Las Vegas, NV — China’s Li Jingliang welcomes Tony Ferguson back to the welterweight division at UFC 279.
For Jingliang (19-7), it’s a chance to build on a recent win, one that saw him bounce back from a crushing defeat at the hands of UFC 279 headliner Khamzat Chiamev. The win, a TKO finish, came over Muslim Salikhov back in July.
“This is the sport, this is the game. It’s always, one guys wins and one guy loses,” Jingliang told media outlets including Cageside Press during Wednesday’s UFC 279 media day.
“The most important thing is you need to learn from the loss, the failure,” he continued. “I took lessons from the Khamzat fight, and then I got a huge win from my last fight. But you should always keep calm and carry on, and just keep working and show your capability in the octagon. There’s always a bigger challenge in front of you.”
Being on a card with Chimaev, who made a highlight reel clip out of Jingliang, isn’t all that frustrating for the Chinese fighter. He actually finds losses more important than wins in the sense that, you can learn more from them. And as he later put it, it’s “kill or be killed. That’s the game. It’s the food chain. But it’s always in our life, so it’s very real.”
While many are expecting something of a crazy fight between “The Leech” and Ferguson, Li Jingliang himself isn’t treating this match-up as any different from any other.
“I think no matter whoever is my opponent, I will always try my best in the octagon. To fight for the people who support me — my family, my teammates, my coaches. So I always try to do my best, and I think if we just do our job, an amazing fight will come by itself.”
As for past opponent Chimaev, Jingliang says he’s become friends with his former foe.
“Khamzat is a good guy. Fight is fight, but outside of fight, when I told him we are friends outside of fight, he said yes,” Jingliang revealed. “He also said he wants to go to China, to visit our country and to see if he can participate in an event or something.”
Jingliang, in turn, offered to help him find some good food.
Watch the full UFC 279 media day appearance by Li Jingliang above.
