RDA: I can beat McGregor from Guard

UFC lightweight champion Rafael dos Anjos recently appeared on the must-listen Submission Radio and talked Conor McGregor, Jose Aldo, Khabib Nurmagomedov, ‘Cowboy’ Cerrone, and more.

During the UFC 189 World Tour stop in Los Angeles, McGregor had discussed moving up to lightweight.

“We will take Aldo and we will take dos Anjos, without a problem,” said McGregor. “The featherweights must beg now. They must beg for pardon, beg for forgiveness. If that’s the case, if they apologize and beg, I’ll leave the division. I won’t terrorize them anymore. They can have their division back. They can go back to being on the prelims and I’ll go to the lightweight division.”

“So, guess what Raphael? I’m coming to get you, too.”

RDA was not impressed.

Man I don’t know how this guy thinks that,” said the champion. “He flatters himself too much. I don’t see any way. I can stop the fight with him in my closed guard, I can stop on bottom. Whatever position he wants. There’s no way he can beat me. I don’t see, like any way. He’s a good fighter, but he needs to take care of the featherweight division first. Man, lightweight division is a shark tank, you know? He better stay in featherweight division.

If you talk about Conor McGregor one year ago, nobody knows who’s this. I don’t know who is Conor McGregor one year ago. And he’s going to have a big test now against Aldo, and I think he’s been talking a lot, but he has a big test and I think he should take care of his business against Aldo, which is going to bring him a big problem. And after that if he beats Aldo and if he wants to come to lightweight division, I will be more than happy to welcome him.

Like Aldo’s fight, it would be good for both of us, and to get this guy would be good. If he’s featherweight division champion….if he becomes the champion and I’m a lightweight champion, why not. Let’s make it happen. If UFC want it – and I never pick fights, you know my whole life. So whatever the UFC say, I’m up for.

I think in my opinion he’s selling the fight, but in my opinion he’s crossing the line, you know? He cannot offend his opponent and he does some things that he’s offending Aldo. Like he’s taking advantage because Aldo doesn’t speak English. And while Aldo is trying to say something, like he’s saying a lot of things over it and he thinks he can take advantage of it, but man he can sell the fights. You can use many ways to sell the fights, but don’t be disrespectful, man. Don’t disrespect your opponent, because man he’s a martial artist. You know I learned this. I’m an old school guy. The one thing that I give a lot to Aldo is respect, man. The guy steps in the octagon and he’s a man. You know, he has balls. So you have respect him.

Dos Anjos also discussed Cerrone vs. Nurmagamedov at UFC 187: Jones vs. Johnson on May 23, 2015 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

I think it is a 50-50 percent fight,” said RDA. I’m gonna tell the truth, I fought them both. So I lost to Khabib, but I beat Cerrone. Cerrone is a tough fighter. Man, I don’t know how Khabib is going to deal with him. He’s just coming back from that knee injury. He’s out like almost a year and maybe this can make a difference. But Cerrone, he’s been active and for sure it’s going to make a lot of difference for him. But I think it’s a 50-50 percent fight. It can go either way.

“I don’t want to make any excuses but I had a couple of issues before the Khabib fight. But man, no excuses. He did a great job, he did the perfect strategy. He was able to hold me down and keep the pressure. I wasn’t able to defend his takedown, but man for sure. I’m a different fighter now and at that time I was fighting with a lot of pressure because I was thinking about my title shot and all those things, and I was under pressure, but man for sure the next fight will be different if he beats Cerrone. I think, man it’s going to be a different fight. I’m a complete fighter now. I have extra confidence.

I was training so hard to fight against Rustam Khabilov, who broke his hand two weeks before the fight. And man I was on fire to fight in two weeks, the guy got hurt, and I don’t know. I think it kinda….and then my fight got rescheduled for two months later and I think I over trained a little bit. I almost tore my ear off. My ear got stuck on the cage. I took fourteen stitches behind the ear, I hurt my groin. You know, those kind of things. At the day of the fight I was hundred percent physically, but everything else happened during the camp, and I think it kind of made a difference. And for the fact to be eight months without fighting – because between the Cerrone fight and the Khabib fight it was eight months – I think it made a difference too.

I’m going to do a different strategy. I’m gonna focus for sure on my wrestling, which is his main game. He’s going to try and take me down, I do the same thing because I don’t fear all the ways he can beat me, and he’s going to do that game. The wrestling game against the cage. It’s a pretty tough game. I’m going to make sure my submission attempts are going to be sharp, my wrestling defense sharp, and looking for the knockout, submission. Looking for the finish to clean that loss of my record.