Khabib Nurmagomedov: ‘Dos Anjos Smashes Pettis in Striking and on the Ground’

Even though he came up short in their only fight, top-ranked UFC lightweight Rafael dos Anjos evidently earned the respect of second-ranked Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC on Fox 11 in April 2014.
As for Anthony Pettis, Nurmagomedov doesn’t seem to hol…

Even though he came up short in their only fight, top-ranked UFC lightweight Rafael dos Anjos evidently earned the respect of second-ranked Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC on Fox 11 in April 2014.

As for Anthony Pettis, Nurmagomedov doesn’t seem to hold the same reverence for the UFC lightweight linchpin. 

During a March interview with MMAFighting.com‘s Marc Raimondi, Nurmagomedov offered his prediction on the lightweight title bout between Pettis and dos Anjos that will unfold at UFC 185 on Saturday.

“I think [dos Anjos] smashes [Pettis] in striking and I think he smashes him on the ground,” Nurmagomedov said. “This is my opinion. I don’t know why, but I think he’ll smash him.”

Nurmagomedov handed dos Anjos his last setback when he racked up six takedowns en route to a unanimous-decision win at UFC on Fox 11. Since the loss, the Brazilian has reeled off three straight wins, two of which ended by form of KO-TKO.

Nurmagomedov suffered a torn right meniscus following his win over dos Anjos and hasn’t competed since. 

Aside from his loss to Nurmagomedov, dos Anjos has looked virtually unstoppable in his last nine fights, winning eight times in that span, including five times by unanimous decision. The 30-year-old longtime Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt confidently echoed the sentiments of Nurmagomedov at a media scrum prior to UFC 184 on Feb. 28.

“For sure man,” dos Anjos said when asked if he believes he has an edge in grappling over Pettis. “I think I can beat him anywhere. I think I’m a dangerous fighter that hits hard, and I’m going to prove to everyone why I’m getting this chance. I think I can beat him on the ground or knock him out. I have a lot of confidence in what I got, so on that day on March 14, it’s going to come down to who makes a mistake, and I won’t be that guy.”

Nurmagomedov, who’s slated to face third-ranked Donald Cerrone on a stacked UFC 187 card in May, made sure to clarify that his win over dos Anjos didn’t come easy.

“Dos Anjos is no easy man,” Nurmagomedov said. “A lot of people watch and think I beat him easy, but it was not easy. It was no easy fight. I beat him, but nobody beat him like me.”

After losing his UFC debut in 2011 to Clay Guida, the 28-year-old Pettis has won five straight fights, including two by KO and two by submission. Odds Shark has deemed the former WEC lightweight champ a 3.5-1 favorite (-350) to top dos Anjos (+250).

 

Bleacher Report obtained the quote from Rafael dos Anjos firsthand.

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UFC 185 Preview: Why Is It so Hard to Imagine Rafael Dos Anjos as UFC Champ?

There’s nothing wrong with Rafael dos Anjos.
On the contrary, dos Anjos has been outstanding through more than six years in the UFC. He’s gone 8-1 dating back to May 2012 and no matter what happens during his lightweight title shot at UFC 1…

There’s nothing wrong with Rafael dos Anjos.

On the contrary, dos Anjos has been outstanding through more than six years in the UFC. He’s gone 8-1 dating back to May 2012 and no matter what happens during his lightweight title shot at UFC 185, he can boast a resume few 155-pound fighters can match.

So, why does it seem so hard to picture UFC President Dana White strapping the title around dos Anjos’ waist at the end of Saturday night? 

Maybe it’s a confluence of things.

For starters, it feels as though the UFC’s most competitive and interesting weight class finally has a champion we can all agree on. That guy—the guy who fits the role like he’s straight out of central casting—is Anthony Pettis.

You know, he of the Wheaties box and the cage-hopping Showtime kick? The guy who became the first ever to stop Gilbert Melendez three months back at UFC 181? The kid with the custom suits, 100-watt smile and casual cool?

Pettis—he’s our man. Or perhaps more accurately, he’s The Man.

Secondly, we know dos Anjos wasn’t anyone’s first choice as No. 1 contender.

Khabib Nurmagomedov likely would’ve been here, had the undefeated Russian been healthy when—in the wake of Pettis’ win over Melendez—the UFC was shopping around for new challengers. Nurmagomedov defeated dos Anjos last April but was still rehabbing his injured knee when the championship carousel finally had an opening, so dos Anjos got the nod instead.

None of this is a knock on dos Anjos himself, mind you. He’s obviously a heck of a fighter and probably a very nice guy too. It’s just that, despite his success, he hasn’t been able to do much to separate himself from lightweight’s crowded crop of contenders.

For fans, it’s hard to get excited about a guy who so far seems completely unknowable.

