Five fights into his UFC career, lightweight Roosevelt Roberts is 4-1 in the UFC. And after UFC Vegas, and a submission win over Brok Weaver, he knows exactly what he wants next.
Roberts (10-1), who joined the UFC off a 2018 appearance on Dana White’s Contender Series, in the pre-UFC Apex days, is gunning for a fight with Matt Frevola. He called out “The Steamrolla” after his UFC Vegas win, and explained the reasoning behind it while speaking with Cageside Press in a virtual media scrum post-fight.
A fight that happened at the UFC Apex, the new home of the Contender Series. And UFC events as well, for the foreseeable future.
“It’s cool. I like it. The cage was the same size as Contenders,” Roberts told us. “So yeah, it was cool to actually be in a smaller cage, I don’t gotta worry about a lot of moving around. Yeah, I feel good.”
On the Contender Series, athletes fight without any walkout music, similar to walkouts on The Ultimate Fighter. Despite the lack of a crowd, music was back at UFC Vegas over the weekend — not that Roberts noticed.
“To be honest with you, with this walkout man, my heart was pumping and I was ready to go, so I couldn’t hear [it],” he said. “I was just focused and ready to get to it. But I like the fact that it did have music playing. It wasn’t like just like crickets, like everybody just eyes on me, waiting for me to go. So yeah, it was actually a pretty cool experience.”
As for Roberts’ callout of Matt Frevola, the reasoning is simple. “He fought my brother. I didn’t like the outcome. So I need that,” he explained. Not Robert’s literal brother. Rather, teammate Jalin Turner. A fighter, he explained who watched him make it. Roberts watched Turner make it in return.
“I’m in the same weight class. If I if I don’t like something about somebody, I’m gonna say it to them,” he continued. “So I called [Frevola] out and let him know I want to fight. We were supposed to fight and it didn’t happen, but that doesn’t mean I still don’t want to fight. I mean, I still want to fight. Just because it got pushed back. I wanted it to be Matt that I fought tonight. But it wasn’t, it didn’t play out like that. So next one moving forward is Matt Frevola.”
