Brad Tavares Ready For Krzysztof Jotko Test And Hoping For UFC Hawaii In 2018

UIFC middleweight Brad Tavares is currently riding a winning streak of three and he’s hoping to extend that run to four when he faces Krzysztof Jotko on April 14.

Tavares vs Jotko will feature on the UFC Glendale card headlined by Dustin Poirier vs Justin Gaethje and with wins over Caio Magalhaes, Elias Theodorou and Thales Leites in the last 18 months, the Hawaiian is heading into the bout full of confidence.

Speaking to MMANytt last week in Las Vegas, Tavares said he’s going to be ready for whatever Jotko brings to the table and admitted that he’d not even heard of the Pole prior to him fighting one of this teammates.

“I haven’t watched a whole bunch of tape on him,” Tavares admitted. “I’d been hearing his name and I guess he’d been doing his thing. No disrespect to the guy, I’d never seen him fight before until he fought Uriah [Hall] my teammate. I don’t watch every single fight, but from what I’ve seen, he’s pretty well rounded and he seems pretty good everywhere.

“He’s a striker which is right up my alley. I’m more than happy to go toe-to-toe with anybody. I’m expecting him to try and mix it up though because if he wants to come out there and just strike with me, I feel like that’s my game. I’m expecting him to mix it up and I know he can. I’m expecting a fight everywhere.”

As one of the man Hawaiians fighting in the UFC in 2018, Tavares is hoping the UFC see fit to stage a show there later this year. With Max Holloway as the UFC featherweight champion, Tavares says there’s no better time for the UFC to visit the islands.

“It has to happen,” Tavares said. “Since I’ve been in the UFC, like back in 2010 or 2011, whenever it was, it had been brought up, the question: UFC Hawaii? MMA is huge in Hawaii, there’s a huge following. I feel like at that time, BJ Penn was one of the hugest stars in the world and he still carries a lot you know. His name is huge. I’ve been hearing it over the year, but after like 2013 you know, when you keep hearing ‘UFC Hawaii is going to be next year’ I kinda got over it.

“It wasn’t until recently, now we have a champion from Hawaii and all these active UFC fighters hailing out of Hawaii and to have not just the UFC talking about it, but the Hawaii Travel And Tourism Authority say there end that they are interested and that they want to do it and that they want to make it happen. That gives us a lot of optimism, but, I’m not holding all my hope on it. It has to happen one day and I hope it’s sooner rather than later. I hope it’s this year., I hope it’s this summer. We will see.”

Watch the full interview: