“I worked a lot on strength conditioning, I tried to work a lot with iron,” the Russian heavyweight said at a media day in Las Vegas. “It was just a good period when there are no performances, and you can work on your muscles. I also worked a lot on wrestling. I only had time to work on wrestling, and I just wrestled, several times a week. Therefore, nothing secret – it was just time to work in more detail on the things that I wanted to pull up. It remains only to show it in battle”
“It’s a good fight to test my wrestling skills that I’ve been working on and generally prove myself, perform, earn money, and prepare for new fights. By and large, the name is not very important – the only thing that matters is how I can express myself.
“Naturally, I am set for a good fight, I am ready to go all the way, but in general I have a plan according to which I will dominate in every aspect, and if I dominate, it is quite possible that I will be able to finish the fight earlier. I will try to do everything that my coaches have planned, and we’ll see what will come out of it in the fight. I hope that it will be a great fight for the audience – not too long, but not too short, so that the fans enjoy it, and I can feel my opponent, feel my skills.”
Drago also answered a question about what he thinks of the recent performance of Jon Jones, who returned to the octagon after a three-year hiatus and won the vacant UFC heavyweight championship belt by defeating Cyril Gan in two minutes.
“It was a great fight and Jon Jones made good use of Cyril Gun’s mistakes. It was interesting to see Jones at heavyweight, but we haven’t seen a lot of stuff from him yet. We saw that he knows how to dominate, take the center, used the moment well to enter the fight, catching the opponent on the first mistake, but it is interesting to see how Jones will feel at a long distance with opponents who will resist better in the fight.
“Of course, in general, the fight made an impression on me – I thought it would last longer. It was cool. It’s interesting to see Jones at heavyweight and I can say it will freshen up our division. Now everyone is talking about it, and it’s good”
Recall that the heavyweight fight between Alexander Volkov and Alexander Romanov will be the second most important event of the UFC Fight Night 221 tournament, which will be held on March 11 in Las Vegas.