Las Vegas, NV – Long layoffs can derail a fighter’s career if they aren’t smart about their comeback but 11-months after his last bout UFC featherweight Sodiq Yusuff took no easy fight when he faced UFC staple Alex Caceres at UFC Vegas 50 on Saturday night.
Yusuff (12-2) defeated Caceres via unanimous decision in their main card bout.
“I can’t complain. I’m really happy to get that mat time in, and like you said it’s a victory. I was just here a couple days ago man, I told you guys man, as long as it’s a W I’m happy,” Yusuff told the media at his post-fight scrum.
Yusuff had previously spoken about battling long-haul COVID, which resulted in the long layoff, and possibly leaving fighting altogether. The layoff left him with a bit of cage rust coming into Saturday night.
“Health-wise I felt fine, but it took me a little bit of time to get my feet under me. I feel like that first round was kind of getting back to ‘Oh we do this’ and then from the second round on I was more comfortable. But I got caught in the eye my vision went blurry in the end of the second. At the third it was just gone. Like all this was gone,” Yusuff said pointing to his left eye.
“But it’s all good. I’ve been working on trying to stay focused stay in the zone not just looking for power shots. I think I was able to stay real composed and stick to the game plan in this fight.”
Yusuff employed a leg kick heavy game plan against Caceres that paid off in the later rounds as his opponent clearly favored the lead leg and was unable to use it very well.
“Specially once I started seeing him wobbling and he couldn’t really put much weight on it. I kind of knew it was a done deal. I’m an avid move-spammer. I believe in spamming moves. If you play video games against me I’m going to hit that move about a million times until you make me stop,” said Yusuff.
In his post-fight interview Yusuff mentioned he would like a matchup with Bryce Mitchell next. Mitchell is coming off a big win over Edson Barboza at UFC 272 a week ago.
“I want to test myself against Bryce man. Bryce put up a post a while ago asking for an opponent and I had commented on it that I wanted to be his opponent. He liked it so I thought I was getting a fight with Bryce. And then like a week later then I saw he was fighting Edson so I was like, ‘Ah he just toyed with me’,” Yusuff laughed.
With almost a year away from the cage Yusuff is not looking for much time off before he gets back to action.
“I don’t really need time off. As soon as this eye gets ok I’m going to be right back, back to practicing. Once the eye gets better I’m going to be back sparring again. I don’t really feel anything. My legs are a little shaky but the only thing right now that I feel is my eye.”
Watch the full UFC Vegas 50 post-fight media scrum with Sodiq Yusuff above.
