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Mario Pinto points to a mantra: “Perfection is the enemy of progress.” These words had special significance for the British-Portuguese stalwart. ufc The debut is serving as both a reminder and an important lesson for his impending sophomore journey.
Against Austin Lane in March, Pinto put on a beautiful, balanced display of his skills, but suddenly, things went wrong. After a surprise exit in the first round, Pinto was given a transformative pep talk from his coach Stuart Austin before the second round. Forty seconds later, this Pinto was leveling the lane To remain invincible.
“I was trying to be too perfect, and it got me into trouble,” explains Pinto. IndependentSitting outside a café near the Canary Wharf Brazilian jiu-jitsu gym, where he teaches MMA – alongside coaching roles at FightZone London and Fight City gyms. “Before throwing elbows, I was throwing 6/6 punches, but I wasn’t throwing as many because I was like: ‘Everybody needs to be perfect.’
“The thing about Stu… it wasn’t even his voice, it was just the eye contact. But also what he whispered to me: ‘You’re talking nonsense, brother. We fight all the time.’ They panned the camera right before he said it!”
Midway through the round, Austin acknowledged Pinto’s nervousness, which the 27-year-old says was down to external factors – and not any doubt about his own ability. Pinto explains now, “The internal is very important, and all these variables on the outside have no control over what I’m doing.” “It feels like they have control – the crowd, the TV, the brand.
“But contender series, i fought in front of mage [White, UFC president]But I don’t care – you’re still nothing,” Pinto adds, referencing the TV show where she earned a UFC contract with a knockout win. “Then last time, at Fight Week, people made a big deal about my UFC debut. They were saying: ‘You’re the favourite, I’ll bet on you!’
“Some of those factors make you think: ‘I can’t afford to make a mistake.’ But what difference does it make if you do it in the gym? The second round, I was just like: ‘You know what? Fuck this. If I get beaten, people will forget within a week. So, I just went after him. I finally felt free. I took the chains off my back.”
Pinto also admits: “I watched a lot of tape on the lane. There has to be a balance. I made it more complicated, trying to find his rhythm, the patterns. ‘Why does he change his foot like that? Why does he bend like that?’ “It’s overstimulation, especially if you think too much.”
That brings Pinto to her next fight: Saturday’s showdown with Jhonata Diniz on her home soil in Brazil. Rio de Janeiro card to headline as fan favorite and domestic fighter Charles OliveiraCompeting with Mateusz Gamrot.
“With Jhonata, I’ve broken her down and I understand her style, but I don’t want to conform my game to hers,” says Pinto. “Do what you do, and deal with what it does when the time comes.”
Pinto is not only trying to learn from what he considers excessive tape study; He is also trying to learn the above mentioned external elements.
“I’m not going to let those things bother me, even fighting in Brazil,” he says. “You just have to enjoy it, then roll the dice. But at the same time, I’m not trying to trick my brain into saying ‘It’s no big deal’, because then I know I’m playing the game. It’s just a platform to show what work I’ve done, and what I want to become.”
And what could Pinto become? ‘Champion’ is most people’s goal, but right now, Current title-holder Tom Aspinall An occasional training partner of Pinto, not yet a rival.
“I was like, ‘Now I know why you’re a champion, it makes sense,'” Pinto says of recent sessions in Aspinall’s gym. “Yeah, he’s good. Plus, I know he could raise the bar a little bit, so it was great to hang out with him and pick his brain. I even asked: ‘Did you see things you think I need to work on?’
“They told me it’s just some details, whereas a lot of people don’t want to tell you; they just say, ‘Oh no, you’re great, don’t worry.’ But he said: ‘You’re doing things that a lot of veterans don’t do – [you’re] Like a new kind of heavyweight.’ It’s nice to hear this and understand that maybe I’m not as far off as I think.
“All the best, Joe Andy [Aspinall, Tom’s father and coach] Made clear, it was: ‘There’s no ego here.’ Like, if you win a position: where other people are competitive or a little salty, they’re very cool. I like what they’re doing.”
Aspinall looks for successful first title defense as undisputed championWhile Pinto is still looking to crack the top 15, there are similarities between them. “I want to be like Tom, Islam Makhachev, Alexander Volkanovski, Jon Jones,” says Pinto: “I’ve always tried to be shapeless.
“If you’re ‘master of none’ that might be a problem, but I want to be mma fighterEspecially not a striker or a wrestler, otherwise one day you fight a striker and you have to beat them – and vice versa.”
Perhaps Pinto’s sessions with Aspinall would aid him in his new quest: progress on perfection.