Ariane da Silva had a reality check in her most recent UFC appearance, and the eye-opening loss to Jasmine Jasudavicius prompted a change in training ahead of her next bout with Wang Cong in the preliminary portion of this weekend’s UFC 316 fight card in Newark.
Da Silva told MMA Fighting she decided to leave Florida for three weeks to dive all-in in wrestling training with Angel Cejudo in Arizona, working with the brother of former UFC champion Henry Cejudo to fix holes in her game. Her schedule was “pretty much only no-gi and wrestling,” occasionally training with Henry and Tracy Cortez.
“Last year was a bit complicated,” da Silva said. “I had a few training partners in wrestling, but my coach opened a new gym and our schedules weren’t working since the Casey O’Neill fight so we couldn’t train together, so I ended up not working with him. All I was doing was working on my wrestling during MMA training.
“I felt I just didn’t let things go in the Karine [Silva] fight, I thought it was something more mental than technical, but then we had the Jasmine fight and I was like, ‘No, those are not positions I don’t know. It’s not like I don’t know how to defend a single or double leg. My body didn’t react when it needed, it didn’t do the right technique. It didn’t do what was necessary to defend a takedown.’
The former KSW flyweight champion felt the change was necessary after having a three-fight winning streak snapped against Karine Silva and Jasudavicius.
“We saw that I needed to train,” da Silva said. “Every athlete trains and learns a certain way. How do I learn? Repetition. I have to train a lot, I have to repeat so many times so my body reacts the right way in the fight. And that’s what we did now. We did a wrestling crash course without knowing who we were going to fight.”
Da Silva expected to face Miranda Maverick next. Instead, she will take on a Chinese prospect who recently rebounded from a shocking upset loss to Gabriella Fernandes with a decision victory against Bruna Brasil.
“I believe she might even try to go for a grappling gameplan against me because that’s a flaw I’ve showed in my last fights, so I have to be prepared for everything,” da Silva said. “I trained it all and the hardest I could so my body can react and have the correct answer for whatever the fight asks me.”
Da Silva is confident despite having lost two in a row in the UFC, and expects the same from Cong even though her hype has taken a hit after losing to Fernandes and going to a decision against a natural strawweight.
“I believe that every fighter is confident going into a fight regardless of their situation,” said da Silva, who was victorious in six of 13 octagon appearances. “I can speak for myself. I’m coming off two losses and still feel confident. I can’t look at her performance and wonder how her head will be. But I can analyze her technically, and believe it’s going to be a very good fight because we’re both strikers.”
“She’s very technical on the feet and doesn’t do anything crazy,” she continued, “so I believe this fight will play out mostly on the feet and it’s going to be a fun one for fans to watch. It’s an opportunity for me to show all my evolution in MMA, but more than anything to have fun in there. I’m fighting a striker and I believe I’ll be able to go there and have fun, display my technique and everything I know, and all my striking arsenal.”
