Beneil Dariush will look to cement his status as the next lightweight title challenger by turning away former champion Charles Oliveira in the UFC 289 pay-per-view (PPV) co-main event, recently made official for Sat., June 10, 2023 at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
And Dariush is hoping to test his ground skills against the bonus-winning Brazilian, who scored 21 submissions in 33 wins throughout his decorated MMA career.
“I actually get more pumped up about the grappling,” Dariush told MMA Junkie. “I’m not going to lie, to get into some of the scrambles with him and to be able to kind of just go nuts on the ground, that’s just as exciting as the standup is. An opportunity to have this fight on the ground, I’m actually really looking forward to that because you see him submit so many people, and you wonder how good his jiu-jitsu is. But then at the same time, you see him lose when he shouldn’t lose in the grappling, so I’m really looking forward to getting my hands on him and getting a feel of his grappling.”
Dariush, 34, improved to 22-4-1 by outlasting Mateusz Gamrot at UFC 280 last fall, his eighth straight victory and a performance dominant enough to solidify his spot at No. 4 in the official lightweight rankings. Still not good enough for Dustin Poirier, but that’s an entirely different story.
As for the 33 year-old Oliveira, who fell to 33-9 (1 NC) after getting trounced by Islam Makhachev — also at UFC 280 in Abu Dhabi — he’s looking to recapture some of that magic from the last few years, which helped “Do Bronx” put together an incredible 11-fight winning streak from 2018-22.
“The focus of this fight is to be perfect,” Dariush continued. “Personally, the way I see it is domination. I plan on dominating this fight. I want to remind people. because I think my last fight was kind of close. The fight will be an absolute domination, is what it’s going to be. I will do what I plan to do, and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. That’s what I hope for.”
To see who else is fighting at UFC 289 click here.
This story originally appeared on MMA Mania
