Winning always matters most but Henry Cejudo knows that’s not the only thing that leads to bigger and better opportunities in the UFC.
On Saturday at UFC Seattle, the former two-division champion headlines the card with a fight against Song Yadong but even after back-to-back losses to Aljamain Sterling and Merab Dvalishvili, Cejudo doesn’t doubt for a second that he could potentially get back into title contention with a single win and then making the most of his time during the post-fight interview. It’s a formula that helped rocket Conor McGregor to superstardom and Cejudo believes more fighters need to take full advantage of those precious few moments with a captive audience hanging off their every word.
“It all comes down to performance and then what you say on the mic,” Cejudo told MMA Fighting. “I think a lot of people lose a lot of opportunity because they don’t know how to use that damn mic. It’s amazing to me. They’ll say it a few days later. No, you’ve got to go when the iron’s hot, when everybody’s watching you.
“I think there’s a lot to it. The cool thing about MMA is you can skip the line if you know how to do it. If you know how to do it correctly.”
Cejudo looks no further than former UFC title challenger Chael Sonnen, who transformed himself from a good but somewhat forgettable middleweight contender into one of the biggest names in the sport because he learned how to sell himself.
The ability to hype up a potential fight put Sonnen in a position to succeed throughout his career and Cejudo definitely took lessons from that.
“Look at Uncle Chael,” Cejudo said. “He brought himself into that Jon Jones fight and he got a big payday because of it. He sold it, he was able to create this narrative that was fake and then it became real.”
While there’s a long list of fighters who aren’t using that microphone time to their advantage, Cejudo points to one specific incident more recently that left him confounded.
“People really drop it. Like [Caio] Borralho,” Cejudo said about the middleweight contender. “Borralho should have got on that mic [after his last fight] and called out Israel Adesanya and I was hoping that he would.
“But these people, everybody wants to be the nice guy. He’s going to [end up putting] more miles on his body rather than [saying] this is how I’m going to go. That’s just one example that really comes to mind. I think he’ll learn from that but of course, it’s a lot.”
As far as his own plans for UFC Seattle, Cejudo understands that winning the fight and beating Song still takes the highest priority but he’s got a few ideas for what he’ll say afterwards if everything goes well.
Cejudo might even take aim at Song before the fight just to drum up a little extra interest.
“I’m still coming up with some rhymes,” Cejudo said. “Maybe I’ll do some Chinese rap. I don’t know. We’ll see. I’m still thinking. Song ain’t that long. That’s all I’ve got to say as of right now.”
