Mario Bautista earned a lot of praise for giving Umar Nurmagomedov everything he could handle in their UFC 321 scrap but he ultimately came up short on the scorecards.
Despite dropping a decision that night, Bautista showed off that he could hang with the best fighters in the division after engaging in some wild scrambles and grappling exchange, which included hitting a near submission on Nurmagomedov. But in the end, the 32-year-old contender from Arizona still went home with a loss on his record and looking back now, he acknowledges his biggest regret really comes from his preparation leading up to the fight.
“I probably would have just done my camp a little bit more differently. That’s all it is,” Bautista told MMA Fighting. “In the fight, I gave it my best. I tried as hard as I could with how I was training and what not.
“But if I could do it all over again, I would do the camp a little bit differently and hopefully it would be here in the states somewhere. I think it would be more beneficial to me.”
When it comes to specifics, Bautista points directly at his wrestling as a deficiency that plagued him in the fight against Nurmagomedov. While his team trains everything during a camp, he says that there was a belief that Nurmagomedov might focus more on his striking in the fight so Bautista’s team mixed things up a bit more when it came to the game plan.
Once the fight started in Abu Dhabi, Nurmagomedov returned to his grappling roots while hitting 11 out of 14 takedown attempts and racking up over 10 minutes of control time.
“I think I would have just made it more wrestling heavy. Really wrestling heavy,” Bautista said about his training camp. “That’s what I would have done more. I think leading into that fight, we watched a lot of videos and we saw clips of him and Raoni Barcelos, him with [Cory] Sandhagen, he was doing pretty good in the standup there as well. So we went a little bit more that route but as soon as we got in there and started trading with him, we hit him with some knees and pressured him, he just resorted to wrestling. Trial and error.
“We wrestle quite a bit here at the [MMA] Lab. So I tried my best. But I think if I was more wrestling dominant in my camp and focused a little bit more on that, I think it would have been a little bit more different.”
A loss is a loss and fighters are rarely interested in a moral victory but Bautista appreciated the kind words he received about his performance even in defeat.
It didn’t soothe the sting of his eight fight win streak coming to an end or missing out on a potential title shot if he beat Nurmagomedov that night but Bautista was proud that so many people reached out to pay him compliments after UFC 321 ended.
“I was pretty happy with that,” Bautista said. “After the fight, you’re kind of down on yourself like dang, I kind of crapped the bed, that was my shot!
“I feel like I didn’t perform well but then I get back here, I went to the gas station and some random guy said ‘hey I want to let you know you did a good job and you represented us well.’ He said “represented us,” probably talking about the U.S. against Russia. It’s all pretty good. Good feedback from people and very encouraging heading into this next one.”
The next one takes place on Saturday at UFC Vegas 113 when Bautista competes in the main event against Vinicius Oliveira.
While technically a step down in the rankings, Bautista really didn’t mind much because he was so happy that the UFC wanted to put him in a main event despite coming off a loss. Bautista couldn’t say yes fast enough to the offer and he wants to prove the UFC made the right move by putting him in this advantageous position.
Add to that, Bautista knows Oliveira has a lot of hype around him right now as a rising star a 135 pounds so it really is a great chance to get back on track while competing in his first main event.
“He lives by the sword, dies by the sword,” Bautista said about Oliveira. “That kind of style. At this level, you’ve got to be a little bit more technically sound and then especially in three-round fights he can get away with that style. But the longer this fight goes, the more reads I make, I just don’t see it turning out too good for him.
“He throws them from the hip. He tries to win these fights for sure and he’s exciting in his own little way. The plus for me was the main event spot and being a five-round fight. That’s what makes it exciting for me.”
Ideally, Bautista expects to win on Saturday and then jump back into the deep end of the bantamweight division with all sorts of potential matchups awaiting him.
While he knows that he probably won’t cross paths with Nurmagomedov again right away, Bautista hopes that his continued success could eventually lead to a rematch one day in the future and this time he wants five rounds to work.
“From what I hear, I left the fight and they’re like ‘you had that dude huffing and puffing on the mic after the fight,’” Bautista said about his first encounter against Nurmagomedov. “But I’m excited. I really prepared well training for this five-round fight. I think with those two extra rounds against Umar, who knows, maybe it would have been different.
“You get some wins and you stay consistent because that’s what’s happening at the top of the division already,” Bautista said. “These guys kind of hang out there at the very top so you’ll always stay in line for rematches. [Petr] Yan and Sean [O’Malley] and Sean and Merab [Dvalishvili] and Cory Sandhagen and Merab. If you stick around there, eventually you’re going to have to end up rematching these guys. So I could possibly see a later fight with Umar again and I will definitely be ready for that one.”
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