“I almost arrived in France,” he laughs. “We’ll have to wait until next time, I guess.”
Welcome to the fight game, a place the welterweight from Missouri is pretty used to after 19 amateur fights and seven pro bouts, so when a Sept. 3 fight in France against Cédric Doumbe turned into a Sept. 10 fight in Las Vegas against Yohan Lainesse, the 28-year-old did not insist on this subject. In fact, he’s happy to fight on the same UFC 279 card as Nate Diaz.
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“It would have been great to go there,” he said. “But, at the same time, I can fight on a Nate Diaz card, so you can’t be upset about that at all.”
A fan of Stockton’s best, I guess?
“I don’t know a lot of fighters who aren’t,” said Weeks, who has a ways to go to match Diaz’s longevity in the UFC, but two fights he showed he belongs in, even if he doesn’t. he lost on the scorecards to Bryan Barberena and Ian Machado Garry. As for fight number three, he doesn’t feel the pressure to win; he wants to win for himself.
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“It’s two fights in a row, especially when you’re in the UFC, you want to win,” Weeks said. “That’s the first thing that comes to mind. But as far as saying, “I need to prove something,” I can stand there with the best of them, I punch with the best of them. It’s just a win I need for myself. Gotta get the W because that’s what I wanted. This is the dream I entered. I said we were going to go to the UFC and we were going to dominate. My first two fights, we haven’t dominated yet. They were both competitive fights, but I think it was just that I felt comfortable being there.
The first fight with Barberena came on just four days notice. The second against Garry had a lot of hype behind it because of the Irishman. No excuses, but he’s seen plenty in two fights, which gives him a big boost against Lainesse, who is also looking for his first UFC win after a knockout loss to Gabe Green in April brought him out of the ranks of the undefeated. On Saturday, Weeks wants to remind him how that last fight went.