Mario Bautista discusses his upcoming fight at UFC Vegas 71
Mario Bautista will look to continue his red hot streak in 2023 when he returns to the octagon on March 11 at UFC Vegas 71.
Bautista went a perfect 3-0 in 2022 by posting victories over Jay Perrin, Brian Kelleher and Benito Lopez and now he’ll look to add three more wins in 2023.
While fighting three times seems manageable and a very achievable goal, Bautista has his eyes set on some bigger things this year than just a fight total. In fact, his main goal is to crack the top 15 in the official UFC bantamweight rankings.
First up on his pursuit towards becoming a ranked UFC fighter will be Guido Cannetti, who Bautista is very familiar with.
The two were first booked to fight in 2021, but the fight would never end up taking place.
While the two didn’t meet inside of the octagon back then, Bautista still spent a lot of time preparing for Cannetti and he now in 2023, he is keeping the same blue print he was putting together two years ago.
Two years can be a long time in the fight game, but Bautista doesn’t feel like Cannetti changed too much in that time span and he knows that Cannetti is going to come fast out of the gate, but he’s prepared to be smart, counter and hopefully leave Las Vegas with another win.
Prior to the event, Bautista spoke with MyMMANews to discuss his matchup with Cannetti, how he’ll look to build on last year, and his goals for 2023.
You can watch his full interview in the video above.
A list of fights scheduled for UFC Vegas 71 are listed below:
Petr Yan vs. Merab Dvalishvili
Raphael Assuncao vs. Kyler Phillips
JJ Aldrich vs. Ariane Lipski
Lukasz Brzeski vs. Karl Williams
Abu Azaitar vs. Sedriques Dumas
Austin Lingo vs. Ricardo Ramos
Vitor Petrino vs. Anton Turkalj
Mario Bautista vs. Guido Cannetti
Tony Gravely vs. Victor Henry
Tyson Nam vs. Bruno Silva
Jonathan Martinez vs. Said Nurmagomedov
Carlston Harris vs. Abubakar Nurmagomedov
Alexandr Romanov vs. Alexander Volkov
