UFC Fight Night 38's Will Chope screaming his way to a UFC bonus

NATAL, Brazil – Featherweight Will Chope would like to think he’s going to do things differently in his second UFC fight, but he knows he can’t make any promises.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” Chope told MMAjunkie. “I have a gameplan, but even the gameplan just sometimes goes out the window – sometimes, a lot. Even when I say it’s not supposed to.”

And it isn’t, especially since he threw it out the window in his octagon debut against Max Holloway and wound up on the wrong end of a TKO. He learned a lesson in that fight, so he should be able to incorporate it when he meets Diego Brandao (18-9 MMA, 4-2 UFC) on Sunday at UFC Fight Night 38, right?

“Kind of how I fought Max the first round, but just keep that the whole time, and try to stay long,” Chope (19-6 MMA, 0-1 UFC) said of his plan for the bout, which serves on the FOX Sports 1-televised preliminary-card of Sunday’s event at Ginasio Nelio Dias in Natal, Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil.

“If I keep moving and keep him away from me … because I know he’s going to come charging for overhooks and maybe push me against the cage for a takedown. But if I get a chance to clinch, I really like clinching. I think of myself as more of a clinch fighter than a boxer or a ground guy.”

Chope stands out in the featherweight division at 6-foot-4. His reach is just the kind of advantage he is blessed to have. Brandao stands at 5-foot-7 with a 69-inch reach. If there were ever an opponent Chope could use his length against, this is the one.

But if he doesn’t use that reach, it serves no purpose. And that goes back to sticking to the plan.

Against Holloway, he was doing a good job of using his natural gift until he decided a performance bonus was more important than a solid win.

“I was winning the first round, and when I went to the second round, I really wanted to go for the finish and completely threw the gameplan out the window and went to a really stupid way of fighting,” Chope said. “So I just learned to stay calm and keep my confidence and not let it affect me.”

But as he might admit, that’s just lip service. He might talk about strategy like other fighters talk about honor and challenge and respect in MMA. It’s a nice idea, but in practice, it doesn’t always get to the heart of what’s really going on.

“People talk about honor and challenge,” Chope said. “I like the money.”

Chope hasn’t lost his hankering for a $50,000 performance bonus, so that impulse to impress will be there with him in the cage, nagging at him to swing for the fences and throw caution to the wind. Will he listen?

He can’t say, but he did notice one thing in his debut. The guy who did win the bonus that night, Hyun Gyu Lim, screamed a lot in the cage. Maybe he can cancel out the voice in his head by just making noise.

Probably not, but what are you supposed to say when you don’t know what’s going to happen?

“I’m just going to start screaming randomly,” joked Chope. “Because as long as I scream, I’ll get ‘Fight of the Night.’”

For the latest on UFC Fight Night 38, stay tuned to the UFC Rumors section of the site.