Rani Yahya competed on the preliminary card of UFC On Fox 28, submitting Russell Doane in the third round of their encounter.
The Brazilian’s mother passed away 11 days before the event, but she was still able to provide inspiration to a grieving son.
”It was f****ng sad, man,” Yahya told MMA Fighting. “I was at American Top Team and had to come to Brazil to see her intubated. It was tough. I still had to train twice a day during all that, there was no day off. At the end of the day, that gave me more motivation to go in there and win to dedicate it to her because she would never allow me to pull out of a fight because of her. She was my biggest fan, she was always watching me fight live in Brazil, and she was very proud of me.”
Maria Abadia De Camargos passed away after a thirty year battle with lupus, spending her last days in an ICU before passing away.
Yahya knows that he has to move on as a professional MMA fighter and wouldn’t mind a bout with a retired Urijah Faber down the line.
”I think that a fight with Urijah Faber will be interesting,” Yahya said. “He’s a nice guy, an icon of the sport, and it would be good to fight him because we’re tied with most submissions in the bantamweight history. It makes perfect sense. I know that my next fight won’t be for the title, so I want the highest-ranked guy possible. You only live once, so I want to put on my best performances now.”
A confident Yahya has now won six of his last seven bouts in the UFC, with four of those six wins coming by way of submission.
