Chase Sherman made a triumphant return to the UFC with a second-round TKO win over Ike Villanueva at UFC Jacksonville.
As “The Vanilla Gorilla” was back home this past Saturday night hanging out with his family, he found out that 72 hours after the successful start to his second UFC run, he already had somebody calling him out.
Rodrigo Nascimento, who had a second-round finish in his own right at UFC on ESPN 8 against Don’Tale Mayes’, didn’t waste anytime letting the promotion know that he wants Sherman next.
“I logged onto Facebook and was getting tagged in everything about being called out,” Sherman told MMA Fighting on What the Heck. “I started getting text messages about it and was like, ‘Whatever it is, it’s whatever.’
“Beforehand, I would’ve been like, ‘What the f*ck?’ Before I even realized who it was, I would’ve jumped on Twitter and said, ‘I’ll fight you,’ but we’re taking a different approach to things this go-around. I’m not gonna let my pride get in the way of my legacy. With that being said we’re studying film, trying to do the things we need to do and I told (the UFC) that when we go into this, I’m gonna make sure I’m ready.”
Sherman became a fan favorite early on in his first UFC run due to his tremendous heart and willingness to throw down with whoever he shared the octagon with. That style lead to a 2-5 stint and his release from the promotion.
The 30-year-old stated that the fight with Nascimento has already been brought to his attention. Sherman, along with his team, took a step back to assess the situation.
“They wanted me to fight in July,” Sherman explained. “I’m not fighting this guy in July because where’s the benefit? He’s a very skilled fighter, there’s no market for it. He doesn’t have much of a name, so where does that benefit my career? If you want me to go fight him later in the year, fine. Let’s do it. But to fight him in July? That basically gives me June to get ready. My coaches say that it’s not a smart fight (right now) so I’m going to listen to them.
“I’m not going to go into a knockdown, drag out fight and potentially be 1-1 (because I jumped into another fight too quickly). Then what? Then everybody assumes I lose a fight, ‘Yeah, we knew it. He’s just a bum.’ We’re going to do things smart. The whole f*ckin first part of my career I tried to be a company man and take all of these fights I shouldn’t have took on short notice. I had seven fights, six of them were on short notice.
“Sh*t, nobody cares who you fought, who you lost to, if you took it on short notice, or if you tried to please the matchmakers or Dana White. Nobody cares about that. They care about wins and losses. I learned that the hard way. I’m not going around chasing money, big paychecks and chasing stupid fights. I’m gonna fight when I’m ready and fight who I want to fight. When the time comes, we’ll make the big matchups after.”
Following his release from the UFC in September 2018, Sherman delivered three straight first-round finishes under the Island Fights banner. In addition, the Mississippi native dove into the bare knuckle boxing scene and became the BKFC heavyweight champion this past August before losing a unanimous decision to Joey Beltran three months later.
Sherman admits—although he declined to go into detail—he wasn’t very happy with the way BKFC conducted business. In the end, he believes the brief transition was a big reason for his resurgence in MMA.
“The bare knuckle boxing really helped with my hands and my timing,” Sherman said. “(It helped me) be a lot smoother instead of trying to be so fast and arm punching everything.
“It felt a lot different in there. I didn’t feel like I was wasting a whole lot of energy. I felt calm and I felt like I wasn’t landing big shots. When I went back and watched it, I was like, ‘Holy f*ck, there was some heat being thrown.’ I was trying to take that guy’s head off. That last elbow, if it had landed, he might still be in the hospital. The lord blessed him right there.”
While people were certainly excited to see Sherman have such a memorable moment at UFC Jacksonville, they were also enthused with his return to Twitter following the victory. It had been nearly a year since “The GIF King” graced fans with his presence on the social media platform and he knew a successful return to the octagon would be the perfect time to return from that hiatus.
“People are f*ckin ruthless online,” Sherman explained. “I just didn’t want that kind of negativity in my life anymore when I already had enough negativity going on. I’m getting cut from the UFC, my whole life was changing and I didn’t feel like logging onto Twitter to have f*ckin 20,000 people tell me how bad i f*ckin suck at life when they’re sitting home on the couch with a thumb up their ass. You can’t really do nothing about it.
“I didn’t want to have to deal with that anymore and I logged off for a while. I was done with it.”
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