UFC Mexico’s Wes Schultz on Contender Series Run, UFC Debut

Wes Schultz’s first shot on Dana White’s Contender Series did not go the best way I imagined. In a back-and-forth contest with Mansur Abdul-Malik, who’s now 3-0-1 within the UFC, Schultz was left heading again to the drafting board. However, as he watched his former opponent within the huge present, he discovered confidence in his success.

“Even going back to like your wrestling days, you don’t want to get beat by someone that gets f*cking beat out of the tournament right away,” Schultz defined. “You don’t cheer for other people in this sport, but still like okay, that’s if you got if I would have got beat by someone that wouldn’t like 0-2 to and got cut I’d be like f*ck. I’d want to go back to school get my master’s or something.”

Perhaps a few of that success is why Schultz was so fast to get one other name to the Contender Series. It took simply over a yr for him to get his second shot – this time towards Mario Mingaj. The time, the Pura Vida product would come out on prime and would achieve this whereas hitting a novel submission. His suloev stretch would develop into the primary in Contender Series historical past and simply the third underneath the Zuffa banner, and it even stunned Schultz.

“I know this works and I’m going to try it because I’m crazy. I use that more for like a sweep just get people back down, but my coaches were like man, you have it f*cking just f*cking put your hips in and I did I f*cking got it which I never submit people with that in the room,” he mentioned. “So that was truly sort of a shock. I used to be like, holy f*ck. Did that simply occur? Yeah, I most likely would have let it go in the event that they did not [yell].”

Now he is able to take that artful strategy to the UFC Octagon when he meets Damian Pinas in Mexico City. He feels that craft strategy is likely to be the distinction maker towards a formidable opponent.

“I think I’m a little bit more crafty and I go around issues. If I meet resistance doing something, I’m usually not going to try to go through it. I’m just going to go around it. I think he’s more of a kind of plod forward and what you see is what you get, which is fucking scary,” Schultz mentioned. “I think I’m going to have more tools than him, but his tools are going to be fucking maybe a little bigger, little scarier tools.”

You can catch his struggle with Pinas as a part of the UFC Mexico prelim card. The card kicks off at 5pm EST this Saturday on Paramount+.