Gregory Rodrigues will have a little more to fight for soon. In fact, he does already. With a baby girl on the way, due in the fall, UFC Austin’s Rodrigues is feeling the added motivation already.
“That’s one more thing to motivate me for this fight. The head changes a little bit. Now, it’s not going to be just my wife and I, it’s one more person. My daughter, one part of myself,” Rodrigues (11-4) told Cageside Press in an exclusive interview ahead of his fight with Julian Marquez. “I will make make sure she’s going to be good, and I need to kill everyone. I kill already, but now I have one more reason to do what I do. And I love what I do of course, but now I have one more reason to do my best, and get the best results.”
“I’m so happy. I’m very happy to see my life improve in all ways. One, first in my career to get in the UFC, now, my wife is pregnant, we moved from California to Florida, building a life here,” Rodrigues added.
“I’m so grateful, it’s going to be one more big step in my life, and I will make sure she’s going to have a champion dad.”
Rodrigues is coming off a loss to Armen Petrosyan, the first defeat for the former LFA middleweight champ inside the octagon.
“I have a lot of respect with Armen, he’s a warrior. It was a very hard fight, I think it’s one of the hardest fights I’ve had in my life,” acknowledged Rodrigues. “In my head, I know I won the fight. The results on the paper, they said not, but in my head I know I won that fight. But I think everything happens for a reason, and I’m growing a lot from that fight.”
With his coaches on the same page, not much has changed for Rodrigues in terms of training ahead of his return. But he does want to take any doubt out of the equation, should things go to the judges again. “We don’t want to give them the chance, to [get] results not like we want.”
“I don’t want doubt. I’m gonna get out of the cage without a doubt, if you win or lose,” Rodrigues continued. “That’s changing in my head. It’s hard for someone to judge a fight. My question is, in this fight, two [judges], they saw the fight in one way, and one guy gave like three rounds for him?”
It’s a little weird, is what it boils down to. But Rodrigues isn’t dwelling on it. “My focus is now, I forget about it. I know what happened, I know I’m very confident I won the fight, and then let’s go to the next one.”
The next one is against “The Cuban Missile Crisis” Marquez, who Rodrigues called “a tough guy.”
“I never expect easy fights, always I want to fight the best. He’s one great challenge for me, in this next bout,” said Rodrigues. “He has some knockouts, submissions. He can fight on top, he has good pressure. But man, let’s see if he’s going to keep this pressure on me. I know who I am, I know my power, I know my ground game, I know my striking game’s better. I think it’s a good match.”
Rodrigues had actually asked matchmaker Mick Maynard for an opponent with more experience with the UFC. He’s got that in Marquez. “Julian’s in the UFC since like 2015 maybe, and he’s fought guys that have good names. He has a name, he’s building his name in the UFC but he didn’t fight [for a while], I think his last fight was last year, I think it’s a year he didn’t fight. I think that’s one— I keep consistently fighting, fighting, fighting so maybe that’s going to be the difference for me. But with everything, he’s a great fighter, I respect him, and both of us are guys who always go forward, and try to finish the fights. So it’s going to be a great fight, definitely.”
Watch our full interview with UFC Austin’s Gregory Rodriguez above. The event takes place this Saturday, June 18, 2022 at the Moody Center in Austin, Texas.
