The last time out for Cody Brundage was not the banner performance he was looking for. After taking a short-notice fight with Sedriques Dumas, Brundage looked to find a finish in every possible opportunity, which wound up being his downfall. Reflecting upon the fight, Brundage recognizes that while his skills may have been there, his execution just simply wasn’t.
“I think the execution for sure needs to be a little bit better and then just not rushing a finish,” Brundage admitted. “Jumping guillotine three times in that fight – nobody know how stupid it was more than me.”
And while he came to that realization on his own, that hasn’t stopped people from telling him that more than once. Whether it be angry trolls online or his own teammates, people have been giving it to him.
“Pretty much everybody,” he said with a laugh. “Pretty much got a good ribbing from everybody. Online it was definitely pretty brutal, but hey if you’re in the spotlight and make mistakes like that, that’s just kind of how it works out for you.”
Brundage takes it all in stride, which you can attribute to his good nature. However, he also points out that while people are knocking him for jumping guillotine over the last couple fights, it did also net him a fat paycheck in the not so distant past.
“I keep hearing about it and part of that is that I jumped guillotine against Rodolfo [Vieira] and lost the fight that way,” Brundage said. “I’ve been chriped a little bit and I’m not saying I don’t deserve it – definitely the guillotine jumping has not worked out in my favor this year, but last year I had a big finish and fifty-thousand dollar bonus for it. Sometimes your success can be your biggest obstacle.”
While that bonus was nice, Brundage says he’s learned his lesson going into his UFC Vegas 79 fight with Jacob Malkoun. Even though he won’t be jumping on the Aussie’s neck, he does think a finish is right there for him.
“I think I’ll put him away in the second or third,” he predicted. “He’s very hittable. He gets rocked in pretty much every single one of his fights… He’s available to be hit and I feel like I’ll find him eventually and I feel like I have the power to put him out.”
You can catch his fight with Malkoun as part of the ESPN+ prelims of UFC Vegas 79. That fight card starts at 4pm EST.
You can hear the entire audio of this interview at 24:03.
