As far as introductions go, Moutinho’s UFC debut against “Sugar Sean” was both good and bad. The bad is that it was a short notice call on a high-profile pay-per-view card against a high-profile opponent in O’Malley that ended up in a third-round TKO loss. But the good is that Moutinho was in there slugging away until the bitter end, determined to silence any doubters. Mission accomplished there, because when it was over, all anyone wanted to talk about was the gritty New Englander. He’s happy with that part of it – and the Fight of the Night bonus – but the rest, let’s just say he wants a different overall experience on Saturday.
“I didn’t think it was gonna be such a fast rise up in people’s eyes from taking a beating, to be honest about it,” he said. “I took a little bit of a beating, and I didn’t follow the game plan that my coaches set out for me. I understand we had ten days, but I didn’t really do what I was supposed to do. I just went out there and got into a pissing contest and I lost. It is what it is. I’m happy to the extent that it’s gone because it’s allowing me to do this full-time and allowing me to make a little money on the side of just being able to train and do what I love to do, so I’m happy it went that way, but I’m not satisfied.”
You wouldn’t expect any fighter worth his salt to be satisfied, and the 29-year-old bantamweight is all fighter, and has been ever since he first strapped on the four-ounce gloves. For him, this was an inevitable path for him once he started.
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“It’s the only thing that you truly get to test if you’re a man or not,” Moutinho said of fighting. “It’s one on one, it’s me versus him, and I get to go in there and find out if I’m better than that person. That’s something that I’ve always wanted since I was a kid. I was always playing sports and I was always competitive, and competition’s the only thing that drives me in life; it’s the only thing I’ve ever wanted to do. I was growing up as a young kid, not knowing what I wanted, and then I found wrestling in high school, and it was the same thing – it’s you and another man. You can’t blame anybody else for your shortcomings, and when I got older and didn’t really know what I wanted to do with my life, that’s all I was searching for, that feeling of am I better than him, and how do I really test myself and how do I prove to myself that I can overcomes things? I found MMA and it literally changed my life. It gave me purpose, it gave me drive. So money and all that other stuff, if I get that with it, that’s cool, but that’s not what I’m in this for. I’m in this to truly test myself as a man and see if I’m worthy.”
A pro since 2016, Moutinho had his ups and downs while compiling a 9-4 record on the regional circuit, but when the call came to replace Louis Smolka on the UFC 264 card at T-Mobile Arena, he didn’t hesitate to accept the O’Malley bout, simply because this was the kind of test he craved. Then the whirlwind sucked him in for the next 10 days.
