JDS: I hope Miocic beats Werdum

Former UFC heavyweight champion Junior dos Santos recently made his his first appearance on Submission Radio, and discussed all things heavy. The fighter is coming off a win over Ben Rothwell in the main event of UFC Fight Night 86 on April 10, 2016 in Zagreb, Croatia. However, prior to that, he went 2-3, with losses to Cain Velasquez twice, as well as Alistair Overeem.

“I don’t care about what people say too much, but with the results that I had, you know, some negative results with Cain Velasquez and also with Alistair Overeem like pretty recently, and those things and also the injuries that I had all this time, that was really, really bad, man. A very serious, a very bad situation that I was going through. You know, because I love to be Junior Dos Santos. I love to be who I am, you know, to be fighting, to be giving my best all the time, to represent my country – and not just my country, but all the fans around the world that enjoy watching me. So that was really hard for me. I was a little bit sad deep in my heart. Now I think, like I said, I’m putting things in the right place and I’m feeling that I have great potential to be champion again and I will work for that.

“’I’ve never thought about retirement or anything of these kind of things. Because like I said, I really believe in who I am. I knew that some things weren’t going very well for me. You know, I don’t know why – bad energy or something like that. But I also knew that I’m a tough guy. You know, I can do really well doing what I do. So I knew it was a matter of time and I would be back to my winning streak. So now I’m here and I’m looking forward to a new challenge.

UFC heavyweight champion Fabricio Werdum fights Stipe Miocic in the main event of UFC 198 on May 14, 2016 at Arena da Baixada in Curitiba, Brazil. JDS holds wins over both.

Miocic is coming from a great moment,” said dos Santos. “He’s very confident right now. After that loss against me he seems like he’s getting better. And what he did with Andrei Arlovski now was impressive, you know, he went there and knocked him out like this. So it was fast and he’s doing very well and I think he’s got the advantage fighting against Werdum. Because Werdum is a guy that doesn’t take nobody down, you know? He just submits people when people take him down.

“And talking about the stand-up game, I see Miocic being better than him. Of course Werdum fights his fight. Werdum is doing very well in his career right now. But yeah, I think that Miocic has a little advantage in that fight. And I would love to face any one of them, especially for the title (laughs). That would be amazing to be fighting against them again.

“And I hope, I really hope that… like I’m feeling that if Miocic wins it’s better for me. Because man, Werdum all the time, he starts to talk too much and he takes so much time to fight again, you know? And starts to do a lot of things without [fighting], but not like defending his title. So I think if he [Werdum] wins the fight, you know, it’s gonna be good to face him, but I think it’s better for me if Miocic wins.

I would knock [Werdum] out pretty quickly, man. He got better. He’s a better stand-up fighter now. His Jiu-Jitsu is the best in the heavyweight division. There is no doubt about that. But as a striker, he improved a lot, but he’s still a Jiu-Jitsu fighter, man. If I fight him, I’ll knock him out like pretty fast – maybe in the first or second round again.

I was watching sometime his fight against Cain Velasquez and when he became the champion. Man, I can see he’s doing a little better on his stand-up game, but just a little better (laughs). He’s still a Jiu Jitsu fighter. Talking about stand-up striking, I really believe and I’m very confident that I could knock him out again.

About fighting again, I’m not sure right now. I’m just taking care of some things, doing some exams here to check if everything is alright with me. And I wanna fight as soon as possible. Like I told you guys before, I wanna fight three times this year. So I already fought once, and let’s see now what’s gonna happen.