Dom Mar Fan traveled to Shanghai for the Road to UFC quarterfinals to face ONE FC veteran Yuji Yannick Ephoeviga, who entered with an 11-0 record. Mar Fan anticipated being an underdog and attempted to avoid betting lines, but later learned he was nearly a 5-to-1 underdog through a group chat with his students. Mar Fan executed takedowns, inflicted significant damage, and won a comfortable unanimous decision to reach the semifinals. He expressed confidence that his style would trouble the opponent and maintains a ritual victory lap to mock doubters and draw strength for upcoming fights.
I kind of anticipated it. I made a solid effort not to look at the betting numbers or anything in the lead-up to the fight, but when I first got given the opponent's name and I looked, it was 11-0. I was like, okay, chances are people are going to assume that this guy is going to win,
And look, I think it's understandable. When I watched the guy's fights, I couldn't find anywhere that he was actually bleeding physically or metaphorically.
There was a group chat that I was in with a bunch of my Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu students, and then they were chatting about it. I opened the message and I saw it,
I was kind of pissed off. I didn't want to see that. I guess I kind of knew.
He was doing pretty well in his fights, but I was confident from the get-go that he had never someone like me. And I went out there and proved that,
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