Buchecha has a lot of potential in mixed martial arts. But Marcus Almeida needs to avoid some of the pitfalls that Bo Nickal has found himself in, according to a former UFC vet. This was discussed by Krzysztof Jotko, who touched on this topic as a guest on Bowks Talking Bouts.
This chat came before Jotko’s eventual win over Marek Mazuch at Oktagon 74. That August 9th bout was his sophomore Oktagon MMA effort.
Jotko discussed his first Oktagon MMA bout earlier this year in the context of if it was an ideal debut effort over OMMA welterweight champion Ion Surdu. When touching on the main takeaways from that Oktagon MMA debut performance at Oktagon 70 in April, Jotko said,
“Yeah, I can say I control all the fight and I just mad about myself. I was working working so hard and I do my homework lesson because I got [Ion] Surdu in the second round with a rear naked choke. If I really know how to do this rear naked choke like very good, I will finish with this time.”
“But I just make a lot of mistakes going for this choke. When I just coming back to Florida [to American Top Team], I asked my friend, like I told you jiu-jitsu champion ‘Buchecha’ Marcus Almeida, and he was working with me like two-three weeks.”
“Just chokes, the perfect mata leao, and a lot of different aspects for chokes. So this time I can promise you, if we’re going to be in this situation where I been in with Surdu, I’m going to finish this guy and I’m going to choke him out.”
When playfully mentioning that if you’re looking to refine your submission game, there are few people better to help mold you than someone like Buchecha, Jotko stated,
“Yeah [laughs], Buchecha is the best. You know, if you want to ask somebody of help from jiu jitsu or like ground work, you don’t have a better guy to ask, you know. If he don’t help you, I don’t know who can help you, you know.”
Buchecha’s ceiling in the UFC’s heavyweight division
We spoke ahead of the UFC debut of Marcus Almeida regarding this topic of what Almeida’s ceiling could be in the UFC’s heavyweight division, after a somewhat inauspicious debut effort in the promotion, but prior to that Martin Buday setback that Buchecha had, Krzysztof Jotko said,
“Yes, he is new in MMA, you know, he don’t have a lot of fights. I don’t try to push him too much in the beginning, you know. Let him work a little bit more of stand up and wrestling and then I can still tell more about, you know.”
“I don’t want to tell ‘oh he’s good, he is this.’ Like Bo Nickal was saying and then he gets middle guy, not even super good, and he get knockdown, you know. So this is MMA, not jiu-jitsu, you don’t forget it. We can’t forget it, you know. We start from the stand up. So, striking is very important there.”
