Adrian Yanez knows his back his against the wall heading into UFC Fight Night 241.
Yanez (16-5 MMA, 5-2 UFC) welcomes Vinicius Salvador to bantamweight on May 18 at the UFC Apex. Both fighters will look to snap two-fight losing skids, and Salvador will be in search of his first octagon win.
The 30-year-old, who was once considered one of the most highly touted prospects in the UFC, admits he was surprised to draw former flyweight Salvador (14-6 MMA, 0-2 UFC) and knows he’s in a must-win situation.
“I’m in a do-or-die situation in my head right now, so I just don’t want to have to worry about anything,” Yanez told Bloody Elbow.
Yanez’s losses came by stoppage to ranked contenders Rob Font and Jonathan Martinez. The Martinez loss was a tougher pill to swallow.
“That second one (Martinez), the first kick landed, and boom, f*cked my whole leg up immediately,” Yanez said. “I just felt a whole shock in my leg. I felt warm liquid. It felt like my leg was bleeding for a second. … That second one was a lot harder to get over because I had a lot more time to sit back and soak in it because I had to go do surgery after that fight. It also gave me a change of perspective on a lot of things. In my 2023, I got way too comfortable.
“I was comfortable in the position I was at. I had a ranking next to my name, and I was comfortable. I was like, ‘Ah man, I’m fighting the best. I’m here, I’m so close.’ I let my foot off the gas. I started letting others control what I was doing in camp, and I didn’t really have full control. For that Font fight, I was in the greatest shape I’ve ever been in. The Martinez fight I thought I was mentally good there, but walking out to the cage there was still remnants of that loss beforehand. When I was walking out, it was still playing in the back of my head a bit.”
Yanez recently spent time training with red-hot featherweight Diego Lopes (24-6 MMA, 3-1 UFC), who’s coming off a first-round TKO of Sodiq Yusuff at UFC 300.
“It got me excited,” Yanez said on training with Lopes. “Like, man, whenever you’re around like-minded people like them that want to get better and always want to train, that put a fire beneath my ass, it reignited my love for the game.”