EXCLUSIVE | Christos Giagos Believes Experience Will Be the Difference Maker at Noche UFC

UFC lightweight Christos Giagos believes his experience will be the difference maker when he faces Daniel Zellhuber at Noche UFC.

The event takes place at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on September 16 to honour Mexican Independence Day. Fighters of Mexican heritage have filled the card from top to bottom, with the main event seeing Alexa Grasso defend her flyweight title for the first time against Valentina Shevchenko.

Giagos will have his own Mexican opponent on the main card, pitting his skills against Zellhuber who will be making his third walk to the octagon.

‘The Spartan’ thinks he will have the big experience advantage over his 24-year-old, who has had around half the amount of fights that Giagos has had.

He said: “I’ve definitely been in fire-fights, I’ve definitely been in back-and-forth fights, I’ve been in worst-case scenario situations. I’ve done it all so I feel like that experience going in there, I’ve been in deep water fights when sh*t gets rough sometimes and I don’t know if he has.

“He had a good fight with Lando [Vanatta] for sure, he uses range really well but then he fought Trey [Ogden] who he didn’t do so well with that fight. I don’t know which version I’m gonna get, I think he still has a lot of experience to gain.

‘We’ll see, I know he’s gonna be training hard, he has something to prove, it’s Mexican Independence Day, he’s a Mexican fighter [so] he’s gonna be the crowd favourite. He has some momentum going but I feel like I’m just the more experienced guy, I’m better, I think my fight IQ is a lot better and I feel like that’s gonna be the factor of the fight.”

Giagos Reveals Biggest Advantage of New Gym

Giagos moved to South Florida two years ago to train at Kill Cliff FC, formerly Sanford MMA. The gym is headed by Dutch striking coach Henri Hooft, someone that the SoCal native credited with improving his striking since moving there.

Current notable fighters include Michael Chandler, Gilbert Burns, Ian Garry, and Shavkat Rakhmonov. There have also been champions to come out of the gym, such as Rashad Evans and Kamaru Usman.

The 33-year-old revealed what the biggest advantage of training at the gym was in an exclusive interview with Combat Sports UK.

He said: “The biggest thing is just having the bodies, having the bodies there that are all such high-level.

“It definitely makes you… before I’ve trained with other guys, other UFC athletes in the past when I was in California, but there’s times where you go with a good guy or two and then you get a couple [of] easy rounds with somebody who a lot of people slack off.

“Everybody at this gym, even the smaller pros, they push the pace hard and everybody’s good there. It took some adapting and my body had to adapt to how hard the training was, to be honest with you. The level of competition there is just at an elite level. So it’s definitely different, for sure.”