The Rani Yahya fans saw in the cage at UFC Lincoln is the end result of changes the Brazilian made a little over a year ago, that have led to him evolving as a fighter.
Lincoln, NB — Rani Yahya entered UFC Fight Night 135 in Lincoln, Nebraska on a bit of a run, having won two straight. He came out of the UFC Lincoln card with a third victory, and an impressive submission, with a heel-hook win over Luke Sanders. It’s a move he trained for coming into the fight, knowing that Sanders had been submitted by a leg lock before. And it was the culmination of changes he made to his training that he initiated over a year ago.
Now, Yahya told the media following the bout at UFC Lincoln, he’s performing at his best.
“He had a loss [from] a knee bar. It’s kind of weird, he didn’t really resist too much,” Yahya said of his game plan against Sanders. “So we worked a lot on that, at American Top Team, I trained a lot on that with the Jiu-jitsu coach there.”
“As long as I’m on the ground, man, if I’m on top, I feel very good,” he admitted. But he’s not just a ground guy these days. “Striking too. Many people say, I’m a one dimensional fighter, that I only go to the ground. But you tell me, who has the advantage on me in the UFC? It’s even, or I have the advantage. Tonight I had the advantage. I landed a good leg kick, I made him dizzy, I landed a very good punch on him that put him against the fence. So here I am.”
The usually reserved Brazilian called out some big names following his win, mainly the champ, T.J. Dillashaw. Asked what’s changed that he’s now willing to call his shot, Yahya said that “for a long time I wasn’t able to perform at my best. I was performing at 50, 60 percent. More than a year ago, after the last time I lost, I made a few changes.”
Those changes included a move to American Top Team, where he feels he had the “perfect training camp, and now I’m performing at my best, so I have the confidence. I have the confidence now. So I want to go against the best.”
On what ATT brings to the table, well, “everything is different now,” Yahya said. “First of all, it’s an evolving process. I have fun in my training camps now. Before, I used to be my own head coach. I wasn’t as comfortable in Brazil where I was training. Every time I was fighting I over-trained. I used to train three or four times a day, every single day, hard. I wasn’t able to perform. Now, they [ATT] know how to do it. Every day I learn a new thing, new technique, new concept.”
The key, Yahya is now evolving. “I was reborn after I made those changes.”
And while Yahya is open to fighting one of the top Brazilians in the division, such as Raphael Assuncao, “I’m actually focused on these guys — Dillashaw, Garbrandt.”
