Miguel Baeza scored a second round submission win over Takashi Sato at UFC Vegas 15 and UFC President Dana White was impressed by what he saw.
White reiterated after the event why Baeza was one of the fighters highlighted by the promotion before UFC Vegas 15.
“He’s a bad boy. He looked awesome, man,” White said at the post-fight press conference (via Simon Head & John Morgan of MMA Junkie). “He’s one of the guys we highlighted this week in ‘If you don’t know…’ and he came out and delivered tonight.”
Baeza got to be featured a little more than planned after his bout with Sato was moved to the co-main event slot after the main event between Curtis Blaydes and Derrick Lewis was canceled.
The run Baeza has had in the UFC thus far has led White to believe he could become the UFC’s Puerto Rican star.
“He had a primetime spot on ESPN and, in this business, what we do is we put together the platform for you to go out and show everybody who you are, and what you should do is go out and make people talk about you on Sunday and Monday. He did that tonight,” he said. “He went out there and had a huge platform – we came out of the college football game tonight – so yeah, the kid’s a stud. 10-0, Puerto Rican. When New York opens up again, you know what I mean? Get him fighting in New York. I’ve been talking about Puerto Rico, too. We talked about going to Puerto Rico a long time ago, I talked about building a Performance Institute in Puerto Rico, so he could be the guy. … He could be our Puerto Rican star.”
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