Francisco Rivera Looking For a Knockout at UFC 201

Francisco Rivera spoke with MMAjunkie about his fight with Erik Perez at UFC 201 and more. Some highlights are below:

On being wrongly announced as Urijah Faber’s opponent for UFC 203: “Even FS1 announced it and had my picture up and had highlights of our last fight. They were talking about the eye poke and everything. I was getting a lot of messages and people sending me the video. It was pretty funny.”

On a possible fight with Faber: “I tried to make it happen again. It didn’t work out. So if it happens, it happens. But I doubt he wants to fight me again, so I doubt the UFC wants to let us fight again. We’re past that now. But if we ever come across each other again, I definitely would like to fight him again and finish the last two rounds.”

On his loss to Brad Pickett: “I’m definitely going to go back to trying to knock guys out every time I fight them. Sometimes, I forget I have that power and I should stick to it instead of going in there and pacing myself and just trying to get the win and thinking too much.”

On changing his training: “I’m trying to make sure I win every round of the fight through the whole fight in case it goes to decision. As I’m getting older, I need to make sure I’m taking care of my body. I’ve had a lot of injuries in a couple of training camps from different types of training. So I’ve cut down on different things and changed my strength and conditioning.”

On wanting to finish the fight: “This fight, I’m just going to fight my fight and do what I do best and look for the knockout. The only thing Erik can do is take me down and wrestle, but he’s definitely going to get tired of trying, and then it’s going to be on from there.”