Marcus Buchecha guarantees MMA debut will happen in 2017

Fresh off his fourth absolute Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu world title in the Mundial, Marcus “Buchecha” Almeida says his interest to cross over to MMA is still as high as ever, although he feels he will to have to wait a little longer for his debut.

Due to all the grappling tournaments and injuries, the blackbelt told Combate there’ll be no time for his MMA debut in 2016, although he guarantees it will happen sometime in 2017.

“I’m not on the fence, but I haven’t really had any fantastic proposals yet, nothing has really attracted me that much. I’ve been training wrestling and it’s sharp, you can see how many guys I’ve taken down in the Mundial. I will get back to training boxing, too. It’s a sport that involves too much rotation and I avoided it because of my knee. I’ll begin again, wait for a good proposal and see what happens next. There was too much speculation and nothing solid. I need to be 100%. MMA has a lot of impact. I’ll be kicked in the knee, so next year sounds more real. It won’t be after 2017.”

The 26-year old has said he will have his training camp at the American Kickboxing Academy, alongside the likes of UFC standouts such as Daniel Cormier, Luke Rockhold, Cain Velasquez and Khabib Nurmagomedov, among others. It’s yet unknown in what weight class he would fight.