Guilherme Pat’s first trip to the octagon ended with a decision victory over previously unbeaten heavyweight Allen Frye Jr. in December. Four months later, “Kong” feels less pressured as he returns under the bright lights of the UFC to battle Thomas Petersen at UFC Vegas 115, which goes down April 4 at the Meta APEX.
Pat, who turns 32 weeks after the fight, told MMA Fighting the main thing he tried to fix on his game ahead of his second UFC appearance was the mental aspect of the game after feeling like the pressure of debuting in the UFC “kind of froze my game.”
“It’s something new, the first time,” Pat said. “Sometimes you get flashes of thoughts you shouldn’t have during a fight. You have to let everything flow there. I think my opponent may have been ‘surprised’ by the power in my hands. And in the end, some things from my opponent caught me off guard.
“The preparation was much more focused on the mental side this time around. Whether we like it or not, there were doubts and questions about the level, about truly belonging on the UFC roster. Now that the debut is out of the way, we go in more confident and approach training with a different mindset. The mentality now is definitely to go out there and deliver a great fight, a great show for you all.”
Pat said he was caught off guard by Frye Jr’s strategy in December. AJ was 6-0 as a professional MMA fighter with a 100 percent knockout rate, so the Brazilian entered the octagon “expecting a striking battle.”
“And then he came forward and pressured me against the fence,” Pat said. “That made me think, ‘This guy has six knockouts and he’s trying to wrestle me like this?’ That thought crossed my mind right when I needed to act, and I feel like that held me back a bit. But in the third round you could already see that if I had really let my hands go, it would’ve been a knockout. But that’s part of the game. I’m sure that this time I’ll go in much more focused on doing what needs to be done without waiting for any reaction from my opponent, just doing my job.”
Victorious in his UFC and now 6-0 in MMA. Pat admits it was “a bit frustrating” to win a decision like that, but “in the end I was satisfied because of everything surrounding that fight.” He had to deal with visa issues that cancelled multiple opportunities on Dana White’s Contender Series, and now had a drama-free camp for UFC Vegas 115.
“A knockout would’ve been the perfect ending, so let’s save that for this next fight,” Pat said of his upcoming bout with Petersen. “We’re prepared to shut down his takedown attempts and work our striking. His past losses are valuable references that show a possible path, maybe a weakness there. We’re identifying his weaknesses. Those knockouts he suffered are examples for me, a path I’ll look to follow to get my own knockout.”
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