Miami — Nikita Krylov, the #8-ranked UFC light heavyweight, returns to action at UFC 314 this Saturday, where he takes on Dominick Reyes at the Kaseya Center in Miami, Florida.
It’s been over a year since Krylov stepped into the octagon, though that’s not entirely of his own accord. Krylov was scheduled to take on Azamat Murzakanov at UFC 309 last November, only for his opponent to pull out days before the fight.
Krylov wanted to keep that date, or at least something close to it, offering to fight at heavyweight if need be, the weight class where he started his UFC career. It just wasn’t in the cards.
“I was actually very eager to fight, so as soon as I found out there was going to be a cancellation I was on top of my manager a whole time. ‘Please give me anybody else, another person,'” Krylov (30-9) told Cageside Press at Wednesday’s UFC 314 media day.
While preferring to fight someone ranked or at least recognizable, “I actually even said that I was going to be able to come out as a heavyweight, so if there was somebody in the heavyweight [division], I was ready to come out and do a heavyweight fight,” he added. “But I wasn’t going to be fighting just anybody from my division, it had to be somebody worthy. So we kept on asking about it.”
Nothing came to pass, not even at UFC 310 or UFC Tampa the following month. “I think there were two other events that were happening that year in December, so I was ready to fight at any those events. I was saying, ‘give me a worthy opponent, I’ll come out both weights.’ Eventually, nobody showed up. Everybody in my division was already taken, so there was nobody to fight.”
While Krylov initially stated he wanted to only fight someone worthy from his weight class, he later clarified that it was the UFC who limited his options.
“I think what I meant was that UFC wasn’t going to offer me just anybody, because I’m one of the tops [top ranked light heavyweights]. So they weren’t going to give me just anybody on the roster. For me though, I was ready for any challenges, and I was ready to fight anybody who was going to throw a challenge my way.”
Earlier on Wednesday, the top 10 205lb’er addressed fans seemingly overlooking him ahead of his fight with ex-title challenger Dominick Reyes.
“The memory that the fans have are only as good as the last fight you had. Unless you fight a lot, most likely people aren’t talking about you, people don’t remember you. But what I’m bringing right now is the mindset I’m going to remind everybody why I was on that streak, why I was so good, and why I was talked about before I stopped fighting because of this layoff.”
Watch Nikita Krylov’s full UFC 314 media day appearance above.
