Julian Marquez Looking to Pick Matt Hamill Apart at Combate Americas | MMAWeekly.com

While he’s been able to fight twice this year already with another fight coming up, the start of light-heavyweight prospect Julian Marquez’s career was not so active.

After pro debut in mid-2014, Marquez was only able to have two fights until early this year. It’s a stretch of bad luck that understandably frustrated Marquez.

“I’m not going to say at the time that I was tired of the sport and felt done with it, but that’s the whole purpose of any sport, it’s a love/hate relationship with it,” Marquez told MMAWeekly.com. “It was rough, but I had teammates and people who would talk to me all the time.

“I saw a sports psychologist once every week for an hour, and we talked about it, and he helped me focus my mind on what it was. It got to the point where it didn’t matter about the rollercoaster of not being able to fight; all I focused on was getting better.”

After losing a three round war with Chris Harris in Bellator in February, Marquez (3-1) rebounded with a second round TKO of Idress Wasi for Combate Americas in May. Impressed enough was Combate, that he’ll be making his return to the promotion on Friday to face former UFC veteran Matt Hamill (11-7) in a main card 205-pound bout in Verona, New York.

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“I think I match up stylistically better with him,” said Marquez of Hamill. “I think I’m a better striker, and I think I have a lot better cardio. I honestly think my wrestling is a lot better than what he’s going to give to me.

“I’m going to go out there and have fun. I’m going to sit there and pick him apart. Find his weaknesses and make him frustrated to the point to where he over-commits. That’s what I’m looking forward to. I’m going to give him the fight he wants, and a little bit more.”

Another thing that Marquez feels will play into his favor is the fact that all the pressure will be on Hamill, so it will free him up to just go out and fight his fight.

“(Hamill) has like 18 pro fights under his belt, and I have four, so on paper everybody thinks he’s going to win,” Marquez said. “But he’s got the most stressful part of the whole deal. If he loses to a guy with four fights, it’s going to harm him more than anything. I look at it like I’ve got nothing to lose, so I’m the most dangerous fighter in there.”

After inconsistency being able to find fights plagued the early part of his career, Marquez is looking to step things heading into 2017, and take whatever opportunities come his way.

“Right now I’m not committed to signing any long-term contracts with anybody,” he said. “I want to fight tough fights. I want to go one right after the other if I can. I don’t like sitting on the sideline. I’ve done that before, but I’m a fighter in every aspect of the word, and I want to fight, and that’s what I like.

“If (Combate) come at me and tell me they want to fight for the title and hold that belt – show me an opponent, and if they’re willing to do a one-fight contract, I’m cool with it.”

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