Who doesn’t love themselves a bit of Diego Sanchez?
The only remaining contestant from TUF 1 still competing in the UFC is looking for a career revival by dropping to featherweight for the first time in his career.
The Dream will face the stiff test of Ricardo Lamas in his 145 lb debut in November and, speaking to The MMA Hour’s Ariel Helwani, Sanchez revealed the reason behind his decision to drop to featherweight.
“I see all these long, strong wrestlers, like Luke Rockhold, Jon Jones — they’re wrestlers but they’re long,” Sanchez said. “They have long distance, long reach. And for me, my whole career — I started at 185, I dropped to 170, I fought most of my career at 170 — even at 155, I feel like I just have always been the smaller guy. A smaller, shorter guy playing the same gameplan, trying to get inside of the long reach and get people down to the ground.
“And all in all, the real truth is, when I saw Conor McGregor drop down to 145, the guy is my size, if not bigger. Straight up. The guy is my size, if not bigger. And I was like, wow, look at this guy, he’s holding a huge size advantage going into all of his fights. He has the reach. He has the leverage. It just made sense. To be able to see someone my size do it and do it effectively and do it correctly, it just made sense for me to do it.”
Sanchez has long sought a fight with The Notorious but with both fights currently at very different stages in his career, it’s almost impossible to see the realisation of all the grudge match but we look forward to seeing Sanchez competing in his fourth different weight class in the UFC.
