Caio Borralho was victorious in his UFC debut, but he left with a sour taste in his mouth after an unintentional illegal knee forced a technical decision against Gadzhi Omargadzhiev.
Three months later, Borralho is once again co-headlining a UFC card and wants a definitive victory against Armen Petrosyan on Saturday at UFC Vegas 58.
Borralho is convinced Omargadzhiev was “acting” at UFC Vegas 51, but he added he still “dominated the entire fight against a high-level fighter and made it look like he didn’t belong in there with me.”
“In a way, I’m still a bit bothered about it,” Borralho said on this week’s episode of MMA Fighting podcast Trocacao Franca. “And I want to show [UFC President] Dana White I can finish a fight, that I won’t just do all the right things and blow it in the end, you know? He needs to know that I’m the right man [at Dana White’s Contender Series], and that the company will be able to make lots of money .”
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Petrosyan is 2-0 inside the octagon with a DWCS knockout over Kaloyan Kolev following by a close split decision against former LFA champion Gregory Rodrigues this past February. Borralho, however, sees him as the perfect matchup.
“He is very monodimensional,” Borralho stated. “He only has kickboxing. Because he is very limited, he will not shoot for takedowns and he won’t do jiu jitsu. He will try to stay on his feet all the time, because he is so one-dimensional. You all know that I am a black belt of jiujitsu and have seen what it took to become a world champion in sambo jiu-jitsu. I dominated him on the ground, and I have that card up my sleeve to get him on the ground and try to submit him even though he moves well on the feet.
“But the truth is that I want to prove to him I can strike enough to frustrate him and show him where he cannot beat me. It won’t be easy, because I am just as skilled as his. This is the main point of this fight. Similar to the Gadzhi fight. He took me down early and thought he would stay on top and maul me, but I swept him right away and saw frustration in his eyes. I wanna see that same frustration in Armen[’s eyes] when we trade before I take him to the ground and maybe even submit him.”
Borralho said he wasn’t in perfect condition going into his UFC debut after a lower back injury required a 15-day layoff less than a month before the fight. “The Natural” even informed his manager he wanted to pull out, but luckily his agent hadn’t notified the company before he changed his mind the next day.
The Brazilian middleweight is asking for a stoppage at 100% now.
” I won, but was not convincing in my Contender fight so the contract didn’t go through,” Borralho stated. “The second [DWCS] fight, I wanted to do things the right way and get the KO and the contract, and I did that. The same thing happened in my UFC debut, but that [illegal] knee in the end left that weird taste. Now, I have the opportunity to show I can finish fights. I expect to land a good hand on the feet, he has some holes there, and his ground game is zero. I will also explore this .”
Borralho believes Saturday will be his coronation. He knows how to get it done.
“There are two ways I end this fight, and I see it very clearly,” he said. “Last time, I said I was going to finish the fight with a knee, but I didn’t think it would be like that [laughs]. I see this one ending with a right hand counter. I see him leaving plenty of room over his left shoulder so that my right hand can enter more easily. I also see myself taking his back early and submitting.”
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