HOLLYWOOD, Fla. – It seems the dark days are now behind for Emiliano Sordi’s run in the 2021 PFL light heavyweight season.
The PFL 2019 champion had a rough start to this year’s season, but he’s finally hit his groove. Sordi (23-8-1) fights in a semifinal bout this Friday against Antonio Carlos Junior on the main card of 2021 PFL Playoffs 3.
The bout goes down at the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel & Casino with the main card airing on ESPN 2 and ESPN+ and the prelims exclusively on ESPN+.
Sordi defeated Chris Camozzi via unanimous decision and fought to a draw against Dan Spohn to qualify to the playoffs as the last seed of the division. And within those two fights, the Argentine hasn’t had it easy in terms of the outside circumstances.
For the first bout, he was coming off one of quarantine in Argentine, one of the world’s strictest lockdowns, and for the second the injury bug hit.
“The truth is that physically I knew I wasn’t 100 percent,” Sordi told MMA Junkie in Spanish. “I was an entire year without doing anything just locked down at home.
“And after that, I came here to the U.S. around January and I began training hard. But a few days before going to the quarantine at PFL, I got COVID and that also affected my performance. For the second fight, I got staph, so just bad luck before the fights. But we’re Latinos and we were born fighting and surely we’ll die fighting.”
Sordi feels his now finally in form entering his bout against the veteran Carlos Junior.
“I feel very good, although the first two fights I wasn’t in form, they helped me as part of getting back into shape for this third fight,” Sordi said. “This third fight I truly feel I’m 100 percent.”
As far as the matchup, Sordi is happy to have gotten paired up against Carlos Junior. Winner of season three of “The Ultimate Fighter: Brazil,” Carlos Junior is one of the biggest names Sordi has come across in his career.
“There is no secrets,” Sordi explained. “He’s a grappler and a jiu-jitsu fighter and I am a striker. He trains boxing, but I also train jiu-jitsu, so surely is going to be an entertaining fight because both of us are going to go out and fight.
“The bigger the name, the bigger the challenge, and the fight is going to be better. That’s always what we’re looking for, big challenges. So for me, the bigger the name, the more I like the fight.”
Check out the full interview with Sordi in the video above.
Emiliano Sordi finally feeling ‘100 percent’ after unlucky start in PFL’s 2021 season
