Rob Font warns Adrian Yanez not to underestimate him at UFC 287.
In a battle between two of the most technical boxers at 135 pounds, Font and Yanez will throw down in Saturday’s main card featured bout at Miami-Dade Arena in Miami. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on ESPN and early prelims on ESPN+.
Font (19-6 MMA, 9-5 UFC) has lost back-to-back bouts, and Yanez (16-3 MMA, 5-0 UFC) is on the rise. But after taking a year off, the 35-year-old Massachusetts native is ready to put a halt to Yanez’s hype.
“This is a big fight for me,” Font said on Episode 1 of UFC Embedded. “I took a year off. I needed it. I needed that year off to kind of recoup. Adrian Yanez, this dude is a killer. He’s got a lot of momentum on his side. He’s on a nine-fight win streak. I just hope he doesn’t sleep on me. It’s going to be a banger. This is a guaranteed Fight of the Night, for sure.”
Font is higher than Yanez in the UFC’s bantamweight rankings, and Font’s head coach, Tyson Chartier, finds himself in familiar territory after he helped Calvin Kattar snap Giga Chikadze’s winning streak in January 2022.
“We’ve got a young, hungry prospect coming up. He’s 5-0 in the UFC, really good boxing,” Chartier said. “Obviously, he’s got good jiu-jitsu and wrestling, too. He hasn’t always had to use it. This is what happens. In the UFC, you’re the hungry lion coming up and you try to knock off the king, and then you get a number next to your name, and then those new hungry lions come up and they try to steal your crown.
“So right now, we’re in that position where we have to defend our number. I think I see a revitalization of his attitude. I think now he’s coming into this fight with that different, fresh perspective of like, ‘I don’t have to do this, I get to do this.’ I know there’s this extra motivation going into it and extra excitement for him and the whole team.”
For more on the card, visit MMA Junkie’s event hub for UFC 287.
