The UFC was a lot different when Allan Nascimento last fought in the octagon.
In January 2023, when “Puro Osso” choked out Carlos Hernandez, Amanda Nunes was still active, Aljamain Sterling and Francis Ngannou were still champions, and Alex Pereira and Jon Jones had yet to change weight classes.
Nascimento finally ends the longest layoff of his UFC career when he enters the cage Saturday to fight Jafel Filho at UFC Vegas 107. He had a lot to overcome these past 868 days.
“Crazy, huh? It’s very complicated, really,” Nascimento told MMA Fighting. “[MMA] is a sport that demands a ton of physical effort. I really had some bumps on the road, some injuries and health issues in some of the fights that were booked, but thank God I’m fine now.”
Following his second straight UFC win, Nascimento was forced out of fights with Tim Elliott and Sumudaerji. After recovering from a knee surgery, he then withdrew from a clash with Filho during fight week when they were initially booked to clash this past August. The Chute Boxe fighter was scheduled to return to the cage in March, but saw his opponent Asu Almabayev get elevated to the main event against Manel Kape.
“MMA is very unpredictable because you don’t work in seasons so it’s hard to periodize things,” Nascimento said. “You have to stay active at all times, always waiting for a date and a fight to be booked, so you’re training for 365 days. But it’s part of the sport. It’s an aggressive competition with sometimes three or four fights a year with 300 days of training. So the odds of injuries and serious stuff happening are a bit higher.”
Despite not having entered the cage for nearly 900 days, the Brazilian flyweight was in the gym most of that time, training and learning, so he promises to deliver a great performance when he’s finally back. To leave his health problems in the past, Nascimento said he started practicing yoga.
“I learned how to better dose the training,” Nascimento said. “I’m out for two and a half years, but I made sure to deal not only with the fight and training, but also start doing yoga. For example. It has helped me a lot. We don’t have to focus only on the fighting aspect of training, but us fighters we have to take care of our minds to be able to follow the plan in there. And yoga has helped me a lot. I think it was a huge asset for me as of late.”
In terms of martial arts abilities, Filho and Nascimento are two submission specialists from two renowned MMA camps in Brazil, Nova União and Chute Boxe, so Nascimento foresees a chess match at the UFC APEX on Saturday night.
“It’s hard to say ‘my [jiu-jitsu] is better’ but I feel better prepared, with my jiu-jitsu better adjusted,” Nascimento said. “I’m a black belt under Master Barbosa so it needs no further explanation on how much this man has taught me and made my jiu-jitsu go from gi competition to MMA, for example. We know it’s different.
“I was able to show that most of the fights in my career. I think it’s going to be a chess match of maybe who makes less mistakes than who fights better, you know. We both know our qualities, our strong points, so I think that’s going down to the details. Jafel is a complete fighter. We know he trades on the feet, he likes that, and has a very polished jiu-jitsu. We both have two areas we can explore, so we’ll see who explores that better on the fight.”
