Mateusz Gamrot recently revealed his plan for beating Charles Oliveira and surprisingly, he plans to actually take him down. It’s definitely an uncommon gameplan for facing one of the beat grapplers in MMA with the most submission finishes in UFC history, but Gamrot is clearly confident in his ability on the ground. He deserves to feel that way too, as he’s a two-time ADCC Trials winner in his own right. It would make a pretty big statement if Gamrot can beat Oliveira at his own game and given that Oliveira has been at the top of the lightweight division for several years, it might even bring him close to a title-shot.
The opportunity only came up thanks to a twist of fate too, as Gamrot was brought in to replace an injured Rafael Fiziev against Oliveira at UFC Rio. He’s been campaigning for the fight for quite some time and he wasn’t going to let a short training camp put him off taking it. He almost didn’t get the chance though, as Oliveira turned down the idea of fighting him publicly. Gamrot actually spoke about this in a recent interview:
“For me, this was a little bit surprise because I saw his interview in Portuguese, like he knows my name, he respects me. Of course, I respect him a lot too. But he has camp prepared for different style, versus striker guy, and he is not ready for my style. For me, this was a little bit funny because he’s the lion, the most submissions in the UFC history. He submits almost everybody. How can be scared like a grappler guy? I am a grappler, I want to take down everybody in my fight, so this is going to be the same with Charles. We step in the cage, but I want to take him down and want to scramble with him in the ground.”
He also explained that Oliveira’s desire to grapple is what will make the fight entertaining:
“My previous opponent always tried to stand up from the ground, like ground was fire for my previous opponent, so I never can show my really performance in the ground. But right now I think Charles wants to fight me on the ground, in the guard, he wants to try to submit me, maybe choke me, maybe guillotine, maybe take the back. He’s great from this position. I think this time I show my epic performance from the ground, like versus (Arman) Tsarukyan. This was non-stop action, non-stop scramble because Tsarukyan was a wrestler as well and he don’t scare my wrestling. I expect the same against Charles. This is gonna be epic fight in the ground.”
The full interview with Mateusz Gamrot where he talks about his plan to take Charles Oliveira down was uploaded to the official YouTube channel of MMAFighting:
