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By: Jamie Penick, MMATorch Editor-in-Chief
"I'm gonna tell the truth, I fought them both. So I lost to Khabib, but I beat Cerrone. Cerrone is a tough fighter. Man, I don't know how Khabib is going to deal with [Cerrone]. He's just coming back from that knee injury. He's [been] out like almost a year and maybe this can make a difference. But Cerrone, he's been active and for sure it's going to make a lot of difference for him. But I think it's a 50-50 percent fight. It can go either way... I'm going to do a different strategy [if I fight Nurmagomedov again]. I'm gonna focus for sure on my wrestling, which is his main game. He's going to try and take me down, I do the same thing because I don't fear all the ways he can beat me, and he's going to do that game. The wrestling game against the cage. It's a pretty tough game. I'm going to make sure my submission attempts are going to be sharp, my wrestling defense sharp, and looking for the knockout, submission. Looking for the finish to clean that loss off my record."
-UFC Champ Rafael dos Anjos talks to Submission Radio about the UFC 187 bout between former foes Khabib Nurmagomedov and Donald Cerrone, as well as how he'd fight Nurmagomedov differently in a rematch.
Penick's Analysis: Either Cerrone or dos Anjos beating Nurmagomedov is going to be quite a task to accomplish. The Dagestani fighter has never been beaten, and there's no clear path to victory against him at the moment. Stopping his takedowns is something that has to be done, but it's a lot easier to say that than to actually stop them. His striking isn't up to his grappling, but he's not bad on the feet, either. Cerrone's got a chance to pull off the upset first, but should he fail, dos Anjos will probably enter his first title defense as the underdog.
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Jamie Penick, editor-in-chief
(mmatorcheditor@gmail.com)
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