Diego Nunes against Tyler Toner. Photo: Josh Hedges
With 15 wins and a single defeat to his name, Diego Nunes made it to his fourth win in five fights for the WEC. His triumph over Tyler Toner this Thursday in Colorado came by way of unanimous decision. Now the fighter is eying his next challenge, likely against Mark Hominick, who saw action at the same event and beat Leonard Garcia convincingly.
Check out what he had to say in this interview with GRACIEMAG.com:
What are your thoughts on your fight with Tyler Toner?
I tried to give it my best and I did what we had worked on as a team. We had in mind exactly what ended up happening. We’d drummed up a plan based on Toner as a world champion kickboxer. He has a really heavy hand, but we did well standing and in taking him to the ground. I think I won by a large margin, even though some of the judges gave one of the rounds to him.
What does your future in the WEC look like after this win?
Yesterday I had a talk with Joinha (Jorge Guimarães, his manager) and they told me they’d like to see me against Mark Hominick. I know a bit about him and I’ll study him further when I get back to Brazil. He’s a good striker, has great boxing. He moves really well, so much so that Leonard Garcia couldn’t find him in the cage. I feel it’s a great fight to further improve my standing in the event, as he’s coming off two good wins and his name carries weight.
Diego Nunes. Photo: Josh Hedges
You went to train at Nova União for this fight. What has changed?
Everything’s changed. It’s like I dove into new water and came out renewed, purified. Everything I learned there I hadn’t trained before. It’s a different training methodology and, thank God, it fit in great. I have a lot more to learn from them and it’s been a pleasure.
What was it like fighting at altitude in Colorado?
We did our planning with Dedé (André Pederneiras) and Pedro “Cuban”, our wrestling coach. They did the calculations just right as to how much time we needed to show up in advance to acclimatize. The air really is drier and heavy, you really feel it in your lungs. We wore out a lot, during the first training sessions. But we stayed there another ten days running and training and that made a difference. You can just compare us to the other fighters on the same night. A lot of them gassed out in the first round and José Aldo and I fought really well. I was quite explosive and felt great.