This one meant a little bit more to Vicente
Luque.
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After suffering a brain bleed following his loss to Geoff Neal in
August 2022, Luque was sidelined for a year before returning to the
Octagon at
UFC on ESPN 51, where he earned a unanimous decision triumph
against Rafael dos
Anjos in Saturday’s main event at the UFC Apex in Las
Vegas.
“It was like having the most amazing win for me, just because of
everything,” Luque said on the ESPN+ post-fight show. “So many
changes in my life. I moved to Florida, moved my family, a new way
of life and just training and going through the injury. At the
beginning, not knowing if I was ever going to be able to do this
again and then I got cleared. Then going through the training camp,
I’m going to fight a legend like Rafael. It’s a special win.
“I feel blessed. I feel amazing. Now it’s like all the decisions
that were taken and everybody that was around to help me, we did
the right moves and we’re victorious. That’s beautiful.”
Luque, who has finished 13 opponents in UFC competition, adopted a
different approach against dos Anjos. He landed a career best eight
takedowns and racked up 12:01 of control time in a grinding win
over the former lightweight champion. Luque said he felt like the
bigger, stronger fighter in the cage.
“Kamaru [Usman] told me ‘you’re going to be the bigger guy in
there, you’re going to be stronger because you always fought at
170,’” Luque said. “That’s what I felt in there. Once he shot, I
stuffed it, I turned around and I was putting my weight on him and
I could feel he had do a lot of power to move me and I was just
maybe 70 percent controlling him so I could conserve some energy
but still put pressure on him, throw the shots.”
Luque also admitted to feeling some trepidation regarding how his
body might react to a fight following his health scare. Once the
fight got going, those concerns were alleviated.
“There was another side of me that was worried,” Luque said. “Like
before I took those shots, I didn’t know how I was going to be in a
fight. I took those shots and OK, you’re good. That’s why you’re
here, and you’re ready to go.”