MELBOURNE, Australia – Dhiego Lima is looking to expose holes in Luke Jumeau’s game.
Lima (14-7 MMA, 3-5 UFC) takes on Jumeau (13-4 MMA, 2-1 UFC) on Saturday (Sunday locally) at UFC 243, and is expecting a standup affair, but will look to put his ground game to the test.
“It’s a great matchup,” Lima told MMA Junkie on Friday. “You bring two standup fighters, you’re going to get a fight out of it. We both bring it and he’s very good at his distance. He’s a very calm guy, fights with his hands down –that means they’ve got great distance. But I see a few holes. He hasn’t really been tested on the ground, tested on the wrestling, so there’s a lot of gaps there. We need to find out what’s going on there.”
But if he can’t take Jumeau to the ground, he has no problem keeping the fight on the feet.
“If he’s great at defending, great – we’ll keep it standing,” Lima said. “But we’ve just got to test them out. We’ll see.”
Lima has had a recent career resurgence, winning his past two fights. On the cusp of potentially being cut in his second UFC stint, he scored a first-round knockout of Chad Laprise at UFC 231 and followed that with a split decision win over Court McGee in April.
And while he can’t point to a specific turnaround point, he says it all came down to getting himself better mentally prepared and living in the moment.
“It’s just a little less training, to tell you the truth,” Lima said. “(I’m) focusing more on the mental part, so it’s more forgetting about that and just enjoy it – enjoying the path. Before, I was putting so much pressure on myself. So right now, I’m just enjoying the ride. Whatever it is, I’m ready.”
