When Julian Erosa returns to action at UFC Vegas 47 this weekend, he’ll do so riding something of a high.
“Juicy J” has finally hit his stride in what is his third run in the UFC. There first two, admittedly, didn’t go his way. But in this third stint, Erosa is 3-1 inside the octagon, and coming off an impressive d’arce choke finish of Charles Jourdain — one that Erosa had hoped would be bonus worthy.
“I wish, I really do wish I was able to get 50Gs on that. You do expect these things, you know?” Erosa (26-9) told the Top Turtle Podcast on Cageside Press ahead of Saturday night’s card. “Especially with a d’arce choke, and the way I set it up. It’s a pretty rare submission already in the UFC, let alone the way I kind of set it up as well. And it was such an exciting fight, I figured I would get the bonus, but these things happen, you’ve gotta take them with a grain of salt and just kind of move on to the next one.”
There are no guarantees in life or fighting, and Erosa believes the deck might have been stacked against him winning a bonus last September. “I did think that it was a bit shifted towards the European fighters for getting bonuses, because obviously it was the highly anticipated debut of Paddy Pimblett, and even his teammate, that one girl, she got a bonus as well,” he noted. “I thought me and Jourdain fought a bit more technical than theirs, and exciting, and to finish off with a sub instead of going to a decision. I think our fight was a better Fight of the Night, and I think I had a better performance than Paddy did.”
Instead, Pimblett, a former opponent of Erosa, and fellow Brits Tom Aspinall and Molly McCann all picked up bonuses. “It was to be expected. I knew that the Europeans would have a little bit of a bias towards the bonuses,” reiterated Erosa, especially given the card was supposed to have taken place in London.
Bonus snub aside, Erosa has looked like a new fighter in his third tour of duty with the UFC. That’s something he attributes to patience.
“I really think it’s kind of amounted to just me being patient,” he explained. “Getting in the UFC, you want to push the action, you want to be an exciting fighter. On the regional scene, there was so many times I fought some pretty high level dudes that could have been UFC caliber fights, and I finished these guys in spectacular fashion. I was like ‘man if I could just do that in the UFC, I’ll get bonuses, I’ll move up the rankings’ and this and that. So I think I was trying to force the issue, instead of letting the fight come to me.”
Erosa believes he’s actually at his best in the second half of fights, citing his contests against Sean Woodson and Jourdain as examples. “I can hang with these guys in the beginning rounds, but once the fight goes on and on and on, I wear on guys. And my cardio is something that I hold at the highest of all my skillsets.” In an MMA landscape where “everybody trains everything the same,” from boxing to jiu-jitsu to wrestling, Erosa continued, “the way you can get the edge is by the cardio. Having the durability, having the willingness to fight. There’s so many guys that are so good, but you put them on the big stage, and they crumble. And you wonder why, it’s because they don’t have that willingness to fight.”
Julian Erosa returns at UFC Vegas 47, where he takes on Steven “Ocho” Peterson. The event takes place Saturday, February 5, 2022 at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas, Nevada.
