This weekend, he’s back in the UFC APEX in Las Vegas with another interesting matchup, this one against 14-0 Alexandr Romanov. A win keeps momentum on the Californian’s side while also likely garnering headlines for handing “King Kong” his first pro loss. But the way Vanderaa sees it, that unbeaten slate is a bit of a mirage.
“Honestly, if he sits there and tells himself that he won his last fight that he should have lost, that tells me he’s not in the right mindset for this fight,” said Vanderaa of Romanov’s technical split decision over former Ultimate Fighter winner Juan Espino in April. “I saw someone who lost his last fight; I didn’t see someone that won. And if he thinks he won that fight and he thinks he’s gonna do the same s**t that worked for the other 13 fights, then he’s gonna lose. It’s simple as that.”
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Vanderaa knew the mindset of an unbeaten fighter for a spell early in his career as he went 5-0 with five finishes until running into Richard Odoms in June 2017.
“I knew it was gonna be a hard fight and I think there was a level of immaturity career wise where I jumped into a big LFA title fight with someone who was a veteran of the sport and we went all five rounds before he caught me in a standing kimura,” said Vanderaa. “Thinking about it, he wasn’t setting things up in the sense of him picking me apart. It felt like a decent back and forth. And then he played the long game and caught me in the fifth. I felt that was just a lack of experience.”
