It is the place where he went to his first amateur mixed martial arts event, the place he had his first amateur fight, it is where he became a professional and now rising UFC star Roger Huerta will face the biggest fight of his career in front of his hometown of Minneapolis, Minnesota, when he steps into the octagon against Kenny “Kenflo” Florian on August, 9 for UFC 87: Seek and Destroy.
The 25-year-old Huerta will take part in what many fight fans are expecting to be the best match of 2008, which also happens to be his first fight of the year. After a long fight schedule in 2007 that included 5 amazing fights, Huerta took time to train with some of the best in the sport.
The months of not having to fight allowed him to train with welterweight champion George “Rush” St. Pierre from whom he learned a lot of new fighting strategies as well as the business side of the sport.
“Going against a guy like that day in, day out, is pretty interesting, it’s grueling and you got to be on top of your game all the time with that guy, he’s an amazing champion and an amazing athlete,” Huerta said in a recent phone interview in which Florian also participated.
Now the two 155 pound Latinos will fight to determine the UFC’s lightweight contender, who will eventually take on the lightweight champion – and a force to be reckoned with – BJ Penn. But they are only concentrating on the task at hand: winning their next fight.
“This fight right now is the most important fight of my life. My career is in the line with it, every time any fighter steps in the octagon, you either move up the ladder or you get bumped down,” Huerta said.
And it is a long climb back up. At 32 years old, Florian, 9-3-0, lost via unanimous decision to Sean Sherk for the vacant lightweight title in 2006 and since has had to rack up 4 wins to get to this point. Huerta has a professional record of 22-1-1 and has won 6 fights in a row in the UFC that have proven to be great battles of endurance that even helped him land the first Sports Illustrated cover dedicated to an MMA athlete. But with all the hype and everything that this fight means to his career, Huerta is cool and confident due to his prolonged training and great cardio conditioning.
“Knowing you can go 100 miles an hour and not slow down and knowing that your opponent eventually is going to slow down, is going to get tired and you’re still going the way you started the beginning of the first minute of the first round, it’s an amazing confidence,” Huerta said.
“This is one of those fights you can’t predict, its thought to see, I think we could find ourselves all over the mat, on the ground the whole time, standing up the whole time,” Florian said, “I really try not to predict those things and prepare. I just try to prepare for everything and make sure that my body, my mind, my techniques, can go as far as this fight needs.”
But should we believe the hype? I can’t recall the last time a lightweight bout was this anticipated. While Florian has faced the more difficult opponents in the past, Huerta is looking to prove himself and is an extremely tough competitor. We’ll just have to wait to see, what these fighters have in store for MMA fans.
This Midwest pay-per-view event is headlined by the Canadian George St. Pierre who defends his welterweight title against Jon Fitch and also features former WWE wrestler Brock Lesnar – also a native of Minneapolis – against Heath “The Texas Crazyhorse” Herring among other fights.
For more information on your favorite MMA fighters in Spanish visit www.ufcespanol.com .
PHOTOS COURTESY OF UFC.
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