Some Ultimate Fighter participants struggle with multiple fights, and weight cuts, in quick succession, not to mention being isolated from friends and family. Not TUF 32 middleweight finalist Robert Valentin, however.
“Robzilla,” who returns to action against Torrez Finney at UFC Vegas 105 this Saturday, actually had the time of his life on the show, despite the hurdles that have left other fighters struggling.
“To be honest if you say it like this, it sounds awful, but for me it wasn’t hard. Actually when people ask me, until today, I say it was the best time of my life. I enjoyed every single day,” Valentin (10-4) told Cageside Press in a recent exclusive interview. “The hardest part was maybe that I had to leave again. Because I would get so comfortable in that house, I was really in my happy place— only having to focus on training and fighting and no distractions, no other B.S. around you. I have to really say for some people it was a prison, for me it was a temple. I really enjoyed it.”
Having been through the show all the way to the finale, falling just short of winning the show, Valentin has technically competed in the UFC once already. Still, it’s UFC Vegas 105 that he sees as his debut. “This fight is my debut, because the last fight was still kind of feeling like The Ultimate Fighter. We were wearing The Ultimate Fighter shorts, Ultimate Fighter gloves. Even though everything else was on the UFC card, I feel like this is my real debut for the UFC now.”
The feeling coming into this Saturday “definitely feels different,” Valentin added. “And I have to say, I think in the last fight I let the pressure take over me. For this fight, the motto for the fight camp was ‘remember your past self would have died to be here, so enjoy it.’ It’s an amazing opportunity and an amazing experience, and my younger self would have done anything to be in this moment here. I love to fight, I love to be in there, so I tried to make it about that again, and go out there and enjoy myself and not let this pressure take over.”
Torrez Finney, the man Valentin faces at the Apex on Saturday, was not unknown to him prior to the match-up being booked. He’d seen Finney during his Contender Series appearances, with the American appearing on the show three times before the promotion signed him.
“I think it’s a great match-up. I kind of see it as an opportunity the UFC provides for the both of us. If you look at the others guys coming off The Ultimate Fighter, they get fights that are I would say a little bit more meaningless. This match-up, I feel like it’s a big opportunity because he has something to his name, me also obviously a little bit,” stated Valentin. “I made kind of an impact on the show. So we’re bringing this fanbase and we’re bringing just a tiny little bit of name in this game to this match-up.”
Another part of that opportunity: the chance to become the first man to beat Finney, who has a 10-0 record as a pro to date.
A glance at MMA’s record keepers will show that Valentin, who has lived and trained in Thailand the last three years, holds six submission wins, while Finney owns seven KO/TKO finishes. The records don’t tell the whole story, Valentin suggested.
“Sometimes the records speak a complete different language than the actual fight style. Because he’s more of a wrestler, a guy who wants to take it to the ground. Even though I have submissions, it’s mainly because people try to take me down because they didn’t want to stand with me,” he noted. “My background being Judo, I’m a passionate grappler but I love Muay Thai, I love the standup, that’s where I enjoy the fight most. I think it’s more of a wrestler versus striker match-up, even though the record says something else.”
Valentin has no plan to go out and engage in a grappling match come Saturday. “That’s never been my style of fighting. I think it’s a big stylistic match-up between wrestling, and trying to keep it stand-up.”
Watch our full interview with UFC Vegas 105 middleweight Robert Valentin above, where he talks more about the fight, his time on TUF, Alexa Grasso‘s impact on him, and the “problem child” that is Swiss MMA.
