{"id":40100,"date":"2026-08-25T06:13:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T06:13:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sherdog.com\/news\/news\/Edson-Barboza-calls-UFC-331-star-an-improved-version-of-me-202521"},"modified":"2026-08-25T06:13:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T06:13:10","slug":"edson-barboza-calls-ufc-331-star-an-improved-version-of-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/edson-barboza-calls-ufc-331-star-an-improved-version-of-me\/","title":{"rendered":"Edson Barboza calls UFC 331 star an \u2018improved version of me\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
<\/div>\n

Edson
\nBarboza<\/a> sees plenty of himself in Mauricio
\nRuffy<\/a> and believes the surging Brazilian has become an
\n\u201cimproved version\u201d of him.<\/p>\n

Barboza, who recently retired from the
\nUltimate Fighting Championship<\/a>, claims Ruffy is one of his
\nfavorite fighters to watch. Ruffy is set to face Arman
\nTsarukyan<\/a> in the UFC
\n331<\/a> co-main event on Sept. 19 in Los Angeles and Barboza
\nrecently broke down the matchup, having trained alongside Tsarukyan
\nat
\nAmerican Top Team<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n

Advertisement<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Barboza compares Mauricio Ruffy to Anderson Silva ahead of
\nArman Tsarukyan fight<\/h2>\n

Barboza gave his assessment of the matchup in an exclusive
\ninterview with Sherdog. He claims Ruffy reminds him of UFC legend
\nAnderson
\nSilva<\/a> before drawing a comparison between Tsarukyan and
\nKhabib
\nNurmagomedov<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cRuffy is one of my favorite fighters right now,\u201d Barboza said.
\n\u201cHe\u2019s extremely creative and skilled, and he reminds me of Anderson
\nSilva. He just needs one opportunity to finish a fight. I\u2019d say
\nhe\u2019s the improved version of me.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he thinks highly of Ruffy’s abilities, Barboza acknowledged
\nhow good Tsarukyan is while comparing the latter to Nurmagomedov,
\nwho he faced back in 2017.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve had the opportunity to train many times with Arman at ATT,\u201d
\nBarboza added. \u201cHe\u2019s impressive. If he needs to, he\u2019ll come at you
\n10,000 times until he takes you down. Khabib had more pressure. He
\ncontrols you more and is always one move ahead, but he doesn\u2019t
\nreally look for the submission. Arman is different. He\u2019s always
\nlooking to advance and find the finish.\u201d<\/p>\n

He then highlighted Ruffy\u2019s finishing ability while hyping up the
\nmatchup.<\/p>\n

\u201cRuffy only needs one opportunity to finish the fight,\u201d Barboza
\nconcluded. \u201cAll I can say is that it\u2019s going to be a fight you
\ncan\u2019t miss \u2014 a classic striker vs. grappler matchup.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Edson Barboza sees plenty of himself in Mauricio Ruffy and believes the surging Brazilian has become an \u201cimproved version\u201d of him. Barboza, who recently retired from the Ultimate Fighting Championship, claims Ruffy is one of his favorite fighters to watch. Ruffy is set to face Arman Tsarukyan in the UFC 331 co-main event on Sept. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":40101,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[150],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-40100","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-martial-arts-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40100","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40100"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40100\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40100"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40100"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.martialartskleinanzeigen.com\/videos\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40100"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}