Trevin Giles will officially be a UFC welterweight come Saturday night.
Giles is set to drop to welterweight for the first time in his career, which he admits is something that is a long time coming. He rarely cut weight to make 185lbs, but he does say he has never made 170 before so the first time he does will be on Friday.
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“It was something I was interested in, I started pretty well at 185,” Giles said on Just Scrap Radio on BJPENN.com. “Middleweight is not something that is closed to me but 170 seems to be what interests me because I was doing good at 185 and most of the guys had a size advantage over me. I thought it would be interesting to go to 170 and see what my performance would look like when I don’t give up a size advantage.”
Once he decided to make the move to welterweight, the UFC offered him 12-0 Michael Morales, which Giles says he didn’t know much about. However, once he saw he was undefeated and this was his debut, he got excited for the scrap as he knows Morales will come motivated and hungry for this fight.
Not only does fighting an undefeated fighter get Giles excited, but he also says this is a very good matchup for him.
“I don’t know a whole lot about him, and that’s no disrespect to him, I don’t know much about him. This is his first UFC fight, he’s a wrestling champ in Ecuador and likes to strike a little bit,” Giles explained. “He has some tools but I would expect his natural instinct is to go back to his wrestling… It’s a good matchup, when it got presented to me and I saw he was undefeated and it was his first UFC fight, the first thing I thought of was this guy is hungry. Sometimes their first fights in the UFC are their best ones. This might be the best version we have seen yet, he’s hungry and has a point to prove so it excites me.”
In the fight, Trevin Giles believes he can’t just box Michael Morales. Instead, he says the key to this fight is mixing in the wrestling as well which will then leave openings for his hands.
Should Giles be able to do that, he is confident that will lead to a stoppage win in his welterweight debut.
“I think I need to be a complete mixed martial artist. A lot of time in my fights, I utilize my boxing, but I don’t utilize a lot of techniques I do shine at,” Giles said. “I can mix it up a little bit more to give him more to think about and really find that soft spot in his technique when we do fight. I don’t feel any pressure to finish, but do I want the finish though? Yes, all the time. I never think about points, I don’t care about that, my job is to finish you.”
If Giles gets the victory at UFC 270, he isn’t sure where it puts him in the division or what might be for next. For him, he says the sole focus is on Saturday and getting back to the win column.
“I don’t even think about that. I just go in there to beat this guy and we will see where it puts me afterward,” Giles said.
Do you think Trevin Giles will best Michael Morales at UFC 270?