Raul Rosas Jr. picked up a fourth straight win with a unanimous decision over Vince Morales at UFC Mexico, and it turns out a late comeback attempt didn’t endanger him as much as his own conditioning.
As the third round started with Rosas clearly up on the scorecards, Morales made a last-ditch effort to get the win after he latched onto a D’Arce choke. There were a few moments where Rosas was grimacing from the submission, but despite several adjustments, Morales just couldn’t sink in the hold to end the fight.
Looking back now, the 20-year-old prospect says he was never close to tapping out or getting choked out because he knew exactly what to expect from Morales.
“To be honest, I wasn’t going to tap regardless,” Rosas told MMA Fighting. “[In] any choke, I could have been there for five full minutes, no problem. With me, if you’re able to get a choke on me that means your choke is perfect. Because in the gym, everywhere, I even let people grab a hold of my back and get a full choke, and I’m able to just be there forever and their arms get gassed out, especially for this camp I knew Vince was really good at the D’Arce. I felt it in training before because I’ve trained with him like a year and a half ago. I never tap.
“So this camp, I had my brother and other people I didn’t know start with a deep, deep really, D’Arce and I would say OK go and they were trying to choke me and I would escape. I felt really comfortable. His choke I would say the deepest, the one that went the deepest was the last one, but it was 55 percent out of 100 percent deep. It was a little bit uncomfortable but not enough to pass out or choke me out.”
Rosas admits he was actually a little surprised Morales even went for the D’Arce choke after he couldn’t land it when they were training together in the gym.
“I mean I thought he would know because he got it in training before,” Rosas said. “I’ve let him get a deep D’Arce on me before when I trained with him a year and a half ago. He squeezed the hardest in that training session. Like I remember he squeezed so hard for like a minute and he wasn’t able to tap me.
“I thought going into the fight he would know no matter how deep it got, he wasn’t going to tap me. But now that I think about it, why not give it a try, you know? Obviously he gave it a try.”
While Rosas says the submission never came close to finishing him, the altitude in Mexico City was a completely different story.
Fighters have notoriously struggled to deal with the thin air whenever competing in the region’s high altitude and as much as Rosas tried to prepare for what it would feel like, he has never dealt with a level of exhaustion he experienced did during that three-round battle.
In fact, Rosas was forced to alter his strategy, because when the first round ended, he thought he was done.
“When the first round ended, I was dead,” Rosas said. “Zero in me. My arms were dead. That’s why I didn’t strike no more. My arms were dead. They didn’t respond no more. [Usually when I go to] the corner and sat there almost chilling and this time when I went to the corner, the first thing I do I tell them water, give me water because I was so dry. Then I stand up because round two is about to start and I look at him and he’s jumping [around], all fresh, and I was like f*ck. Because I was dead. I was like f*ck.
“Then I got a flashback from the Christian Rodriguez fight and I was like no, I can’t let this happen again. I can’t lose. I was like no matter what, I don’t know what I’m going to do, I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to win tonight. Today I’m going to win. I don’t care. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, but I’m going to f*cking push through, and today I’m going to win. After that, I was kind of blacked out and I just kept on fighting and I was able to just win the fight.”
Rosas suffered his only career loss when he dropped a decision to Rodriguez back in 2023 after he completely ran out of gas, which allowed his opponent to take over.
He refused to let the same thing happen again so Rosas effectively willed himself to victory even though his body was completely exhausted.
“I was dead, especially for the third,” Rosas said. “It went from zero to negative. On the third, it’s been the most tiredness I’ve ever felt in a fight. That’s why I’m proud of myself because I was able to dig deep.
“Even the next day I woke up, it took me the whole day, I was still out of breath. Like if I have just got done from a f*cking 10-mile run. I think from how I pushed my body that fight, that night I pushed it so much, it took me another whole day to still get my air back. I was still out of breath.”
Considering how badly things could have ended that night, Rosas is proud of himself for finding a way to battle through adversity and get the job done. It wasn’t the best performance of his career by any means but Rosas had so much go wrong yet he still ended up with another win on his resume.
“Not perfectly but perfect in a way,” Rosas said. “I was able to get this experience under my belt, fighting at altitude, learning how to manage myself when I was so tired and still keeping myself in the fight. But obviously, I always want a finish but this just helps me a lot because before I would finish everybody.
“At some point, I said I have to learn how to manage whenever I’m not able to finish everybody. Manage three rounds. How to go three rounds. How to win a fight, not just finish a fight and now for my next fight I know I have to put it together to know when to win the fight and when to go for the kill.”
As far as returning to Mexico City for another fight, Rosas admits he would have to get better acclimated to the altitude, but he’s happy he got that first fight out of the way so at least he knows what to expect if there’s a next time.
“I’m always up for the challenge,” Rosas said. “Honestly, if the fight makes sense, like if it was a big fight, a big opportunity, yeah.
“The only reason why I doubt sometimes I’m going to fight in Mexico City is not because of the altitude but it’s because a lot of my team can’t make it, training partners, coaches, so it’s a smaller camp just like three people with me and that’s if they can make the trip. That makes it hard. As far as the altitude and everything, I would like to do it again. Now that I have that experience under my belt, I think it will be easier.”
