Former
Ultimate Fighting Championship champ Charles
Oliveira does not care who stands across the Octagon with him
as long as gold is on the line.
Celebrating a whopping eight million followers on his Instagram
page, Brazil’s Charles
Oliveira is the most popular mixed martial arts fighter from
that country, even surpassing Alex
Pereira’s 6.8 million. The next fight for the jiu-jitsu ace is
bound to be a significant one, if it is entirely up to Oliveira.
“Do Bronxs” spoke to Sherdog on
Wednesday, anxious about his next opponent and hopeful that he
will be vying for a belt of some kind—even if it is of the “BMF”
variety—in that next outing.
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“For me, what makes sense is to fight for the title,” Oliveira
evaluated. “I talked a lot about BMF because Islam
[Makhachev] said that he just wants to return in October, and
October is too much time [out of the cage]. I want to fight [on
International Fight Week in June]. But later, Islam said he wanted
to fight [on that week as well], so I took the focus from the BMF
belt, against [Max]
Holloway, and returned my focus to the lightweight belt.”
The second possibility suggested by the former champion was to
welcome Ilia
Topuria for an interim strap.
“If it’s for a belt, I’m in, it doesn’t matter who is on the other
side. What does not make sense for me is to do one more fight to
fight for the belt next,” the Brazilian noted.
At the conclusion of the UFC 314 co-main event, the victorious
Paddy
Pimblett threw his name in the hat of possible Oliveira
adversaries. “Do Bronxs” could not help himself in addressing the
challenge, although not in the way Pimblett might have wished.
“Paddy is a tough kid,” Oliveira said. “He proved how he is
evolving against [Michael]
Chandler. I understand his desire, but as I said, my focus is
the belt. When I was reaching top 10, I also wanted to face the top
five. That’s part of the game. Pimblett would be a great fight, but
not now.”
If it is a rematch with Makhachev in the cards for Oliveira, the
former champion reiterated that he would not do any special
training against the Russian.
“I just need to be there and make things happen. In the first fight
I just wasn’t there,” the Brazilian admitted.
Recently, Jean Silva
offered in an interview that he was very upset by the lack of
support from the Brazilian fans in his fight with Bryce
Mitchell. If it were up to him, Silva would choose to compete
somewhere other than Brazil in his next encounter. Oliveira
disagreed wholeheartedly.
“Without a shadow of a doubt, if my phone rang and asked me to
fight in a UFC in Brazil, I would love to,” Oliveira remarked.
“It’s been a long time since I fought there, but whenever I have
the opportunity, I ask. I didn’t see Jean’s interview; it could be
related to something he said and the supporters didn’t interpret it
well. But in my case, whenever I lost, I was embraced by Brazilian
cheering. Brazilian cheering is unique. So, I would love to fight
here again.”