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Ultimate Fighting Championship pioneer and repeat heavyweight
title challenger Pedro Rizzo
weighed in on Jon Jones’
upcoming move to Rizzo’s old division. Speaking to Sherdog on Wednesday night, Rizzo, the leader of the
Brazilian MMA team Usina de Campeos RVT, went to Abu Dhabi, United
Arab Emirates, to corner two of his fighters. Both Douglas
Silva de Andrade and Warlley
Alves competed on
UFC on ESPN 20 with varied results, as Silva de Andrade dropped
a decision while Alves scored a knockout over Mounir
Lazzez that made his coach proud.
“We are glad that Warlley was finally able to recover from a
sequence of injuries and surgeries and show a great performance,”
an elated Rizzo told Sherdog. “[The] first time he showed me that
sequence of three quick [kicks] it was even hard to hold the pads,
and I told him to invest [in] that, and we were happy that it
worked. Warlley is evolving a lot lately, I’m confident that soon
he will be back among the top 10 contenders of welterweight.”
When asked to choose winners in the two most important fights at
UFC 257, the disciple of Marco Ruas made
his bet on Dustin
Poirier and Dan
Hooker.
“I believe Poirier added more techniques on his game since the
first fight with Conor [McGregor], so I see him as favorite this
time, but of course Conor’s left hand can decide the fight in one
blink. Concerning Chandler and Hooker. I see Chandler as a better
overall fighter, but I think Hooker’s distance control will
complicate Chandler’s game plan. In addition, he is making his
debut in UFC, so there is naturally more tenseness. My bet is
Hooker.”
But when the subject turned to his original weight category, “The
Rock” had no doubt to predict that Stipe
Miocic will keep his belt against Francis
Ngannou. Similarly, he expects Miocic will have no problem
beating Jones.
“I think Ngannou will be a pretty tense fight, but Miocic has more
tools to win again,” Rizzo claimed. “About Jones, he always had
problems while facing opponents with long range, like [Dominick]
Reyes and [Alexander] Gustaffson. He is arriving in a division
where everybody has about the same range. The second point is that
in this new division, his opponents have a lot of knockout power,
and he doesn’t. Jones never knocked out anyone. That’s why I see
him going down to light heavyweight division soon.”
