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“El Nino” believes there is still much room for improvement.
Before signing with the Ultimate Fighting Championship in 2016, Claudio Puelles (10-2, 3-1 UFC) spent his career fighting in the Peruvian local scene. Recently, the 25-year-old took a unanimous decision from Jordan Leavitt at the end of their 155-pound affair at UFC Fight Night 189, scoring his third straight victory inside the Octagon. He then was invited to reflect on the current situation of mixed martial arts in his country.
“MMA was growing a lot, a lot here in Peru,” he said when he talked with Sherdog. “They had amateur events almost at least three times a month, so that kept new fighters very busy, and that’s a good thing. That’s something I didn’t have when I was fighting amateur in here. I really like that’s happening because that means we’re going to have a new wave of fighters going pretty hard at it. That’s something I’d like to encourage every young fighter to fight a lot, get a lot of experience. That’s the best that can happen to you. Gyms are growing [but] not necessarily the right way because we’re getting some gym where you don’t get good instruction and that’s not necessarily good [but] not necessarily bad either because at least you like the sport more people get to know about the sport, but sometimes they don’t get good instruction, and that’s not a good thing.”
What “El Nino” hopes is to see soon a governing body that can regulate the messy regional scene.
“There are good gyms, there are gyms where you have serious trainers, they’re making some new athletes, and that’s good,” he added. “But it could be better. There needs to be a little more regulation, maybe like an MMA federation that would help so that all the academies have to go through the federation to actually be ranked as officially MMA gyms.”
Tudor Leonte started writing about mixed martial arts in 2013 for Italian media outlets. His journey with Sherdog begun in 2018 and now he covers One Championship and countless European shows. You can follow him on Twitter @MrTudorLeonte.
