Brandon Royval chooses a different mindset for UFC Fight Night

MANILA, Philippines — It’s a big fight — this dust-up between Brandon Royval with Brazilian Rogerio Bontorin — come UFC Fight Night: Kattar vs. Chikadze on Sunday, January 16 (on Premier Sports on Skycable and Cignal as well as the Tap Go application). 

For the 29-year-old Royval (12-6-0), who started out his UFC career on a stellar note, winning his first two matches that were named Fight of the Night, it is getting his career back on track while changing his approach to the game.

After coming from Legacy Fighting Alliance where he picked up a 6-2 record and was its flyweight champion, Royval started out his UFC career like a house on fire. He submitted Tim Elliot and Kai Kara-France and earned Fight of the Night honors for both.

Then in his next fight, he dislocated his shoulder and lost to Brandon Moreno. His one fight of 2021 saw him submit to Alexandre Pantoja.

Now he opens the UFC’s first offering for 2022 with a huge match.

“It’s a hard match-up,” Royval said of this bout versus Bontorin (17-3-0). “He has been in the Top 10 a long time and has been representing the flyweight division with success.”

“My training camp was a little different and I prepared specifically for Bontorin. I started out by thinking of not rushing things.”

Royval believes that his early success in the UFC took him out of his game plan which was to fight at a frenetic pace. While it is his style, he admitted that “was thinking of how to impress and as a result, lost myself. It is easy to get worked up.”

“It’s those 50Gs,” he said of the $50,000 bonus for Fight of the Night.

When he began training camp for this fight, Royval’s first step was to work on his mindset. 

“I am not placing pressure on myself. I am not thinking of title contention fights and thinking that a win here and I get a title shot. That’s a lot of pressure. Now, I am enjoying the process and getting ready for the sport I love. I calm myself down and know when to put the heat on.”

With regards to the fight, Brandon looked at it from his Brazilian foe’s perspective. I ask, ‘how’s Bontorin going to beat me? Why did they accept this fight and what is his strategy? How to negate that? His path to victory is how I make a mistake and I cannot give him that.”

Come fight night, Royval will also have to purge his mind of some kids he lost. 

Prior to taking up mixed martial arts, Royval worked as a counselor in a juvenile detention center. Just this past week, two of his former wards lost their lives.

“Some weeks I hear good news about someone getting a job or having a baby,” Brandon recounted. “Sometimes, they get an overdose. It’s crazy to think that a person is one decision away from changing his life forever.”

While his former wards have been impressed with Royval’s rise in MMA, Brandon says that he cannot just ask them to take up the sport.

“It’s a choice,” he said.

Right now, he has to put the senseless losses of life in the back of his mind and try to do something positive for his career.

That is his choice and no doubt, UFC Fight Night: Kattar vs. Chikadze with Royval vs. Bontorin will be an explosive event to start off UFC's 2022 event calendar.