Luiz Gustavo earned a shot at the RIZIN lightweight title after a vicious knockout over Taisei Sakuraba in March, and he wishes the son of legendary Japanese star Kazushi Sakuraba wasn’t that hurt from his strikes.
“Killer” Gustavo, who challenges Ilkhom Nazimov for the RIZIN lightweight belt this Sunday in Kobe, Japan, told MMA Fighting he felt bad when he learned that he fractured Sakuraba’s son jaw with his second-round knockout.
“We want to win no matter what, but not in a way that seriously harms the other guy,” Gustavo said. “Of course losing already hurts, but I mean injuries, like someone needing jaw surgery. We don’t want that for anyone. We want to win and only hurt the guy the minimum necessary [laughs]. We want him to recover quickly and come back as soon as possible because this is our job, and we can’t afford to stay out of work.”
Gustavo trains under Andre Dida in Curitiba, the longtime coach of former PRIDE champion Wanderlei Silva, and saw RIZIN build a narrative for his clash with Sakuraba’s son off the rivalry between “The Axe Murderer” and “The Gracie Killer”. In the end, much like in the 2000’s, Brazil came out victorious.
“Japan doesn’t really have rankings,” Gustavo said. “They usually go with the guy who sells the fight and puts on good performances. All my fights are wars, there’s always a knockout, never a boring fight. That last fight was really good, and because of the names involved, Sakuraba and Wanderlei, it sold really well. It got a lot of attention. And the way the knockout happened, the way the fight played out, gave me credibility to fight for the belt.”
The hype around that finish awarded Gustavo a shot at the RIZIN belt, his second attempt to winning gold less than two years after challenging Roberto Satoshi. Nazimov, who now holds the title, dethroned Satoshi in just 13 seconds this past December, even quicker than Satoshi’s 21-second win over Gustavo.
“I deserve the belt,” Gustavo said. “I’ve been in this promotion for a long time and I’ve had a lot of fights to earn this title shot. Unfortunately, I lost the first one, but I earned another opportunity and I deserve it. I’m definitely bringing this belt to Brazil. Ever since I stepped into that promotion I said I was going to be champion, and now the time has come.”
“Everybody watched PRIDE and dreamed of having that picture on the wall at home, being able to say they fought in Japan,” he continued. “That’s where it all started. I used to watch Wanderlei fighting in PRIDE when I was 9 and say, ‘One day I want to fight there.’ I’ve been there for eight years now, and the Japanese fans are different from everyone else. The energy there is incredible. This is a dream coming true, especially now that I’m going to win this belt.”
Gustavo said that “if two guys fight 100 times there’ll be 100 different results,” so he won’t let “MMA math” take away any confidence ahead of his shot against the man who beat his nemesis.
“Anything can happen in there,” Gustavo said. “Unfortunately Satoshi lost quickly and couldn’t really show his game, just like I lost quickly to Satoshi and couldn’t show mine either. That’s the magic of MMA. Anything can happen. It’s a great matchup for me. I’m a striker, he’s also a striker, so I’m sure it’s going to be a great fight. It’ll be a really good fight as long as he doesn’t try to hold onto me, right? Usually these guys are strikers, but when they fight me they want to take me down and just hold me there. But if he really wants to strike, then it’s going to be an amazing fight.”
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