UFC 223’s Artem Lobov: My MMA record ‘represents a real fighter’

Conor McGregor’s teammate from SBG Ireland Artem Lobov does not exactly have a very pleasing professional mixed martial arts record. He currently holds a win-loss slate of 13-14-1, with one no contest, and has gone 2-4 in his UFC run that began in late 2015.

Yet, despite this subpar record, “The Russian Hammer” is still proud of what he has accomplished in his seven-year MMA career.

“My record, for example, it represents a tough road. It represents a guy that was willing to fight when no one else would,” Lobov told MMAjunkie Radio. “When you ask to go to some other country and fight their local best guy, and you know the judges are going to be his friend and the referee is going to be his coach, the head of commission guys is probably going to be his relative or something like that, and you’re asked to do that for 100 Euros.”

“Nobody wants to do that. There was only one guy that was willing to answer the call every time, and that was me, so my record represents that – a true fighter, a real fighter.”

After two losses following his debut at the TUF 22 Finale, Lobov was able to pick up two wins in 2016. This short streak, however, was broken when he lost twice in 2017. But for Lobov, his main focus is to move forward, as he faces fellow TUF alum Alex Caceres at UFC 223 on April 7^th in Brooklyn.

“I was quite happy, to be honest, with even my last two performances, even though I lost fights,” Lobov said. “There were certain errors that I have to fix, but it’s important to keep things at work because, for example, when a guy gets a loss, they often want to change everything, but that’s not the case. A lot of the things still work.

“You just might need to make some smaller adjustments. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing. I just fine-tuned my performances to get the perfect performance, and I feel that it will come.”

The 31-year-old Lobov also recently revealed that he has been thinking about possibly transitioning into either boxing or K-1 kickboxing.