Final Strikeforce champ Tarec Saffiedine wants eventual shot at UFC gold

Tarec Saffiedine would love to be thought of as a champion still, but at the same time, with Strikeforce gone he realizes the number of people who looks at him that way grows smaller as time marches on.

So the Belgian, the final Strikeforce welterweight champ, will keep working his way toward what he hopes will one day be a shot at UFC gold.

“You know that saying that you’re the champion once you’re defending the title? I never had the chance to do it,” Saffiedine on Wednesday told MMAjunkie Radio. “I’m still the champion of Strikeforce, but I had to let that go once it was gone and focus on my career in the UFC. I still take a lot of pride being the last Strikeforce champion, though.”

Saffiedine (15-3 MMA, 1-0 UFC) upset Nate Marquardt to win the final 170-pound title a little more than a year ago at Strikeforce’s final event. With Strikeforce closing its doors, Saffiedine knew that a win over Marquardt would be mostly symbolic and the answer to a trivia question. He wasn’t going to move over to the UFC to fight then-champ Georges St-Pierre to unify the titles. He was moving over to just be another welterweight.

When he came to the UFC, he was sidelined for nearly a year before beating Hyun Gyu Lim a month ago in Singapore. Next up, he gets Jake Ellenberger (29-7 MMA, 8-3 UFC), whom he was supposed to fight in Singapore before an injury sidelined him.

It’s the type of fight that Saffiedine believes can put a lot more attention on him with a win.

“This fight still makes sense,” he said. “He’s in the top five (of the UFC’s welterweight rankings). I just got back in the top 10. I was really looking forward to facing someone like Jake, and there wasn’t anyone else available to fight. He’s back, he’s healthy, and I want to test myself against one of the best. Jake is one of them, and it’s a good matchup, I believe.”

The two will fight on the main card of UFC 172, which takes place April 26 at Baltimore Arena in Maryland. The main card airs on pay-per-view following prelims on FOX Sports 1 and UFC Fight Pass.

Because Saffiedine already was training for Ellenberger once, he said he’ll just make some modifications this time around. But most of those adjustments will be from lessons he learned in the bout with Lim, which was a “Fight of the Night” winner at UFC Fight Night 34.

“It does change a little bit because from my last fight, I made some mistakes that I need to work on,” Saffiedine said. “I need to work on a lot of things for myself since that fight. Plus, it’s not going to be a five-round fight. It’ll be a three-round fight, so that changes the intensity. But as far as pure game plan for Jake, I don’t think it’s going to change much. I’ve just got to go back to my coaches and go back to what we were working on in the last camp (before he got injured).”

While a win over Ellenberger might not have Saffiedine in the immediate title picture at 170 pounds, he would have a combined six-fight winning streak between his final four bouts at Strikeforce and first two in the UFC.

And right now, Saffiedine said the way he’s moving forward is with the mind of a champion – hoping that one day he gets a shot to fight for the title in the UFC.

“In my heart, I’m the champion and I’m still going to fight like the champion,” he said. “That’s where I want to go in the UFC – get to that title. And it would be awesome to walk into the cage fighting for the belt as a former Strikeforce champion fighting for the belt.”

For the latest on UFC 172, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.

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