tUFC Hall of Famer [autotag]Matt Serra[/autotag] knows a little something about being a massive underdog.
Serra scored one of the biggest upsets in UFC history when he knocked out Georges St-Pierre in the first round to win the welterweight championship in 2007 at UFC 69.
With former Invicta FC champion [autotag]Megan Anderson[/autotag] being heavily underestimated in Saturday’s UFC 259 co-main event vs. the consensus greatest female fighter of all time in dual champ Amanda Nunes, Serra can absolutely relate.
From one huge underdog to another, Serra thinks Anderson should merely block out all the noise. He remembers watching a particular moment in what he dubbed as a mundane fight between Jeff Monson and Tim Sylvia, which he used going into his fight with GSP.
“At the end of the day, it’s a fight,” Serra told MMA Junkie. “The critics, the naysayers, the people that think you’re gonna get destroyed, there’s only one other person locked in there with you, so you could control your own fate. My mentality with Georges in a similar situation, I did not know I was gonna beat him 100 percent, but I know it was a him-or-me scenario for myself. I was gonna say it’s either him or me. It’s either me or him, one of us is going out because that was my school of thought.
“The reason why I really went in with that attitude is I saw Jeff Monson fight Tim Sylvia in the worst main event in UFC history. If you can’t sleep at night, throw in Jeff Monson vs. Tim Sylvia, and that’ll work better than NyQuil. So I remember seeing that, and he was shooting in from across the cage and going to his back, and I’m like, I can actually do that and survive vs. Georges. First of all, it’s disgusting and second of all, I just need one shot at this thing. It’s do or die, you control your own fate, F everybody.”
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Nunes has run through everyone she’s faced en route to capturing both the bantamweight and featherweight titles. She holds first-round knockout wins over former champions Miesha Tate, Ronda Rousey, Cris Cyborg and Holly Holm, and has looked unstoppable as of late. If Anderson is able to dethrone her, it will undoubtedly go down as one of the biggest upsets in UFC history.
UFC 259 takes place Saturday at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas. The main card airs on ESPN+ pay-per-view following prelims on ESPN and early prelims on ESPN+.
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