Case-in-point: Even Sunday’s episode of UFC: Countdown does little to shed any new light on dos Anjos.

In fairness, the UFC-produced mini-documentary is a fairly bare-bones affair, and even the scenes about Pettis don’t stray far from the training room. But at least with the champ—who we’re already well acquainted with, anyway—we get some back story on how he used money from the Melendez win to buy his mom a house. At least there are few precious seconds of Pettis and coach Duke Roufus talking about their kids.

With dos Anjos? We see almost nothing that might differentiate him from the guys waiting in line behind him. We learn he recently changed his strength-and-conditioning regimen. We witness him sparring at Kings MMA in Huntington Beach, Calif., and hear sparring partner Beneil Dariush tell us it’s not very much fun to strap gloves on with “Rafa” right now.

But that’s about it.

If you read between the lines, you come away with the feeling dos Anjos is a good, hardworking and probably pretty private guy. He doesn’t exactly light up the interview segments, but he’s doing them in his second language, which is better than most of the people reading this right now could muster—and that goes double for the guy writing it.

But if the point of Countdown is to get us to care about dos Anjos, the show doesn’t seem to try that hard. The 30-year-old Brazilian feels like a stand-in, like a placeholder. Frankly, it could be anybody shambling into the cage opposite Pettis this weekend.

Dos Anjos’ primary aim, of course, is to change that. For his part, he’s very confident he’ll be taking the belt home to Rio de Janeiro after Saturday’s little pit stop in Dallas.

“Anthony Pettis is a talented fighter, really tough, a champion … but I see holes in his game,” dos Anjos told MMA Fighting.com’s Guilherme Cruz this week. “I won’t say what and give away my strategy, but I do. Don’t get me wrong, Anthony Pettis is really good, and he proved that, but he’s not unbeatable.”

And yeah, he’s right about that.

Perhaps the strangest part of this matchup is that dos Anjos really could win. The guy is a consummate grinder—48 percent of his wins are by decision, UFC official statistics remind us—and it’s impossible to completely count him out of any fight.

Melendez had some early success clinching Pettis against the fence—a strategy Roufus refers to as “wall and stall” in the above video. It’s a good bet dos Anjos will opt for a similar ploy and if Pettis can’t fight his way out or craft an out-of-the-blue stoppage like he did against Melendez, things could get interesting.

UFC fight weeks are always full of hyperbole and half the trick is sorting out the actual storylines from the sales pitch. In this case, however, it’s not so difficult to believe the Countdown pundits when they say dos Anjos could end up giving Pettis the fight of his life.

So far, however, oddsmakers aren’t buying it.

Dos Anjos is going off as more than a 3-1 underdog, according to Odds Shark. As much press as his recent win streak is getting, it’s actually been fairly anonymous. Back-to-back victories over Benson Henderson and Nate Diaz during 2014 were eye opening, but the only other real highlight of his long UFC career was probably a unanimous-decision win over Donald Cerrone in August 2013.

All that adds up to the impression this fight will simply be a steppingstone for Pettis.

Much of the intrigue (and indeed, excitement) surrounding the lightweight division right now involves the young, charismatic champion finally getting on a roll. The early part of Pettis’ UFC career was stymied by injury. When he finally did get healthy and take the title off Henderson via first-round armbar at UFC 164, it felt like the entire weight class had been granted a new lease on life.

Now, we all want to see how high he can fly.

“I think Pettis is the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world, if the kid can stay healthy,” White told CBS Sports Radio host Jim Rome back in December. “This kid is able to do things to people that other people can’t do.”

We want to see Pettis take on the winner of Nurmagomedov vs. Cerrone, at UFC 187 in May. We want to see if he can withstand a round of challenges from up-and-coming contenders like Michael Johnson and Tony Ferguson. There has even been some lip service—on Countdown, among other places—about the possibility of a fight with the winner of the upcoming featherweight title scrap between Conor McGregor and Jose Aldo.

A win by dos Anjos would dash all those hopes. Or at least, it would reset the clock on them. It would probably require a rematch, maybe even third fight with Pettis, and in the meantime the lightweight’s group of arguably more interesting contenders would have nothing to do but carry on picking each other off.

Again, there isn’t anything to dislike about dos Anjos, but there isn’t really that much to sink your teeth into, either. So far, he seems like a bit of a nonentity. A lightweight division where he is the champion would be fine, but it’s not exactly the reality anybody is looking forward to seeing.

All that makes Saturday’s dos Anjos vs. Pettis meeting the most dangerous kind of title fight—the kind where we really only want one guy to win.

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5 Reasons to Watch UFC 185

The best lightweight fighter on the planet only fought once in 2014. It lasted six minutes, 53 seconds.
Rightfully so, the world wants more of Anthony Pettis as he takes another step in his journey toward becoming the best lightweight in the history of…

The best lightweight fighter on the planet only fought once in 2014. It lasted six minutes, 53 seconds.

