UFC: Beneil Dariush plans to ‘out-crazy’ Tony Ferguson – ‘I’m preparing for the wild man’
- Dariush shakes off talk of Ferguson’s supposed decline ahead of UFC 262 lightweight clash in Houston
- ‘I try to look at his best fights where he was at his sharpest … That’s the Tony I’m trying to beat,’ he says
Everyone is expecting chaos when Beneil Dariush and Tony Ferguson step into the Octagon next month and Dariush has a plan that just might be unorthodox enough to work.
“I’ve been joking about this,” the No 9-ranked lightweight contender told SCMP MMA. “But I’ll tell you the same thing I told everybody else. The goal is to out-crazy Tony, so let’s see how that goes.”
Dariush faces the former interim lightweight champion at UFC 262 in Houston next month in front of a live audience, in a match-up that is a stylistic gold mine for the organisation and spectators alike.
“You never know what he’s going to do,” Dariush said. “If that’s not exciting to you, I don’t know what is. You prepare the best you can but you do not know what he’s gonna do. You just don’t.
“It makes actually training for him really difficult, too. Because, what I am going to drill? What am I going to focus on? I’m kinda enjoying this. It’s a freedom I haven’t felt in a while.”
Following a rough skid from April 2016 to March 2018 where he went 2-3-1, the resurgent Dariush (20-4-1) is riding an action-packed six-fight win streak, a run which has skyrocketed him to the top echelon of the 155-pound division and into the biggest fight of his career.