City Kickboxing middleweight Cam Rowston returns to action at UFC Perth this weekend, his third UFC fight and third Australian date for the promotion.
Ahead of his fight with Robert Bryczek, which has Rowston looking to go 3-0 in the UFC, the 31-year old spoke with Cageside Press via The Top Turtle MMA podcast and discussed the state of the UFC’s 185lb division at the moment.
In recent times, the weight class has seen Paulo Costa exit for a middleweight run, while ex-champ Robert Whittaker has been talking about doing the same. Alex Pereira is long gone, first to light heavyweight and now heavyweight, while even champ Khamzat Chimaev has teased a move to 205lbs.
In response, Rowston (14-3) noted that “it’s kind of like this intermediary period where no one fighter has really stood out as the next guy. I think the last time you really had a dominant champion was Israel [Adesanya], really. That guy coming up, and everyone’s like ‘oh he’s going to be the champion, he’s going to be the champion for a while.’”
“Before Israel the belt kind of bounced around a bit. They had Chris Weidman, Luke Rockhold, it was kind of like up in the air and it was still waiting for that new guy to come through and establish himself. And I think you will see that with a lot of the prospects at middleweight coming up, especially the Contender Series the last year or two.”
Rowston singled out Yousri Belgaroui and Baisangur Susurkaev as two of those names, as well as “a few other guys that have come off Contender Series that the UFC is trying to push through.” Belgaroui is a former kickboxer who once competed against Alex Pereira and now trains with him; Susurkaev remains undefeated. Rowston expects to be right there with them.
“I think these guys are going to be taking over the spot of the old guard. And the old guard, whether that’s them just sailing off into the sunset, calling it a career or moving up a weight class, those spots are eventually going to be filled. And that’s me, I’m hoping to be one of those guys who fills one of those spots and just kind of blasts his way to the top and announces himself as ‘hey, I’m here in the middleweight division. Cam Rowston is here.’”
Rowston has reason to be flying high. For one, teammate Carlos Ulberg captured the light heavyweight crown in April, doing so on a torn ACL. “You see him do that on one leg— he could probably have done it on no legs. That’s how special of a guy Carlos is,” Rowston exclaimed.
Another reason for Rowston to feel good, it’s his third fight in the UFC, with all of those coming close to New Zealand’s City Kickboxing. Three fights, meanwhile, have Rowston in a comfortable routine.
“It’s starting to feel a little more routine. I like routine, I feel very comfortable in routine. I do my best work when there’s predictability in my life and there’s a lot of structure,” he told us. “Once I signed with the UFC I was able to transition into basically full-time training. I didn’t have to work anymore, and it made my whole week, my whole weekly schedule extremely predictable and structured. Train in the morning, come home, eat, groceries- eat sleep train sh*t basically. That’s all it was every day, and I love that, I love doing that.”
With three fights in less than 12 months, Rowston says that he and his team have gotten into the “nuts and bolts” of training camp, “refining it every fight.”
“I’ve really refined it with the coaches, we’ve leaned it out, cut all the fat off it, all the process and it’s something I really enjoy now.”
From Robert Bryczek, Rowston later explained, “I’m expecting the Polish power. Polish power is a real thing, you look at a lot of the Polish fighters in the UFC and fighting around the world, they’re all, they’re big hitters.”
“From the footage I’ve seen of Bryczek that me and my coaches have broken down, he’s a goer. He’s gonna come forward, he likes to have momentum coming forward, that’s when he does his best work. He’s got really good hands, he throws his punches very mechanically sound, he’s not sloppy with his punches. I’m excited to make this a bit of a dogfight, to just really get stuck in and feel him out and just put on an absolute barnburner of a fight.”
Watch our full interview with UFC Perth middleweight Cam Rowston above.