Tagir
Ulanbekov claims his fighting spirit sets him apart from
everyone Alexandre
Pantoja has ever faced.
Ulanbekov handed Clayton
Carpenter his first pro loss via unanimous decision victory in
the card opener at UFC 311
on Saturday. Likely to enter the Top 10 of the
UFC rankings with his win over Carpenter, Ulanbekov called for
a title shot against Pantoja in his post-fight interview. Pantoja
has walked through almost the entire flyweight division during his
championship reign. Ulanbekov belongs to a long line of special
athletes trained in the mountains of Dagestan by Khabib
Nurmagomedov’s father, Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov. Ulanbekov
believes it is the tutelage of Abdulmanap that has gifted them with
a spirit that sets them apart from others. And according to the
33-year-old, it is this spirit that will give him the edge over
Pantoja.
“I have nothing. All I have is a heart of a champion. And I’m gonna
win it with my fighting spirit,” Ulanbekov said at his post-fight press conference. “He might have
fought guys like me, he might have seen everything. I might not be
better in some departments than he is. But what I have that he
doesn’t have is a fighting spirit. The kind of fighting spirit that
you can’t learn. This is the kind of training that our legendary
coach, Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov, has given us. He made us harder in
places – like people wouldn’t even stop there for a night and we
had to work and train in those conditions. So the kind of spirit
that we have inside is not beaten by anybody. So I’m gonna come out
there and just on my fighting spirit, I can win the
championship.”
Ulanbekov is 5-1 in the UFC and was coming off back-to-back
submission wins before decisioning Carpenter. Meanwhile, Pantoja is
riding a seven-fight winning streak that includes four title wins.