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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
Last Saturday night at UFC on FX 8, Brazilian fighters kept the home country crowd happy, with all but one of the 13 fights featuring a Brazilian with his hand raised. The sole foreigner to pick up a win was featherweight Nik Lentz, who even more impressively became the only non-Brazilian fighter to come down to Brazil twice and walk away with wins in the UFC.
He did so with a good fight against Hacran Dias, following up on his decision win over Diego Nunes in Sao Paulo in January. That was his third straight win since moving down the 145 lb. field, and he's been finding his stride in the division.
Though Dias pressed back with a strong third round, Lentz had done more than enough through the first two rounds to get the nod, and came out of the fight fairly unscathed. Until the doctors got to him, at least. Lentz's only major issue coming out of Brazil was a cut to his hand suffered as the doctors cut off his hand wraps, an inconvenience he'll need to have addressed back at home this week.
"I got a couple marks on my face, but yeah, the doc butchered my thumb cutting off the hand wraps," Lentz said in an interview with MMAjunkie.com. "I'll probably have to go home and get stitches, but after that, I'll be OK."
Lentz expressed respect for Dias' skillset, but felt he did a lot of the things he set out to do in the fight. He saw room for improvement, as in every bout, but he felt comfortable with his performance overall.
"I'm very happy with how it went, but I definitely could have done a lot of things better, especially with how well I was training and how well the training camp went," Lentz said. "I was expecting it to be a little better, but he's a super-talented fighter. I'll give it to him, man. He hasn't been around that long, but he's going to be ranked pretty high eventually."
Speaking of rankings, Lentz is hoping this third straight win opens the door for a step up for him, as he'd like a fight against someone higher up in the division following three straight under card wins. He'd also like to stick closer to home this time around as well, having trekked to Brazil for each of his last two bouts.
"The higher I'm on the card, the more money I make," Lentz said. "And that's one of the reasons I'm in this sport: to take care of my family... We definitely want me to be fighting top 5 guys [from now on], preferably in the United States. I've been traveling a lot, like to Brazil for my past two fights, so I've put in my dues. I'd like to get back to the States, and I'd like it to be against a name guy."
Penick's Analysis: Lentz is going to be a tough fight for anyone at 145 lbs. He had an uneven run down the stretch at lightweight, but after changing up his training camp and heading down to Florida from Minnesota - along with dropping down to featherweight - he's shown a lot more of his potential. His skill set lends itself well to the featherweight division, because his strength translates much better at 145 lbs., as has been seen in each of these last three fights. He'll compete against any featherweight they put him in against, so getting a solid top ten matchup on a card in the U.S. shouldn't be too much to ask for his next fight.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
STAFF COLUMNISTS: Shawn Ennis - Jason Amadi
Frank Hyden - Rich Hansen
Chris Park - Matt Pelkey
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