Mario Bautista made quite a statement with his one-sided victory over Vinicius Oliveira in the UFC Vegas 113 main event.
Following a heartbreaking loss to Umar Nurmagomedov this past October, which stopped his eight-fight win streak, Bautista was immensely proud that the UFC still offered him his first main event in his return to action. He proved the promotion was right to give him that opportunity after he dismantled Oliveira and submitted him with a nasty rear-naked choke in the second round.
But afterwards, Oliveira revealed that he suffered a broken forearm during his camp but decided to push through and still compete but called his decision “a bit reckless.” While the injury may be real, Bautista believes Oliveira is just making excuses for his performance after he was domined and finished inside two rounds.
“That’s all it is to me — it’s excuses,” Bautista told MMA Fighting. “You had the choice. Once that happened, [you could have said] ‘I don’t think I’m ready for this fight, I can’t take this fight, I’m hurt’ or whatever. Once you make that choice, you have to live with the consequences of it and you can’t your word back on ‘oh it’s because of this, this, this.’ You had the choice not to fight.
“You’re on a six fight win streak. You could probably [tell the UFC] ‘hey, can I recover, I really broke my arm’ and show an x-ray. The UFC would probably be cool. He’s not in a position where he’s forced to take a fight. For me, it’s just excuses. Even if he was fine, I think it would have went the same way. Maybe he would have lasted a round longer, who knows. But in my mind, it would have went the same way.”
Oliveira also documented a rough weight cut with the Brazilian addressing those concerns before the fight happened. He stated that he would likely have to cut around 50 pounds to get down to the bantamweight limit and later called it “the worst weight cut of my career” because he wasn’t able to train properly with the arm injury.
Once again, Bautista is calling foul because weight cutting is just part of the job and he questions Oliveira’s discipline if he really had to shed that many pounds before setting foot on the scale.
“That weight cut — to me when you’re saying ‘oh I cut from this much weight’ and you’re trying to boast about it or something or make it seem like it’s an advantage to me, it’s not,” Bautista said. “It just shows you’re not professional, especially between camps. You’re just out there eating food and just getting that big. You’re not maintaining yourself. That’s just plays into my confidence. He’s not on my level. He’s not like me. He’s not taking care of himself.
“I don’t think it’s good for you to cut that much weight, especially so close to the fight. It made him slow to be honest. When I was in there, I felt like I could see all the things he wanted to do. I could see it a mile away, him loading up shots. He did feel pretty big but he didn’t feel strong. I think that’s bad on his part.”
Throughout his own career, Bautista has fought injured plenty of times but he says the only time he really addresses those issues are when past opponents like Oliveira start making excuses for a loss.
Truth be told hardly anybody goes into a fight at 100-percent health but Bautista feels once you make the decision to compete, then the result is on you no matter what happens.
“I’ve had a few injuries leading into these other fights but I don’t really bring it up,” Bautista said. “I will only bring it up when people bring in the excuses. Like Patchy [Mix] came up with excuses afterwards saying it was a bad weight cut, I forgot what his excuse was and then Vinicius and his excuses.
“If you look at it, they’re kind of similar in their attitudes. They try to intimidate you, trash talking and then at the end of the day, they just can’t pull through. It should say something about when you have that kind of attitude and come out like that. Maybe you’re just hiding something and just compensating for something.”
When it comes to the actual fight at UFC Vegas 113, Bautista couldn’t be much happier with how things played out, especially since it was his first main event.
He was praised for a smart game plan and execution that allowed him to stay away from Oliveira’s explosive strikes before taking the fight to the ground and wrapping up an impressive submission finish.
“It couldn’t have gone any better,” Bautista said. “If anything maybe in the first round but you’ve got to give the fans a little bit of something. Give them a round just to digest it, to get a little story. But it couldn’t have gone any better. The way I was picturing it in my head, it’s either a quick finish like that or it’s a drag out, five-round war. In my mind, either way it was going to be exciting but I’m glad I came out on top with a finish. I had a great performance, a finish, a main event and coming off a loss as well. So I bounced back in a great way.
“We didn’t get too much into the standup. You don’t want to trade with the guy. You want to go always to where their weakest spot is at. Where the water flows the easiest. As far as the wrestling, jiu-jitsu, transitions, pace of the fight, the finish. I give myself probably an A+ for sure.”
It was also the perfect way to recover from a loss.
While it doesn’t erase what happened when he faced Nurmagomedov last year, Bautista feels like he set the tone for what lies ahead in 2026 after taking out a young, hungry contender like Oliveira.
“Especially after that loss, I made some changes and everything and one of the things was let’s touch up on the grappling,” Bautista explained. “Get my sequences in order, my flow. Because that’s what I felt I was missing in that Umar fight. He was a step ahead of me. It showed in this fight.
“As soon as I got him on the ground and that finishing sequence is just a matter of simple steps connected together to make it look like an artform. It looked great. So made the changes, came out on top, it was great.”
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