Christopher Curtis plans to beat up Magomed Magomedkerimov in PFL quarterfinals
Professional Fight League is quickly approaching the playoff brackets for the Welterweight Tournament.
With $1 Mil. on the line, #7 seed Christopher Curtis seems as relaxed as could be walking into (potentially) a two fight night Friday, Oct. 11. Curtis’ first fight will be a rematch of his last fight, a unanimous decision loss, against Dagestani fighter Magomed Magomedkerimov.
Ahead of his possible two fight night, Curtis discussed the rematch of having to fight Magomedkerimov so quickly.
“When we went back and watched the video … I didn’t really make too many huge mistakes,” Curtis admitted.
“I made a handful of small mistakes that snowballed out of control. So nothing really huge needs to change, we just have to go back and tighten up a few things. We kind of worked on my ability to interpret what was being told to me and corrected things to where … my corner told me correct things to do. And me kind of in the moment interpreting it differently. So we worked a lot on figuring that out and getting everyone on the same page,” he continued.
The recent loss to Magomedkerimov really didn’t seem to weigh much of Curtis.
“Even in the loss I’ve seen so much media like ‘this is the first time anyone’s made Magomed look human.’ We don’t really know whats going to happen the next time around,” Curtis elaborated.
“So, yeah, you won but it wasn’t a great win for you and … so now it’s just a matter of speaking it into reality and making it a reality now,” he stated.
So what does Curtis expect to do when these two fighters run it back in Las Vegas?
“I’m just going to beat him up,” Curtis claimed.
“With Magomed he’s strong he’s very durable. I’ll give him that, he’s very durable. He doesn’t take a lot of chances so I hate to say it but I feel like I’m going to beat him up. I think it’s going to be a decision. He’s hard to finish and he doesn’t take chances so its hard to go out there and chase that,” he continued.
Given a victory over Magomedkerimov, Curtis would position himself to a fight later in the evening against the winner of Sadibou Sy and Ray Cooper III.
“It’s one of those things that doesn’t really bother me because Ive fought guys like Sy before,” Curtis admitted.
“I’ve fought guys like Cooper before. I’ve beaten guys like that. As far as it goes, I’ve fought a lot of five round fights in my career. But two fights in a night doesn’t scare me. This is just a continuation of what I’ve been doing. I think Sy provides the bigger challenge to me than Cooper does just based on body types. But that’s still a very winnable fight for me and I know I can beat any one of them,” he stated
Christopher Curtis being three victories away from a $1 Mil. bonus check tells us (quite frankly) what that paycheck would mean to him.
“A few months ago it would’ve meant I’d have owned a tiger but I realize that Mike Tyson ruined that for everyone in Vegas,” he joked.
“Outside of that, it’s stability for my family. Everybody wants to leave something behind and have an exit plan. A million dollars is a pretty nice exit plan, takes a lot of stress off and kind of lets me take my time deciding where I go from here,” he finished.
The PFL 2019 Welterweight playoffs kicks off Friday Oct. 11 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, NV. Catch part one of the action at 8:00 pm ET on ESPN+. Continue the action at 10:00 pm ET on ESPN2.
Check out the full interview with Christopher Curtis below.
