this, the pills he took, all the melatonin pills he took.”
“I ate seven pills of melatonin in total,” chimed in Fiziev. “I started to be scared, like maybe I might go sleep in the fight, so I needed to go throw up [with my fingers].”
“I was like, ‘Why do you keep doing this? Everything was perfect and you just came up with this [idea],’” Abdrakhmanov added.
During his appearance Fiziev also discussed how nervous he gets ahead of a fight.
“I’ll tell you some stories, some small stories about the small p**** inside of me. Because always before fight, I have small, small p**** inside of me — and before fights, they start talking, ‘Oh, you’ve lost. Oh, this guy knock you out. Oh, this guy smashing you.’ All of these. And when I go into the cage, this p**** [shuts] off. And I ask them, ‘Hey, where are you? You want to tell me what’s up now?’”
“Once he makes his walk to octagon, this little coward runs away until the next fight,” added Abdrakhmanov. “And then when the next fight comes, this little coward comes back and starts to tell him, ‘Oh, you’re going to lose,’ and stuff like this, and then he’s like kicking him away again.”
Since beating dos Anjos, Fiziev has called for a fight with Justin Gaethje. The win over RDA gave Fiziev a six fight winning streak and extended his pro record to 12-1. Fiziev’s lone loss was a TKO defeat to Magomed Mustafaev in his UFC debut in 2019.