Edmonton — After his UFC debut backfired on him back in Winnipeg this past April, Mandel Nallo got a chance for a do-over of sorts on Saturday at UFC Edmonton. And he did not disappoint.
Lightweight Nallo (15-4, 1NC), long one of the most talked about fighters on the Canadian scene, picked apart Nate Landwehr to open the main card at Rogers Place in Edmonton. It was a textbook display of mixed martial arts, and saw Nallo earn a TKO win on home soil. His first UFC victory, with more to come no doubt.
“It’s funny. You feel a lot worse after a loss than you do feel good after a win. But it’s nice,” Nallo told media outlets including Cageside Press following the fight. “I’m excited to do the next one.”
With the UFC going back to Toronto in January for UFC 336, the next one will likely be soon. “If the rumors are true, there’s nothing in the world that will keep me off that show. I would love for that to be the case,” exclaimed Nallo. “Hopefully we get a special opponent, and we can do something cool.”
He’ll almost certainly be on the card, after winning a Performance of the Night bonus in Edmonton. Though Nallo still feels he has more to show.
“The way I fought tonight, I don’t think it was perfect, but I think it showed a glimpse of the way people on the Canadian MMA scene have been talking about me for years. And so to show a bit of that ability on the night is a good thing for me.”
In his post-fight interview, Nallo admitted to having been dreaming of a bonus back in his debut fight at UFC Winnipeg, when he suddenly came to the realization that he’d been finished. Keeping focused in the cage has actually been an issue throughout his career, with his mind sometimes wandering.
“That is a problem that I’ve had in my career, is you get kind of bored in there and you start to daydream about other stuff. Even thought it’s only 15 minutes and it’s a fight,” noted Nallo. “Having people like Firas [Zahabi, TriStar Gym head coach] around me to just remind me that I have a job to do for 15 minutes, like don’t forget yourself, don’t start talking to yourself in there and thinking like ‘I hit him with the jab three times, there’s no way he’s going to block the fourth.’”
“You have to let the fight play out, you have to let every ten seconds happen naturally, and believe in the skills you’ve worked on,” Nallo added. “You can’t start psyching yourself up or out of situations.”
One of the most talked about, and replayed moments of UFC Edmonton’s Fight Week was Nallo picking his nose during the ceremonial weigh-ins. It was clearly a gag, but just how did it come about? Turns out, his sons requested it.
“So I was texting, my wife was putting my boys to bed during the weigh-ins. And I was like ‘do you and the boys want to see me weigh in, you want to see the live show, before bed?’” revealed Nallo.
Mandel Nallo’s sons don’t really know what their dad does for a living just yet, but he asked them what they wanted him to do, to show that he knew they were watching. “They said ‘pick your nose,’ so I picked my nose. And then it turned into a thing because I shook Dana White’s hand, so it was a whole thing,” he finished with a laugh.
Watch the full UFC Edmonton post-fight press conference with Mandel Nallo above.