Caio Borralho wants to prove a point against ‘one-dimensional’ Armen Petrosyan at UFC Vegas 58
Caio Borralho was victorious in his UFC debut, but he left with a sour taste in his mouth after an unintentional illegal knee forced a technical decision against Gadzhi Omargadzhiev.
Three months later, Borralho is once again co-headlining a UFC card and wants a definitive victory against Armen Petrosyan on Saturday at UFC Vegas 58.
Borralho is convinced Omargadzhiev was “acting” at UFC Vegas 51, but he added he still “dominated the entire fight against a high-level fighter and made it look like he didn’t belong in there with me.”
“In a way, I’m still a bit bothered about it,” Borralho said on this week's episode of MMA Fighting podcast Trocação Franca. “And I want to show [UFC President] Dana White I can finish a fight, that I won’t just do all the right things and blow it in the end, you know? I want to show him that he’s signed the right guy [at Dana White’s Contender Series], someone that will make the company a lot of money and make a lot of money, too.”
Petrosyan is 2-0 inside the octagon with a DWCS knockout over Kaloyan Kolev following by a close split decision against former LFA champion Gregory Rodrigues this past February. Borralho, however, sees him as the perfect matchup.
“He’s very one-dimensional,” Borralho said. “He only has kickboxing. He won’t shoot for takedowns, he won’t do jiu-jitsu, he’ll try to get back to his feet the entire time because he’s very one-dimensional. I’m a black belt in jiu-jitsu, and you all saw what I did to a sambo world champion. I dominated him on the ground, and I have that card up my sleeve to get him on the ground and try to submit him even though he moves well on the feet.
“But, the thing is, I really want to show him I have enough striking to frustrate him, show him the only place he could ever beat me and it won’t be that easy because my striking is just as good as his. That’s the key in this fight. Just like that Gadzhi fight. He took me down early and thought he would stay on top and maul me, but I swept him right away and saw frustration in his eyes. I wanna see that same frustration in Armen[’s eyes] when we trade before I take him to the ground and maybe even submit him.”
Borralho said he wasn’t in perfect condition going into his UFC debut after a lower back injury required a 15-day layoff less than a month before the fight. “The Natural” even informed his manager he wanted to pull out, but luckily his agent hadn’t notified the company before he changed his mind the next day.
At 100 percent now, the Brazilian middleweight wants a stoppage.
“I won but did not convince in my first Contender fight, so I didn’t get the contract,” Borralho said. “The second [DWCS] fight, I wanted to do things the right way and get the KO and the contract, and I did that. The same thing happened in my UFC debut, but that [illegal] knee in the end left that weird taste. Now, I have the opportunity to show I can finish fights. I expect to land a good hand on the feet, he has some holes there, and his ground game is zero. I’ll explore that, too.”
Borralho is so convinced that Saturday night will be his coronation that he knows exactly how he’ll get it done.
“There are two ways I end this fight, and I see it very clearly,” he said. “Last time, I said I was going to finish the fight with a knee, but I didn’t think it would be like that [laughs]. I see this one ending with a right hand counter. He leaves plenty of space over his left shoulder, so my right hand can get in easier. I also see myself taking his back early and submitting.”
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