Las Vegas — City Kickboxing light heavyweight Navajo Stirling improved to 10-0 in MMA and 5-0 in the UFC with a TKO finish of Moldovan vet Ion Cutelaba at UFC Vegas 119 at the Meta Apex on Saturday.
Stirling is young enough in the sport to have seen Cutelaba in action even before he started training mixed martial arts, and spoke about the fight and Ion’s rather unique style following his most recent victory in Las Vegas. Cutelaba is known for faking injury and having some fairly awkward movement in doing so, not something fighters are necessarily used to seeing in the cage.
“Yeah he’s got some like, veteran moves. I’ve watched him do all that for a while, I think even before I trained MMA. I was a fan of him, watching him and now I’m fighting him,” Stirling noted backstage at the Apex, speaking with media outlets including Cageside Press. “I just noticed all of his tricks that he’s been using over the years were on full display. I’m not worried about that, I’m just worried about hitting him where it hurts and applying pressure. Because the principle remains the same when you do that.”
Stirling is now looking ahead to what comes next, and in the cage on Saturday called out a trio of names: Zhang Mingyang, Alonzo Menified, and Dustin Jacoby. He added one more backstage: Modestas Bukauskas.
“Obviously I just threw out some names. I think it was Zhang, Menified, Jacoby, maybe Modestas as well, he’d be a good one.” One name in particular stands out however. “I think out of those four, I feel like Jacoby would be a cool match-up. He was a GLORY kickboxer, he’s very tidy on the feet, completely different puzzle to solve compared to Ion, who’s just very aggressive, looking to get in your face. Whereas Jacoby is just a little bit smarter in his work.”
Jacoby moved to GLORY between UFC stints, and has found much greater success since honing his skills in the kickboxing organization.
“I like the style match-up, and just the technicality of it all. So I feel like he would be an interesting fight,” Navajo Stirling finished.
Watch the full UFC Vegas 119 post-fight press conference with Navajo Stirling above.