Shayilan Nuerdanbieke spent most of his career at lightweight before signing with the UFC. He has been competing at 145lbs inside the octagon and it sounds like making weight is hard work.
After his decision win over Sean Soriano at UFC Vegas 43 the 27 year old talked about how difficult he was finding it to make weight,
“Every fighter in the UFC, from different countries and regions, are all the best in the world so for me to get down to the weight that I’m fighting at took a long time,” he told UFC.com.
Warming up
Having suffered defeat on his UFC debut he was happy to get back in the winning column even if the fight didn’t play out the way he had hoped it would,
“I finally got the win. It wasn’t exactly like I planned (because) I tried to finish the fight in the distance but with the weight cutting… I was glad to get the win.”
He was expecting more of a challenge from Soriano but after the opening round Nuerdanbieke realized this was a fight he should be winning,
“I’m a very good stand fighter so after the first round I started warming up and realized my opponent is not as strong as I thought he was going to be so I gained a lot of confidence in the second and third round.”
New fighter
He has been training at the UFC Performance Institute in Shanghai. Nuerdanbieke might have finished the year on a high note but he knows there is still plenty of work to do.
The Chinese featherweight plans to keep on improving and involving and promises to be a different fighter next time he steps inside the octagon,
“In 2022 I am going to improve. You will see a different Shayilan.”
