Carlos Prates and Michael Morales are already champing at the bit to fight.
On Jan. 30, Prates and Morales fight each other for the interim welterweight title in the co-main event of UFC 336 at Scotiabank Arena in Toronto. Both men want their shot at undisputed champion Islam Makhachev, but they’re gonna have to fight for it, and based on their first face-off Friday at the UFC 335 & UFC 336 press conference in New York City, they can’t wait to do so.
With flyweight champion Joshua Van missing the event,
challenger Manel Kape had no one to feed off of to hype their main event fight, so the promotion was largely left to Prates and Morales. And while neither man was particularly disrespectful toward the other, there was a sense of competitive fire between them, which came to the forefront during their very intense faceoff, with Dana White having to separate the two.
As a joint press conference, Charles Oliveira and Diego Lopes — the BMF title fight main event for UFC 335 — and Alex Pereira and Sergei Pavlovich — the five-round heavyweight co-main event — were also in attendance, but both pairs of fighters stood in stark contrast to Prates and Morales. Oliveira and Lopes hugged it out before their faceoff, while “Poatan” and Pavlovich had a cordial, uneventful faceoff.
UFC 335 takes place on Dec. 12 at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
