Matheus Nicolau is feeling a mixed bag of emotions ahead of his long awaited return to The Octagon this Saturday night, when he takes on Alex Perez at UFC Vegas 91.
Having not competed since his loss to Brandon Royval in April 2023, Nicolau told that media that as happy he to be returning to the octagon, he is also nervous, having spent so long on the sidelines. He said:
“I am feeling good and excited. I am kind of anxious to fight, to perform, to show everything that I am working and that’s it. I am happy with the opportunity, first main event so, lock and load, ready for Saturday!”
The bout will mark the number 10 ranked Flyweight’s first main event. He is relishing the opportunity to return to winning ways in such a big bout and is delighted to see that Flyweights are getting more and more opportunities to perform in headline contests. He said:
“It’s awesome. You know, like, I feel like gratitude for things happening. Like, things that I was working for is finally happening. And I also really motivated to take the best of this opportunity. And that's it, fight to get back to the winning column, especially in the main event and I think is awesome, not just for my career, but also the flyweight division I always love when I see the flyweight guys doing the headline, the UFC events and then in the next week we have also Pantoja and Erceg headline for the belt and in Rio, which is always a huge event. So I'm really excited with all this that happened in this moment.
The extended amount of time away from the cage for the Brazilian includes two failed bouts against Manel Kape. The first of which, should’ve went down on January 13 2024 but when Kape tipped the scales a whopping 3.5lbs over the limit, the bout was subsequently cancelled.
Clearly keen to see the two face off, the UFC rebooked the match up for this coming weekend but Kape was forced to withdraw due to an injury. Luckily for Nicolau, the UFC rallied quickly and found a replacement in the form of Perez. After getting over the initial of losing the Kape fight once more, Nicolau quickly changed his mindset and focused on the new task at hand.
“Right away when we got the news that Manel was out, you get frustrated. You know, I was thinking about him since last year like we started the preparation of around November December because the fight was the beginning of the January and then we closed the fight against him again.
“So right in the moment you get frustrated, you get worried, oh, is my fight going to get postponed? Is my fight going to get cancelled? They are going to get another opponent who they are going to get me to fight is a ranked guy or not. But at the same day we close the fight against Alex so that was good.
“And right away I changed my mentality I was already focused on Alex and the good thing was, it was like four weeks before the fight. So we have enough time to make all the adjustments on the training, on the strategic part, on the technical part. So it was enough time to make all the adjustments we needed and to be ready to get this victory.”
You can watch hill full media day interview, below:
