San Diego, CA — Featherweight Nate Landwehr appears extremely focused ahead of his co-main event fight against David Onama at UFC San Diego.
Landwehr (15-4) has been trading wins and losses of late, and will enter the fight off a Performance of the Night submission of L’udovit Klein last year. He kept things simple during Wednesday’s UFC San Diego media day.
“The days are short, the nights are shorter. Co-main event, this is a sold out show,” noted Landwehr. “It’s time to do nothing but fight.”
While some would see Landwehr having fought in front of a crowd — something Onama himself has not yet done in the UFC — as an advantage, Landwehr doesn’t see it that way.
“I don’t think there’s an edge. I think the first time I ever did something cool, it felt natural too. You’ve either got it or you don’t,” said Landwehr. “We’ll see if he has it, he probably has it. It’s going to be a fistfight.”
The pair were matched up once previously; when that fight fell through, the UFC went in a different direction. But as it turned out, Onama was the man to replace Landwehr’s original opponent (set for August 6 initially), Zubaira Tukhugov, who ran into visa troubles.
“It seems like he’s [Onama] the guy they call when they need a replacement. He stepped up, seems like everything came together for what it’s supposed to be,” Landwehr stated. “We weren’t supposed to be on this card, I wasn’t supposed to fight him, now we’re fighting and we’re going to be the co-main event of a sold out show.”
In terms of what Onama offers, “He’s good. He’s big, he’s tall, he’s young, he’s fast,” said Landwehr. “I feel like I’m going to smash his face in. We’re going to see real quick. Got five minutes to start off, we’ll see if we make it to the second five minutes, we’ll see if we make it to the third five minutes.”
Despite the fight being bumped back a week, Landwehr didn’t have any issues adjusting his schedule.
“I think it was a little bit better for me. More training. It’s always easier to go more than it is to go less time,” he told Cageside Press. “It’s nothing. As far as mental-wise, you’ll never find nobody mentally tougher than me.”
Watch the full UFC San Diego media day scrum with Nate Landwehr above. The event takes place this Saturday, August 13, 2022 at the Pechanga Arena in San Diego, California.