Rightfully so, the world wants more of Anthony Pettis as he takes another step in his journey toward becoming the best lightweight in the history of the sport.

Saturday night’s fight may not last as long, but Pettis and No. 1 contender Rafael dos Anjos look to occupy the Octagon for as long as their bodies and minds will allow in the main event of UFC 185 in Dallas.

The former pines to retain his crown. The latter looks to usurp the king.

Luckily for fans and their pocketbooks, Saturday’s UFC 185 isn’t just about the main event—this one’s worth every pretty penny. Read on and click through the slides as we list the five reasons to watch UFC 185.

Begin Slideshow

Rafael dos Anjos: Steady Progress Leads to Championship Opportunity at UFC 185

Fighter finding their groove fall into a special category where all intangible attributes are locked away. 
Alongside other immeasurable qualities like momentum and determination, fighters coming into their own under the bright lights is something…

Fighter finding their groove fall into a special category where all intangible attributes are locked away. 

Alongside other immeasurable qualities like momentum and determination, fighters coming into their own under the bright lights is something that happens, but it becomes difficult to gauge in the statistical realm. Yet, the aforementioned elements are directly tied to confidence, and when competitors’ confidence in their talents falls in line with the actual skills, they posses something special happens.

This chain of events produces victories in mixed martial arts, and those wins push a fighter closer to a championship opportunity. This is the arc that can be statistically measured, and there is no denying the climb Rafael dos Anjos has made to become the No. 1 contender to the UFC lightweight crown. That said, there has been no express lane where “RDA’s” journey through the 155-pound division is concerned.

For more than seven years, the scrappy Brazilian has been competing inside the Octagon, and during that time he’s notched 17 showings in the lightweight fold. Of those bouts, Dos Anjos has found success in 12, but it’s his five most recent fights that have made the difference.

The Rafael Cordeiro-trained lightweight has squared off with a collection of the best talent in what is arguably the organization’s deepest division over that stretch and has knocked off a collection of contenders and a former champion in the process.

Wins over talented fighters the likes of Benson Henderson, Nate Diaz and Donald Cerrone certainly don’t come easily, but dos Anjos made it look that way inside the cage. Save for a unanimous-decision loss at the hands of undefeated Dagestan-born phenom Khabib Nurmagomedov at UFC on Fox 11 last April, it’s been nearly three years since the seasoned veteran has suffered a setback.

He’s been victorious in eight of his last nine bouts and has pulled off dramatic upsets in the biggest fights over his current run. Nevertheless, those elements were necessary for the King’s MMA representative to find the best of what he has to offer, and dos Anjos will be looking to put everything he has into his bid to derail Anthony Pettis and become the new lightweight champion at UFC 185 in Dallas on March 14.

“This is going to be the perfect moment for me,” dos Anjos told Bleacher Report. “God makes everything in perfect time, and he doesn’t give you anything you can’t handle. This is my time for the title now. I’ve had 17 fights over almost six years, and now it’s my chance. He’s given me this chance, and I’m going to have my hand raised at the end of the fight.

“It’s extra motivation for me to be the underdog. I like it. I’m very happy about that, and there is no pressure coming into this fight. I’m always the underdog, and I go in there and win the fights. This fight is not going to be any different.”

With “Showtime” and the lightweight strap now locked into his cross hairs, dos Anjos will hit the Octagon in Dallas with years of experience and progression at his back. Where he once struggled to adjust to the level of competition upon hitting the sport’s biggest stage back in 2008, over time he’s become a versatile and dangerous fighter with the caliber of gas tank that serves to complement a well-rounded skill set.

There is no doubt the talented young champion will bring his notorious brand of flare and out-of-nowhere brand of danger he always seems to produce, but dos Anjos believes he will be ready.

In his mind, every step taken—both good and bad—has prepared him for what he sees as the crowning moment in his career. The 30-year-old Rio de Janeiro native plans to bring his best to Dallas and is confident he will exit the Octagon with UFC gold strapped around his waist.

“This is going to be a great fight for the fans,” dos Anjos said. “I’m in the best shape of my life, and I’ve been improving more and more with every fight. I was in good shape when I fought Ben Henderson, then I showed up in even better shape against [Nate] Diaz. I will be in even better shape for this fight. My goal is to always be improving my skills. This is going to be crazy and a good fight for the fans.

“I can’t wait to get in there and prove people wrong. I’m going to go in there and show everyone they picked against the wrong guy.”

 

Duane Finley is a Featured Columnist for Bleacher Report. All quotes are obtained firsthand unless noted otherwise.

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Anthony Pettis Will Meet Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 185


(Photo via Getty)

Anthony Pettis will defend his lightweight title against Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 185 in March.

