Already 2-0 this year, the 27-year-old Battlefield Fight League (BFL) heavyweight champion competes for the third time in the last eight months on Friday, stepping into the cage for a second time with Canadian pioneer Lee Mein in the second of the Vancouver-based promotion’s back-to-back fight cards taking place Thursday and Friday night at the BMO Theatre Centre.
“As soon as the competition was back, I was excited to jump in,” said an excited Machado, who was forced to spend all of 2020 on the sidelines as the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out the BFL schedule for the year. “I think I train harder, I focus more when I know I have a fight coming up, so it gives me motivation to keep improving myself, and as long as I’m healthy, I want to be fighting every two months or three months.”
Given the way he’s performed so far this year, it’s easy to understand why Machado wants to keep active.
In March, he got the better of Mein, who steps in this week on short notice for Ron McCarty, stopping the veteran roughly three-and-a-half minutes into the opening round. Just under three months later, he returned to the cage and ran through Unified MMA heavyweight titleholder Chris Larsen, felling and finishing the big man in a little more than half a round.
Currently riding a four-fight winning streak, the affable Brazilian prospect recognizes he’s in the midst of a major developmental period and believes that this fight — like each fight before it — will be the best performance of his career.
“I’m at a point right now where every fight is two or three leaps forward; I’m 100 percent better than the fight before,” said Machado, who trains at Franco Martin Kickboxing/Pankration. “I see more openings, I feel more comfortable in the cage, I improve my game in training. There are still things I can tweak, I can adjust here and there, but for sure I’m a totally different fighter from how I was at the beginning of the year and after the last fight.