Khaos Williams is back on a UFC card Saturday night, and the 10-fight veteran says he is coming to remind people who he is. Williams is scheduled to face Kazakhstan’s Nikolay Veretennikov at UFC Fight Night: Allen vs Costa after not fighting since last June.
For Williams, the return arrives after the first skid of his UFC run. He lost by unanimous decision to Andreas Gustafsson at UFC 316 in June, a result that gave him back-to-back UFC defeats for the first time. This week, he said the break has given him time to reset after a stretch in which he fought through minor injuries and short-notice opportunities. “It’s just life, man. We just got to keep moving forward,” Williams said in an interview with UFC.com. “We can't change yesterday. All we can do is focus on right now and focus on the future.”
Williams said the layoff has been useful because he can come back healthier and sharper. “I had a couple of little injuries before the fights (and) I took those fights on short notice, and now I got time to come back in and remind the people,” he said. He added that he has used the time to tighten every part of his game. “I've worked on everything, and I'm ready to just show the people,” Williams said. “We just continue to get better, every single day. That's what it's about. That gradual increase, every single day. That's what it's about, and that's what I'm about to show the fans.”
Williams said he is not looking at Veretennikov’s recent momentum as a problem. Veretennikov enters the fight with a 2-3 UFC record, but he is coming off a first-round standing-TKO finish of Niko Price in February. Williams said he has shut out the noise around his recent losses because the work is what matters most. “I shut it out, because at the end of the day, nobody believes in you like you're gonna believe in yourself. Nobody is going to put the work in that you put in,” he said. “Like I said on my debut, everybody can be against me, and I know what I'm about to do. It does help me thrive a little bit, because you don’t wanna doubt me. But it’s a part of being great, you know?”
The matchup gives Williams a chance to answer the questions that come with a two-fight slide and a long gap between appearances. It also gives him a chance to do it against an opponent who has found a finish in his most recent outing. Williams, though, says the bigger story is whether he can show the version of himself he believes has been there all along.
