Once he got home to Arizona, Bautista didn’t go buying a sports car or anything extravagant. Instead, he took heed of the words of UFC matchmaker Sean Shelby, who told him after the fight, “Save your money,” before Bautista even had a chance to speak. There was a trip to his hometown by air instead of car, which saved him a 12-hour drive, but other than that, it was back to work to get ready for his next trip to the Octagon on Saturday against unbeaten Miles Johns.
For Bautista, it’s an interesting position to be in, as he was once the young hotshot with the perfect record before Cory Sandhagen beat him a little over a year ago in his short-notice UFC debut. Now it’s his turn to try to turn Johns’ “0” into a “1” in Houston.
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“The mindset I had was that whatever I was doing, it was working, so I really didn’t grow as fast as I could have,” Bautista said of his approach before the Sandhagen fight. “I didn’t feel I had to change much, but after that loss, I realized you do have to change mentally, physically, with your skills, everything. So I feel like he (Johns) is going in there with the mindset that he doesn’t really have to change anything, that he’s won all these fights and whatever he’s doing is working for him. So I hope to change his mind on February 8th.”
That’s a lot of pressure on Johns, and there’s a lot of pressure on Bautista, as well, to keep the momentum going from the Son fight and live up to the acclaim that has him seen as one of the top prospects of 2020. But he’s not bothered by it.
“The closer it gets to the fight, I start to realize that I am being looked at and I like that pressure,” Bautista said. “It motivates me, it drives me and I want to continue to stay on everyone’s radar and stand out from everyone. I’m going to continue to do that and just push hard.”
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