Wes Schultz’s first shot on Dana White’s Contender Series didn’t go the way he imagined. In a back-and-forth contest with Mansur Abdul-Malik, who is now 3-0-1 in the UFC, Schultz was left heading back to the drawing board. However, as he watched his former opponent in the big show, he found confidence in his success.
“Even going back to like your wrestling days, you don’t want to get beat by someone that gets f*cking beat out of the tournament right away,” Schultz explained. “You don’t cheer for other people in this sport, but still like okay, that’s if you got if I would have got beat by someone that wouldn’t like 0-2 to and got cut I’d be like f*ck. I’d want to go back to school get my master’s or something.”
Perhaps some of that success is why Schultz was so quick to get another call to the Contender Series. It took just over one year for him to get his second shot – this time against Mario Mingaj. The time, the Pura Vida product would come out on top and would do so while hitting a unique submission. His suloev stretch would become the first in Contender Series history and just the third under the Zuffa banner, and it even surprised Schultz.
“I know this works and I’m going to try it because I’m crazy. I use that more for like a sweep just get people back down, but my coaches were like man, you have it f*cking just f*cking put your hips in and I did I f*cking got it which I never submit people with that in the room,” he said. “So that was actually kind of a surprise. I was like, holy f*ck. Did that just happen? Yeah, I probably would have let it go if they didn’t [yell].”
Now he’s ready to take that crafty approach to the UFC Octagon when he meets Damian Pinas in Mexico City. He feels that craft approach might be the difference maker against an impressive opponent.
“I think I’m a little bit more crafty and I go around issues. If I meet resistance doing something, I’m usually not going to try to go through it. I’m just going to go around it. I think he’s more of a kind of plod forward and what you see is what you get, which is fucking scary,” Schultz said. “I think I’m going to have more tools than him, but his tools are going to be fucking maybe a little bigger, little scarier tools.”
You can catch his fight with Pinas as part of the UFC Mexico prelim card. The card kicks off at 5pm EST this Saturday on Paramount+.
