Wes Schultz’s first attempt at Dana White’s Contender Series didn’t go the way he imagined. In a back-and-forth battle with Mansur Abdul-Malik, who is now 3-0-1 in the UFC, Schultz had to go back to the drawing board. However, watching his former opponent in the big show, he found confidence in his success.
“Even if you go back to your wrestling days, you don’t want to get beat by someone who gets knocked out of the tournament right away,” Schultz explained. “You don’t cheer for other people in this sport, but you still like okay, that’s if you got beat by someone who didn’t like 0-2 and got cut, I’d be like f*ck. I’d want to go back to school, get my master’s degree or something.”
Perhaps part of that success is why Schultz was called back up to the Contender Series so quickly. It took just over a year before he got his second chance, this time against Mario Mingaj. The time when the Pura Vida product would come out on top and do so while achieving a unique entry. His Suloev journey would become the first in Contender Series history and only the third under the Zuffa banner, and it even surprised Schultz.
“I know this works and I’m going to try it because I’m crazy. I use that more as a sweep to get people back down, but my coaches were like man, you just f*cking f*ck your hips into it and I did it, I f*cking get it, and I never put people in the room with that,” he said. “So that was actually a bit of a surprise. I was like, holy fuck. Did that just happen? Yeah, I probably would have let it go if they hadn’t [yell].”
Now he’s ready to take a crafty approach to the UFC Octagon when he meets Damian Pinas in Mexico City. He believes that a traditional approach can make the difference against an impressive opponent.
“I think I’m a little crafty and I work around problems. When I encounter resistance by doing something, I usually don’t try to push through it. I just go around it. I think he’s more of a plodder forward and what you see is what you get, which is damn scary,” Schultz said. “I think I’m going to have more tools than him, but his tools might be a little bigger, a little scarier tools.”
You can watch his fight with Pinas as part of the UFC Mexico prelim card. The card kicks off this Saturday at 5pm EST on Paramount+.
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