After impressing on Season 2 of “Road to UFC,” Sang Hoon Yoo (33, Team Mad) has expressed his desire to make the jump to the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), promising a “no backing down” fight.
Yoo scored a third-round TKO victory over Chris Hoffman (33-Philippines) in a non-tournament welterweight bout on Season 2 of Road to UFC in Shanghai, China, on March 28 (KST). The Road to UFC is a sort of “audition” for Asian fighters to compete for a contract.
It was a thrilling upset. Yoo was pushed around in the second round, allowing Hoffman to land overhand hooks and takedowns. In the third round, he was down and out, allowing a knockdown to his opponent’s punches. After surviving the cliffhanger, Yoo dropped his opponent with a counter punch, got back to his feet, and finished him off with a flying knee kick as he staggered backwards. It was the kind of explosive bout fans wanted to see.
“I got a lot of followers on Instagram (after the win), and I got about a thousand DMs (messages). I thought I was dying to reply. My opponent (Hoffman) followed me a few days ago, and I didn’t even realize it,” he said, adding, “I played a match that the fans will love. I think it was a more interesting match because we came from behind. Among the matches in Season 2 on tvN’s YouTube, my match has the highest number of views. There were also a lot of comments.” In fact, the fight between Yoo and Hoffman garnered 690,000 views as of August 8, four to five times higher than other matches.
There’s a reason why fight fans are so passionate about Yoo’s matches. There’s a reason why fight fans are so enthusiastic about Yoo’s fight: He admitted 안전놀이터 that he blacked out when he was taken down by Hoffman. His admission that he couldn’t remember what happened made it even more exciting. Due to the non-tournament nature of the event, fighters need to impress to get signed by the UFC, which is why Yoo has high hopes.
“It was my first blackout. It wasn’t bad. It would have been sadder and harder if I went down and the fight was over. Even when I was down, my movements came out and (rather) I stayed calm and focused on the match,” he said, adding, “As the number of views proves, fans are watching because they like my game, so I’m positive that good opportunities will come.”
Yoo Sang-hoon, who started wushu in the first grade of middle school, is a silver medalist at the 2014 Incheon Asian Games. Even before he started wushu, he aspired to be in the Octagon, and after his silver medal, he quickly turned to mixed martial arts (MMA). The road to the UFC is long and arduous, but Yoo was confident that he would one day fight in the Octagon.
While the dream hasn’t materialized yet, Yoo often fantasizes about it. “I fantasize a lot about fighting in the UFC,” he says. I imagine fighting welterweight and lightweight fighters. His recent opponents were Gilbert Burns (Brazil) and Hamzat Chimaev. I cooked Burns comfortably with strikes. “I didn’t have a lot of angles,” Chimayev shrugged.
“Seven to 80 percent of my wins are KOs. I don’t think about the judgment. (If I go to the UFC), I want to fight so hot that everyone likes it and the fans think about when the next fight is. I want to fight like a man,” he emphasized.
