Cung Le makes his debut in the UFC against Wanderlei Silva at UFC 139 on Nov. 19 at the HP Pavilion in San Jose, California, and he is not going to take this fight lightly.
The former Strikeforce middleweight champion told MMAWeekly.com that he expects Wanderlei to be a dangerous opponent, despite his recent decline in performance:
He’s kind of like a warrior that has his back against the wall. A lot of times that’s more dangerous … Wanderlei is not ready to retire. He’s gonna be more dangerous, he’s gonna come and fight a lot harder. He chooses to step in the cage and so do I. It doesn’t make me feel good about myself to think I might be the one to retire him, or that he might get hurt.
Since Wanderlei lost to Chris Leben at UFC 132, many have called for Wanderlei to retire from MMA, with the common criticism being that Wanderlei is past his prime and is more prone to injury at his age.
However, Le squashed these criticisms and made his opinion on the matter clear:
It takes a lot to be a fighter, it takes a lot to step inside the cage and for people to say certain things that they don’t know about, it’s kind of disrespectful. There’s plenty of keyboard warriors out there that think they know it all and they never respect a minute doing what we do.
This marks Le’s first fight in over a year; he, has been inactive since June 2010, following a spectacular TKO win over Scott Smith at Strikeforce: Fedor vs. Werdum.
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