Andy Uhrich will return to the Bellator cage tonight for the first time since 2014 and he will be a massive underdog when he takes on Paul Daley in the main event of Bellator 148.
Uhrich (11-5) has won three fights in a row since dropping back to back fights in Bellator and he credits his recent winning streak to his new gym, Memphis Judo and Jiu-Jitsu. He moved to the gym prior to his fight at Bellator 120 in May of 2014 and the move has worked out tremendous for the fighter from Memphis, Tennessee.
He will be over a six to one underdog tonight against Daley and he is perfectly fine with that since this is a position that he has been in several times in his MMA career. To all of the people that say he does not have a chance in the fight, Uhrich simply says look at the history of the sport. Upsets happen and he plans to upset Daley.
“I feel like I have been doing that for the past nine years,” Uhrich told The MMA Report. “When I got into MMA and fighting, at first I didn’t even to get into fight. I got into learning how to defend myself and get a six pack for the lake. It’s one of those things when I started, I fought as an amateur against a lot of the top guys around here that have been training for years.”
“Walked through them and went 6-0 as an amateur,” he continued. “Turned pro when I knew I wasn’t ready to turn pro. When I had my first pro fight. I fought a guy named Chris Gates and he was a 14 year veteran. He was a brown belt in jiu-jitsu and was 8-3. I fought him on a big show down here called Art of War. It was on the same card as Shane Carwin and few other guys like that. I have always been the underdog and I has always relished it. That is one reason why I got my nickname ‘The Stunner’ because I was stunning people by winning the fights that I should have not won.”
When Bellator offered Uhrich the opportunity to face Daley, he immediately accepted the fight. There was no hesitation in accepting the fight and plans to show the entire mixed martial community tonight that he is a great fighter. As Uhrich noted, no one knows who he is right now but all of that is going to change tonight at the Save Mart Center in Fresno, California.
“There are guys that have a different mindset than I do,” Uhrich explained. “They are like, ‘you took the fight with Paul Daley. Why did you do that? He is a killer.’ I kind of look at them like a dog with your head tilted. I am just thinking to myself. I am a killer too, but just nobody knows that. Nobody knows me like they know Paul Daley. Paul Daley has been around the block. He has over like 50-60 fights, just MMA only. I don’t look none of that stuff.”
“At the end of the day, a fight is a fight. We are both human beings. He both train our ass of. We are both at the same weight class. He has a different set of skills that I do and I have a different set of skills then he does. So whoever puts those set of skills to the test and makes it happen in the cage, that is who is going to come out the winner. There is no need to afraid to do something that you like to do.”
If Uhrich is able to stun the mixed martial arts community tonight, it will likely go down as one of the biggest upsets in Bellator history and put Uhrich right in the mix for a title shot in the Bellator welterweight division.