“A completely different game than grappling itself” - ‘Buchecha’ talks about his first TKO win

‘Buchecha’ Marcus Almeida surprised everyone at ONE 158 when he claimed his first TKO win of his young MMA career.

The Brazilian jiu-jitsu legend took down Simon Carson in their matchup last Friday and it looked like Almeida was on his way to his third straight submission finish. Once he had top control, however, he rained down punches on the Australian fighter.

Carson’s defenses eventually broke, and the referee stepped in to stop the contest at the 2:24 mark of the first round.

During his post-fight interview with SCMP MMA, ‘Buchecha’ was asked if his method of winning changed his mindset when getting control on the ground, as he did against Carson. He replied:

“It's MMA, I'm not fighting grappling so a lot of times when you just focus on the submission and maybe you do a mistake and end up on [the] bottom without punishing the guy, without opening up space. And it happened a lot with me in training before but nowadays, I know it's a different game. So when you have a good position, we have to touch, you have to like push the opponent because that's how he's going to like do mistakes and when I see the mistakes, I get it.”

Almeida understands that now that he is playing a completely different sport, he has to expand his arsenal if he wants to succeed in it as he did in BJJ.

“So that's a completely different game than grappling itself. It's MMA - you have to punch, you have to take down, you have to defend, you have to submit so it's mixed.”

Watch the full interview below:

‘Buchecha’ is relieved to finally compete again

‘Buchecha’ Marcus Almeida has been eager to get back in action for quite some time now, but uncontrollable circumstances prevented him from competing.

He came close to returning at ONE 157 but was scratched off the card at the last minute after his second replacement opponent was held off due to health and safety protocols. He instead joined Mike Schiavello and Mitch Chilson on the broadcast panel to call a couple of bouts on the card.

There was no stopping his fight at ONE 158 though, and he thanked Simon Carson for stepping up to compete against him. In the same interview with SCMP MMA, he said:

“Yeah, I'm so happy, so stoked that I got one more win, 3-0 right now. A lot of respect for Simon Carson, he gave me his word, he signed the contract, and he showed up on the day so. It was hard for me to find an opponent but finally, we found one and I hope to get back as soon as possible. So I want to keep on track and I want to keep the momentum going.”