With his next fight scheduled for May 29th, against Melvin Guillard at UFC 114, Thiago Tavares is training hard in
"I’m training hard for five months and this year my expectation is to win against Melvin and make two more fights. With that, I intend to climb for better fights and face opponents even harder," said the fighter. "Actually, they all have basically the same level. Then you can put Kenny Florian, B.J. Penn, among others. All are very evenly matched, the difference is that some fighters face expressionless and others fight with the bests. What I want is my space. Overcoming Melvin, I will negotiate other struggles to fight with tops."
Considered one of the greatest Brazilian talents among the lightweights, Thiago explains that he passed by a difficult moment in his career, where he had to deal with his motivation to climb into the Octagon.
"Fighting is all I can do and always did. Now I’m giving even more gas. Actually, what I wanted was to be among the best in UFC", he explained. "I saw that it is not so easy, and when I saw that, things began to look very far. I stopped dreaming about it. Lately, it reappeared in my head and made me dream again. Now I want to strive to achieve my goal. I was the first fighter from Santa Catarina that had a dream to fight MMA and be in the UFC and that I did. After winning it all, and after a few losses, stopped dreaming and it seemed that I was just fighting to keep myself and get the money to survive. I did not think that during the fights, but no longer craved something more. Now I think that even you can not be champion, I’ll keep dreaming. That makes me be stronger and supports my desire to fight”.
The fighter guarantees that his motivation is back, which could send him back to the great victories.
"Although the title may never occur, I came back to score arrows in the opponents in my room and think high. This all made me change. Today, I feel like I have 18 years again and in my first fight in MMA. I started very early and I felt the excitement of that era. All this are being very important”, he concluded.
* Photo: Josh Hedges