“I’ve been ready to go out there and put on another show, but I’ve been spending time just getting better.”
On Saturday, Simón gets his ranked opponent, No. 12 Raphael Assunção, a fighter who has been on his radar for years.
“I’ve been a fan of Assunção since I started fighting,” said Simón. “He was at the top of the division, and I remember when he was supposed to fight for the belt, but he had an injury. I feel like he was one of the best bantamweights in the world at the time, but he’s 39 now and on a three-fight losing streak. But even the fights he lost, he’s competing with these guys who are the best in the world, and he’s just coming up short.”
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Simón is spot on when it comes to all those points. Assunção is one of the best bantamweights of his era and one of the best to never fight for a UFC title. As for his three-fight losing streak, those defeats came at the hands of Marlon Moraes, Cory Sandhagen and Cody Garbrandt. In other words, even at 39, Assunção is a threat to Simon’s three-fight winning streak. But he’s also Simón’s ticket back into the Top 15.
“After that Brian Kelleher fight last February, I actually asked for Assunção,” said Simón. “I’m always looking at the rankings and who doesn’t have a fight and what would be a good matchup, and this is the fight I wanted. He ended up getting matched up with somebody else (Kyler Phillips), but then ends up getting injured and so this matchup ended up happening, so I was pretty pumped about that because it’s the fight we wanted.
