By Eduardo Ferreira
Photo Marcelo Alonso
On the last month, two BJJ black belts made successful MMA debuts. André Galvão started with a submission and Xande Ribeiro with a knockout. This Friday (17), the 2005 world champion and 2007 ADCC champion, Robert Drysdale, will make his debut. Against Josh Musick, at Tuff-N-Uff’s Future Stars of MMA, Drysdale wants to show that he’s actually a MMA future star.
“I’m calm and well prepared to fight. I wanna fight, I’m anxious, I’d fight today if I could. I trained all days in two periods, Boxing and Wrestling in the morning and physical preparation with Rafael Alejarra, and the sparring part I did at Xtreme Couture”, said Drysdale, who trained with Wanderlei Silva, Forrest Griffin and Randy Couture on trainings: “Wanderlei and Forrest helped me a lot giving me some tips, the experience, becaude they believe a lot in me, and Couture helped me on the wrestling part. I’m very happy and I know I’ll win this fight”.
To prepare his tactic for the first challenge in MMA, Drysdale will inspire himself in Griffin’s preparation to face Quinton Jackson for the UFC light-heavyweight belt. “I asked him which tactic he would use to face Rampage and he said one simple phrase: ‘I know two things, that I’m prepared and won’t give up’. It marked me a lot and I’ll use it in this fight, also because I don’t know anything about my opponent, only that he has five fights and five victories, and comes from Jiu-Jitsu. I heard that he’s happy to face me and it’s good, because he might come hungry and make some mistakes”, said the black belt.