Evan Elder has put the rounds in the octagon, something his next opponent hasn’t done just yet.
Elder (10-2 MMA, 3-2 UFC) welcomes Samuel Sanches to the promotion next week at UFC 334 from Madison Square Garden in New York. Although the early betting lines have this fight pretty even, with Elder even a slight underdog in some sportsbooks, there is a pretty big difference in octagon experience.
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Elder already has fought five times for the UFC, and Sanches is about to debut. Elder believes this discrepancy will show at UFC 334.
“That’s actually such a big detail, the fight experience under the three letters being in the UFC,” Elder told MMA Junkie Radio. “It can definitely get to you. It’s so much more professional. There’s nothing like it. Everybody tries to follow suit of the UFC, of course, because they’re the gold standard, but nobody’s replicating it. There’s really no real way to get the fight week experience, doing all the media, doing your equipment check-in, and being around all of the big names and on a big card or whatever. There’s a lot of stuff that goes into it, and it can be exciting, overwhelming, good and bad. I definitely think that me just having comfortability in this, not being my first experience doing this, getting to go through and do all the fight week stuff, it’s definitely going to help a lot.”
Outside of the experience advantage, the Kill Cliff fighter rates Sanches highly. Elder likes what he’s seen from the prospect and already has done his homework on him.
“His speed and combinations, I think that he does a really good job, and defensively he does a good job staying in a tight shell,” Elder said. “Really good check left hook and just the ability to stand in the pocket and trade in combinations. So he’s got good power but more so than that, I think his power more comes from his ability to land in combinations than it does single shots, just knockout power. He’s going to hit you with the third, fourth, fifth shot that he’s throwing. That’s why it’s going to hurt; it’s going to be the one that your defense fails to catch.”
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Elder has won three straight, and a fourth could put him in a good position to get a bigger name next. He’s not taking Sanches lightly and plans to rely on his UFC experience to get his hand raised on Nov. 14.
“He is making his debut. He doesn’t have a ton of experience or any experience at the highest level yet,” Elder said . “This will be his first UFC fight, so I do think that there’s a big difference in the caliber of opponents that we fought with me having several fights in the UFC. This is going to be my sixth fight in the UFC. I think that that is really going to end up playing a big factor.”
This article originally appeared on MMA Junkie: Evan Elder points to ‘big factor in beating Samuel Sanches at UFC 334
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