When Shane Burgos found out Edson Barboza would be standing across the octagon from him this weekend, he couldn’t have been more fired up.
The featherweight matchup between Burgos and Barboza will take place on the main card of Saturday’s UFC 262 event. The fight card takes place at the Toyota Center in Houston and will be headlined by a vacant lightweight title fight between Charles Oliveira and former Bellator world champion Michael Chandler.
Burgos enters the matchup on the heels of a decision loss to Josh Emmett in one of 2020’s best fights of the year. “Hurricane” took a lot away from that loss and plans to implement those lessons as he looks to defend his No. 9 ranking in the loaded 145-pound division on Saturday.
In an exclusive interview, Burgos joined MMA Fighting’s Mike Heck to preview the highly anticipated matchup with Barboza, recently welcoming a second child into the Burgos household, realizing in the loss to Emmett that he’s been having too much fun in his fights, needing to get his hand raised “by any means necessary,” thoughts on Kamaru Usman being the pound-for-pound best fighter in the world right now, Giga Chikadze’s recent stoppage win over Cub Swanson, being a big fan of Michael Chandler and admittedly rooting for him in the main event, and more.
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