Jean Silva picks Movsar Evloev to dethrone Alexander Volkanovski, believes he’ll get title shot at Noche UFC
SAO PAULO — Jean Silva is confident he will earn a shot at the UFC featherweight title with a win over short-notice replacement Jose Delgado in the main event of Noche UFC this Saturday in Glendale, Ariz.
Silva originally agreed to face off with former interim champion Yair Rodriguez in a five-round clash on Sept. 12, but “El Pantera” was forced out of the card with an injury. Despite the switch, “Lord” said that doesn’t alter the stakes for his future in the company.
“Is there someone else to fight instead of me?” Silva told MMA Fighting. “Then I’m next.”
Alexander Volkanovski puts the 145-pound title on the line in the main event of UFC 333 on Oct. 24, when he battles undefeated contender Movsar Evloev in Abu Dhabi, and Silva sees the belt changing hands that night.
“I think Evloev wins,” Silva said. “It’ll be me and him. But if Evloev pulls out, then it’s me and Volkanovski [at UFC 333]. It doesn’t matter. I’m next.”
But even though he picks Evloev to win in October, he calls Volkanovski a tougher match-up for him style-wise.
“He’s not 100 percent in everything, but what he does is absurd,” Silva said. “He sticks to a strategy, sticks to the game plan. He knows how to fight, he knows what needs to be done, and he has knockout power. Evloev doesn’t have knockout power. The first hand that gets in, he’s going down.”
Silva needs a victory in Arizona to consolidate his position as the next man in line for the featherweight belt, and said he wasn’t necessarily surprised when the UFC called to inform Rodriguez had to pull out of the Mexican-themed card.
“I’m never confident that anyone is going to fight me,” Silva said. “Honestly, that doesn’t even exist in my head. When a guy gets there and starts preparing, what happens? I already thought he might pull out. I thought we would have more time, enough time to make some adjustments, but we didn’t. It happened the way it was supposed to happen. It happened the way he planned it. I hope he didn’t suffer any serious injury.”
The Fighting Nerd talent revealed he pictures himself as a rottweiler when he’s barking at his opponents before fights—and sometimes during or after the matches—but called Delgado a different dog breed, a pinscher.
“I respect every pinscher,” Silva said. “They’re f*cking brave. The difference is, they can’t handle shit.”
“You have to be a real badass to accept this fight on four weeks’ notice,” he continued. “So I think they were already training. I think the UFC itself should have told him to stay ready, because maybe Yair could pull out.”
Delgado stepping in for Rodriguez caused Silva to change his strategy “completely” for Noche UFC, but credits his coaches in Sao Paulo for doing a great job on such short notice.
“We usually have about eight sparring sessions during a camp,” Silva said. “In each sparring session, we test what we’ve been working on during the week and the strategies. But when they changed the opponent, we only had one sparring session. We had four days to study him and everything.
“When we went into that sparring session, I was pretty scared of getting injured because everything was new. And I was also worried about whether my team would really be good enough to scout an opponent in just four days. And, man, my team is A++. I’m really happy to know that my team was able to make all the adjustments that needed to be made.”
