Brazil’s Mauricio Ruffy heads into enemy territory for this Saturday’s UFC Paris, where he takes on the hometown fighter in France’s own Benoit Saint-Denis.
The lightweight pairing is a hotly anticipated one, with BSD having faced some of the best at 155lbs. Ruffy (12-1), representing The Fighting Nerds, sees a distinction between the two fighters.
“I see Benoit as a very aggressive guy. Even in the way he speaks, in the way he carries himself, he’s a very intense and aggressive guy,” Ruffy stated during this week’s UFC Paris media day. “And I’m a guy who’s very calculated, and very accurate guy who takes him time to find the right shots.”
“I see a knockout, but I’m very excited and ready to go.”
And that’s the game plan, Ruffy later added, while recognizing that in MMA, things do not always work out as planned.
“MMA is a brutal sport. Those little gloves, if it lands, it can knock somebody out. It’s not always that the best guy wins in MMA, you can’t control everything. But I’m going to go in there and do my best, and you guys know my record, you know that I’m always looking for the knockout. I have 13 knockouts already. So I’m going to go in there and do my best against Benoit and hopefully get the knockout.”
Should he get the win over Saint-Denis, who fought Dustin Poirier and Renato Moicano before their respective title shots, Mauricio Ruffy is aiming for the top five next. In fact, his team selected BSD because of the potential path to a title shot he affords.
“I’ve been visualizing my win a lot over Benoit, and I think after I beat him, I want to go to a top five contender. The last two guys that he fought were lucky enough to fight for the title,” Ruffy noted. After discussing it with his coaches, “we decided that Benoit was the right path to get to the title.”
Watch the full UFC Paris media day appearance by Mauricio Ruffy above.
