“I’ve always wanted to beat him” - Fabricio Andrade has been excited to beat John Lineker with or without the world title

Fabricio Andrade will face ONE bantamweight king John 'Hands of Stone' Lineker for the title at ONE on Prime Video 3. The October 21 bout came on the heels of Andrade's scorched-earth campaign to fight his compatriot.

Andrade has been calling out Lineker for some time. After finishing the highly-touted Kwon Won Il back in June, his fate can no longer be denied.

Bad blood has been stirring between the two, with trash-talk and bold predictions making the rounds on social media. The two bitter rivals finally got to confront each other during ONE's virtual media day faceoff interview.

When asked how ready he is to fight the world champion, Fabricio Andrade responded with:

"I’m more than ready. We all know that I am the guy who has been calling for this fight for a long time, even before he was a champion. I want this fight, it’s a fight I want. It doesn’t matter if it's for a title or not, I’ve always wanted to beat him, and now it’s happening. So I’m more than ready and more than excited to fight him."

It's quite an interesting statement from the hungry young lion. One can say that both Andrade and Lineker's paths have been bound to converge at some point.

Both are knockout artists who have been putting away their opponents left and right. It's long been inevitable that both warriors will clash on their way to the top, regardless of the world title being on the line.

Watch the faceoff interview here:

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Fabricio Andrade claims he had a hard time finding sparring partners in preparation for John Lineker

Fabricio Andrade seems to be going into overdrive in his preparations for his world title fight with John Lineker.

'Wonder Boy' trains out of the Tiger Muay Thai gym in Phuket, Thailand. The world-renowned facility houses world-class fighters like Petr Yan and ONE interim heavyweight world champion Anatoly Malykhin.

With the caliber of fighters in his gym, it's quite surprising that not a lot of them can handle 'Wonder Boy' when sparring. In a separate interview with ONE Championship, Andrade said:

“I used to train with many big names before. But for this fight, it’s been hard to find training partners because people don’t want to spar [with] me. I’m not a guy who goes easy in sparring, I always go hard in training.”

It looks like Fabricio Andrade is fixing to make a brutal statement come ONE on Prime Video 3. We're definitely looking forward to seeing how his aggression fares with the equally overwhelming offense of John Lineker.