ABU DHABI – Ryan Benoit’s octagon inconsistency has been his biggest battle to date.
Benoit (10-6 MMA, 3-4 UFC) faces Tim Elliott on Wednesday in the co-main event of UFC on ESPN 13 in just his second fight in nearly three years.
He’s been forced to the sidelines due to an array of injuries, including a fractured rib, but is now ready to plow through the remainder of his contract while avoiding long layoffs in between each fight.
“I just want to be back to being busy,” Benoit said Monday in Abu Dhabi. “This may be the quickest turnaround – even though it’s been seven months since the last fight, I’ve had a lot of time in between each fight camp, so I feel like just being consistent. I’m ready to be back in there. I’m ready to get more fights. I have three fights left on my contract and I’d like to really knock those out quickly. I think that’s been my biggest obstacle is getting fights consistently. The more time you have in the UFC, the more mat time you have.
“I think that’s kind of been my hardest part is getting consistent fights, and so that’s kind of my goal here. I want to be able to not be so uncomfortable coming into the fight. I’ve been here. I was just here a few months ago, so I actually feel very comfortable. This is probably the most comfortable I’ve ever prepared for a fight and it’s probably the most comfortable I’ve ever felt coming into a fight.”
He takes on former UFC flyweight title challenger Elliott, who presents an unorthodox style that even Benoit’s teammates had a hard time mimicking in training camp.
But Benoit is confident in his preparation, picking up on specific habits in Elliott’s game that he was able to break down with his team by watching plenty of tape.
“We looked at a lot of footage,” Benoit said. “Tim has a lot of fights in the UFC. He’s a big veteran and he’s got a lot of rounds, not just a lot of fights. He has a lot of time in the UFC. He’s had a lot of decision fights, so we really went back and studied a lot of habits, a lot of things that he’s done consistently in each fight, and we tried to have training partners implement those things.
“It was an awkward style to prepare for. I think it was harder on my training partners to prepare so awkwardly for some of the wild stuff Tim does. But we were actually able to pick apart pretty consistent stuff that we were able to see.”