Bruno Silva Expects to Rule UFC Middleweight Division With Alex Pereira, Andre Muniz

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Rising Ultimate Fighting Championship middleweight Bruno Silva believes that Brazilians will soon take over the 185-pound division.

After three impressive wins in the UFC in seven months, with two consecutive bonus prizes, former M-1 champion “Blindado” Silva is finally thinking about taking a little time off. The Brazilian recently returned to his hometown of Cajazeiras, Brazil, which took several days to arrive there from Las Vegas. Silva spoke to Sherdog about his most recent performance, a knockout win over Jordan Wright, his style and his thoughts on the rest of his division.

“Less than 12 hours after my win over Andrew Sanchez, my manager got a call from the UFC to face Jordan Wright,” Silva explained about his hectic schedule. “On Monday, I was already training with Daniel Acacio in Curitiba. I’m in camp since February. Now I want to rest my body, learn new stuff. Next week, I’m back to training, but I want to stop impact training for at least 20 days.”

With an extra $100,000 in bonus money in his pocket for his last two knockouts over Wright and Sanchez, Silva believes his current run could not have gone any better in his wildest dreams.

“If I could draw with a pencil my beginning in UFC, it wouldn’t be so perfect,” Silva gushed. “Three knockout streak, UFC giving me good value, and that’s amazing.”

When breaking down his victory against Wright, “Blindado” revealed that his gameplan was to let his opponent strike first and see if he could beat Wright at his own game.

“‘Dida’ told me to make a mental war against him,” Silva admitted. “I always like to beat my opponents in their strong point, and that’s what I did with surprising him on the clinch. We trained a lot to bend when he clinched me, and [I] sent a cross punch over his hand, and that’s how I caught him.”

Known for his unique sense of humor, Silva also explained his traditional dance with announcer Bruce Buffer right after the fight.

“In my first UFC fight, I was celebrating my win [by] dancing, when I saw Bruce was laughing and dancing too,” Silva said with a smile. “Since then, every time I win, I invite him [to dance]. Celebrating dance with Buffer started to be like a tradition to my team. Bruce is such a nice, humble guy and always understands [it] as [a] joke.”

During the conversation Bruno revealed a curious meeting with another Brazilian middleweight talent in the backstage of UFC 269. When he met a few of his countrymen in Alex Pereira and Andre Muniz, he immediately knew there would be an oncoming three-Brazilian storm in the middleweight division.

“I’m a very warm person, typical of Latin blood, and I avoid making contact with possible opponents from my division, mostly Brazilians, but Andre ‘Sergipano’ broke me up. At the weigh ins, he come to talk to me, and he was such a nice, humble guy that I couldn’t play the cold guy with him. I was happy with his impressive win. I’m sure ‘Poatan’ [Pereira], me and Muniz will rule the middleweight division,” Silva concluded with the utmost of confidence.