UFC 127 – Jorge Rivera: “There’s nothing he’s going to do to me that’s going to shake me or rattle me”

A defiant UFC middleweight veteran, Jorge Rivera has been speaking further about his upcoming clash with UK stand-out, Michael Bisping this weekend in Sydney, Australia, explaining there’s nothing the Brit can throw at him during their fight that’s going to rattle him… nothing.
Speaking via MMAWeekly.com, Rivera said:

“The truth is there’s nothing he’s going to do to me that’s going to shake me or rattle me. Nothing. He’s not going to say anything that’s going to shake me, and I know what I’m going to do, I’m going to fight him. Come the 27th, that’s how I’m going to do it, I’m going to fight him. If he wants to knock me out because I’m talking or whatever, so be it, that’s the business that I’m in.”

“This is how I view the sport. The sport is a game where you show your heart and you lay it on the line and the fans are going to love you for doing that. That’s why the fans love Anderson Silva, that’s why they love GSP, that’s why they love B.J. Penn, and Matt Hughes, and all these other great champions. All these guys, they lay it on the line. And you’ve got this guy running around saying he wants to fight higher competition and he wants to fight a champion. Nobody wants to see a guy running around for five rounds, and not actively engaging in a fight and trying to finish a fight.

“The object of the game is to finish the fight. I think that’s a point that he misses. When you run your mouth for so long that you don’t have anything to back it up… it comes across as arrogance and pompous and you don’t do anything.”

Rivera also commented on the YouTube video campaign he launched against Bisping, explaining despite what the Brit might say he knows he’s got right under his skin.

“He doesn’t control that. I actually found that humorous. You ask for my cornerman not to be in the corner for the weigh-ins? See, this is the funny part, he’s trying to say that those videos don’t get to him, yet he doesn’t want the guy who played him in the videos there. Everything he’s doing is a contradiction. We know it’s worked, the campaign on him has worked, now I need to go out there and execute the game plan and put him away.”

Rivera must hope that he has done enough to take Bisping out of his game plan and into his own as he looks to engage the Brit at every opportunity early on in this one. Will “El Conquistador” pull off the upset and dethrone “The Count” in Sydney, Australia?