Cesar Almeida might still be too green to compete with the elite of the UFC, especially those who come from a wrestling background, but he’s doing his best in the gym to close that gap.
“Cesinha” built a long career in kickboxing before fully committing to mixed martial arts in 2021, and it only took him two years to get a contract with the UFC through Dana White’s Contender Series. For his most recent fight, a win over Ihor Potieria, he did his camp alongside UFC champion Alex Pereira, a man he has gone 1-2 against in kickboxing. Now, to battle Abdul Razak Alhassan at UFC Vegas 101 on Jan. 11, he returned home in Las Vegas to train with the likes of Sean Strickland and Chris Curtis.
“I’ve trained with [Nogueira brothers] ’Minotauro’ and ‘Minotouro’, with ‘Jacare’ [Souza], so I’m learning for a long time now,” Almeida told MMA Fighting. “I’m a new guy in MMA, I think I’m the less experienced on the [UFC] roster, but I’ve been learning a lot these past four fights I had since the Contender because now I started to dedicate only to MMA.
“Being with these guys, I get the intensity and energy they have, the willpower. You pick up something from all of them and grow even more. It’s great to be around them because I feel they want me around as well because they see that I have something. They see that I have a future in the UFC. It was great to be part of all those camps because the energy is different. They’re champions. You see how they work and how they deal with adversities in camp, and it motivates you. I’ve learned a lot this past year.”
The flip side of training with many fighters of your weight class, including an occasional training partner in Caio Borralho, is that you might have to face him down the line in the UFC. Almeida said that training together means you all evolve as athletes so “you can’t be selfish,” and competing against a friend is part of the job.
Curtis will share the card Saturday night, taking on Almeida’s former opponent Roman Kopylov, and Strickland is booked to rematch Dricus Du Plessis for the middleweight crown at UFC 312 on Feb. 8.
“He deserves it,” Almeida said of Strickland. “He works so hard. He’s kinda crazy, but he’s very honest, you know? And I see he’s very motivated. Sean never stops training. He became champion and was back in the gym the next day to train, and that’s what makes him a champion. I think he won the first Dricus fight, and I think he’s coming back better this time. I think he gets the belt back.”
Almeida sees his 185-pound clash with Alhassan this weekend at the UFC APEX as a dangerous match-up, especially in the first minutes of every round, but doesn’t expect Alhassan to keep up the same pace for much longer.
“The end of the round is the best option for us to start working and making him miss, make him spend energy and go for the finish,” Almeida said. “It’s a dangerous fight for both and that’s why they booked this fight. They want to see blood [laughs].”
Almeida admits his last victory wasn’t as exciting as he hoped for, and says sometimes you have to prioritize wins over spectacles. That’s not the case against Alhassan, though.
“We’ll have to take risks this time because he’s a knockout artist,” Almeida said. “I’ll go for the same thing, but we have to be ready for everything. The Kopylov fight was a lesson. We didn’t expect him to try takedowns and that caught me by surprise. We’re prepared for everything now, the worst and the best. There’s no easy fights here, but we’re ready.”
