Bantamweight Roland Delorme competes for the first time since UFC release on August 15th, when he meets fellow Canadian Jesse Arnett in the co-main event of Super Fight League 42 in Calgary. Delorme (9-4) caught up with MMAOddsBreaker on Episode 117 of The Parting Shot Podcast and discussed a variety of topics. Matchup with Jesse Arnett (7-4) “He’s a good wrestler, he’s big, and he’s strong. He’s aggressive which I like; it’s pretty hard to have an unexciting fight with somebody who brings it like that. It’s one of those things where two people meet in the middle and then one person is going to go down. His wrestling is better than mine, obviously, but I think that my ground game will probably be better than his, as far as finishing submissions. He’s good, don’t get me wrong. If you sleep on this guy he’ll put you to sleep. With that being said, if I let him take me down and he gets on top of me, it’s going to be a long night. I don’t want to have a long night, I want to go in there and collect my money in the fastest time possible. I got to go out there and put him to sleep. I’m not getting paid by the hour but if it’s not dangerous, it’s not fun.” Training Camp for this fight “Training’s going good, I feel fantastic. My cardio feels good, everything’s feeling good. My training partners are really stepping it up here. I got a bunch of guys coming in all the time. Giving me different scenarios and in arenas that I want to get better. I got to bring in lefties, I got to bring it guys I don’t spar with too.” Returning to the UFC “That’s the plan but I’m not relying on it in any way. I got a good job now, I make good money. I don’t really need to be in the UFC. Of course do I want to? Yeah I’d love to be in the UFC again, but I don’t need to. I think that’s a big thing, where I just want to have fun. I just want to go out there, fight hard and have a good time in the cage, which is something I haven’t been able to do in a long time just because of the pressure in the UFC and fighting on that stage. I was never just able to be able to relax and just have a good time like I know could. I’m just going to go out there and have a good time with it.” New full time job “I work for a company and we grow medical marijuana for all of Manitoba and all the country. We got a pretty good operation going. We can serve a lot of people in need.” Canadian Government’s lukewarm stance on marijuana “Part of [the government] wants to pull the carpet out and they don’t want to do [keep it legalized]. But there is such a demand for it and they make a bunch of money with taxes, they are kind of stupid not to. If you have no problem selling cigarettes, selling booze, then I don’t see why selling legal marijuana should be an issue for the government. They have no problem killing people with pills everyday but they have a problem selling a little bit of weed to somebody, that seems stupid.” Treatment during his UFC tenure “It could have been a lot better. I’m not saying that I deserved more. They paid me good, I can’t argue with that. They paid me way more than anywhere else. They could treat their fighters a little better. It seems like if you don’t do what they want you to do, they get mad at you. Instead of you being the commodity, we’re selling you to the people. It’s a lot more of you’re our asset and we’ll do whatever we want with you. They write the cheques that are fine. But I definitely think they could treat their fighters a little bit better. But I enjoyed my time with the UFC, I got to fulfill a dream and I’d love to do it again.” Lack of MMA in Manitoba compared to previous years “[MMA] was way bigger a couple of years ago. Before I got into the UFC, I had fights in Manitoba every two months. It was two or three promotions competing against each other, hosting events every other month. There hasn’t been a fight promotion in Manitoba in two years. How are you supposed to get fighters to the next level? [Also] there is no amateur program. How do you expect these guys to go pro if there is no amateur program? There is seed put in place to get the guys to where they need to be. They had a good show when [the UFC came here] Winnipeg sold out, and they had the most amount of people in attendance for the first fight of the night out of any UFC anywhere. There are 13,000 people in the stadium for the first fight which is unheard of. Usually the first three, four, fights of the night you got to the stadium it’s empty. I fought in the UFC in empty arenas because I was the first fight of the night. His TUF 14 cast mate T.J. Dillashaw successfully defending his title at UFC on FOX 16 “T.J. looked f**king awesome. One thing you have to give to him is that he’s improved drastically over the past four years. Every fight looks like he’s getting better. I thought the second fight with Barao would be a lot closer. I figured Barao would figure him out a little bit more, he could be more aggressive or T.J. just couldn’t do what he wanted to in the first fight. That’s not what happened at all; T.J. came out and just beat the hell out of him.” Dillashaw having championship potential when they were on the TUF 14 “God no. It’s something that just completely evolved. I didn’t think he was championship material when I fought him and I didn’t think he was that good then, but he got way better. That’s one thing to say I got fight one of the best guys in the world. I can live with that.” You follow Roland on Twitter @rolanddelorme1 You can listen to the full audio version of this interview on Episode 117 of The Parting Shot Podcast below (36 mins in)