Twitter personality Front Row Brian was first to break the news, not Ariel Helwani and Fox like some might say.


(Photo via Getty)

Anthony Pettis will defend his lightweight title against Rafael dos Anjos at UFC 185 in March.

Twitter personality Front Row Brian was first to break the news, not Ariel Helwani and Fox like some might say.

Pettis last fought at UFC 181 in December, thrashing Gilbert Melendez and submitting him in the second round with a guillotine choke.

Dos Anjos, too, is coming off a hot victory. He dominated Nate Diaz at UFC on FOX 13. Prior to that, he knocked out former lightweight champ Benson Henderson at UFC Fight Night 49.

While we were hoping for Pettis vs. Khabib Nurmagomedov, Pettis vs. dos Anjos isn’t a terrible booking decision either. We’re looking forward to this one.

UFC 182: Can Donald Cerrone Leapfrog Rafael dos Anjos with Big Win?

In the co-main event of UFC 182 on Saturday night, Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone will be looking for his sixth straight victory when he takes on undefeated lightweight contender Myles Jury. Jury is 15-0 in MMA, and if Cowboy can hand him his firs…

In the co-main event of UFC 182 on Saturday night, Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone will be looking for his sixth straight victory when he takes on undefeated lightweight contender Myles Jury. Jury is 15-0 in MMA, and if Cowboy can hand him his first loss, he could possibly leapfrog Rafael dos Anjos for the next UFC lightweight title shot.

Dos Anjos earned his spot as the No. 1-ranked lightweight contender by winning in eight of his last nine UFC outings, losing only to Khabib Nurmagomedov by decision in that stretch. He put a three-round hurting on Nate Diaz in his most recent fight, causing UFC president Dana White to say that he’s likely next in line for the title, per Tristen Critchfield of Sherdog.

With lightweight champion Anthony Pettis coming out of his UFC 181 title defense against Gilbert Melendez with no serious injuries to speak of, he should be ready to face the next challenger some time in the first half of 2015.

Cerrone has said in the past that he wants to stay active inside the Octagon, per John Morgan of MMA Junkieand his schedule has proven that, so he won’t sit out waiting for a title shot. He even took to Twitter after his last fight to express his discontent that Jury wouldn’t be ready to fight a month sooner.

 

He’s taken on the best available competition that UFC matchmaker Joe Silva could plug into his busy fighting schedule, and he has crammed 15 UFC fights into his four-year tenure after coming over from the WEC in 2011.

Dos Anjos is currently ahead of Cerrone in the title hunt, partially because he holds a unanimous-decision victory over Cowboy from August 2013. Cerrone bounced back from that with five straight victories, four of which earned him post-fight bonus awards. Dos Anjos has gone 3-1 since that fight, with his first-round knockout of former champion Benson Henderson being his most impressive performance.

Even though dos Anjos has beaten Cerrone already and has not fought the current champion yet, which is something that Cerrone admittedly can’t say anything about, Cowboy should get the title shot if he beats Jury.

If you look at what both Cerrone and dos Anjos have done inside the Octagon over the past two years, Cerrone’s resume starts to look a little better. Four fights in 2013, four more in 2014 and a big fight on the first show of the new year makes Cerrone one of the most active lightweights in the UFC. Conversely, dos Anjos has six fights in the same stretch.

It isn’t just the quantity of fights that makes the case for Cerrone, but also the quality of his wins. His strength of schedule puts Cerrone in a class of his own. He’s got two TKO wins over Jim Miller, both of which occurred within seconds of each other.

He ripped through Edson Barboza in less than one round and didn’t bat an eye at welcoming Eddie Alvarez to the UFC. Dos Anjos’ victories over Diaz and Henderson were very impressive and significant, but Cerrone’s have been equally dominant.

Part of the reason that Cerrone wanted to face Jury is because after a dominant decision victory over Diego Sanchez, Jury told Joe Rogan he was “surprised by how easy it was” to defeat the storied Sanchez, per Dana Becker of FightLine.com.

It may have come off as cocky to Cerrone, but it wasn’t just boasting. Jury did make it look easy to beat Diego Sanchez that night, although Sanchez did offer up food poisoning as an excuse for being so beatable.

Jury followed that one up by storming through Takanori Gomi with a first-round TKO. He’s somewhat quietly racked up six wins in the UFC lightweight division, but his most recent wins have made some noise and earned him his No. 8 UFC.com ranking, as well as landing him in a fight with Cowboy.

A win for Jury would be his biggest yet, and a win for Cerrone would put him on a six-fight winning streak. If Cerrone comes out on top at UFC 182, his case for the next title shot is complete.

Cerrone has fought more often and won more often overall over the past two years in the UFC than dos Anjos. If he kicks off 2015 with a victory over Jury, the UFC should plug Anthony Pettis into the busy schedule of Donald Cerrone.

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