By Ray Vann
Juan Archuleta
Fresh off a loss to Patricio “Pitbull” Freire, Juan Archuleta (23-2 MMA, 5-1 BMMA) is coming into Bellator 238 looking to re-establish himself in the ring and show the world that he truly is the best fighter in the game right now.
Fighting Since Before He Could Walk
Archuleta told Slickster Magazine that his practice for MMA began before he could even walk. “I come from a wrestling family, so I’ve been wrestling all my life” the California-born brawler explained. “At three years old, I was competing against five and six years olds in wrestling competitions,” and his love of the fight seems to have stemmed from there.
Archuleta would continue to wrestle, but it was a series of conversations he had with his wife after graduating from college that really convinced him to pursue mixed martial arts as a career.
“I was working, and my wife was just like ‘you need to go out and compete.’ She kept telling me to fight and fight, and we had been together since high school, so she really wanted to go along with this journey with me. So I just said ‘alright, here we go.'” At his wife’s insistence, Archuleta began fighting professionally at the age of 27, and after a rocky start he was able to win his very first matchup.
“I got knocked down in the first 10 seconds,” Archuleta recalled. “I woke up after that and I was like ‘oh shit,’ because from that point on I knew this dude was trying to take my head off. And I loved it. And I ended up winning the fight. So from then on, it was just history in the making.”
His experience in that fight convinced him that he needed to seek out the best and most skilled fighters he could, and that brought him to Joe Stevenson and the team at Cobra Kai. Through Stevenson, Archuleta would come to know MMA icons like Uriah Faber, TJ Dillashaw, and Cub Swanson, who he continues to train with today.
Cub Swanson, as it turns out, would soon become one of Archuleta’s greatest inspirations both in and out of the ring. “He’s had the highest of highs and the lowest of lows,” Archuleta says, explaining that Cub’s perseverance through adversity has left a strong, lasting impression on him.
Bellator 228: The Fight Before The Fight
Many fight fans were likely wondering what exactly happened to Archuleta in his last fight that knocked him out of his element, and the fighter explained that it wasn’t due to anything in the cage, but instead it was a result of what he called “the fight before the fight.”
“We all got to the arena, myself, Cub, TJ, all my coaches, all my corner. We get there, I do my drug test, I weigh-in, and then in the hallways I started hearing some fighting going. So I step out there and I’m like, ‘what’s going on?’ and they’re like TJ [Dillashaw] can’t corner you and he can’t be in the locker room” Archuleta explained to Slickster Magazine.
This news, however, did not sit well with the 32-year-old veteran, who tried to explain that he had sent in the applications for his cornermen months in advance, and he hadn’t heard anything about them until that moment.
“Apparently, I should have asked for permission about having a suspended fighter in the corner, but I didn’t know that because New York had allowed TJ to corner me against Dudu Dantas. So I figured, if New York had allowed him to corner me, then it was going to be the same in California. So that was my and my team’s fault for not clearing that up. And then the commission had some part to blame – even though they said that they don’t – about doing it on fight night”
The rules, Archuleta says, stated that Dillashaw couldn’t participate in any USADA sanctioned events, but the team believed that this meant as an athlete, not as a cornerman. “The rules really need to be addressed,” Archuleta says. “There’s too much gray area. They need to make it black and white, and they can’t leave any gray area.”
The loss he experienced at Bellator 228, he says, was largely due to the fact that the backstage fracas took his mind off of the task at hand, and he says that this distraction cost him dearly.
“This fight could have been life-changing for me and my family. It would have been close to a $3M payday if I were to win the Grand Prix, but now I’m stuck at base pay again,” Archuleta told Slickster, vowing to return to his rightful place at the top of the Featherweight division.
“I Am The Best Fighter That I Could Possibly Be”
Coming into Bellator 238, Archuleta says that he is more than prepared to step into the ring and show the world that his loss to “Pitbull” in September hasn’t slowed him down a second.
“I didn’t lose that fight due to a lack of technique or a lack of anything. It was just a lack of focus and my mentality. This fight is pretty much the same gameplan that I should have had against Pitbull. I just carried it on to the next day,” Archuleta says. “I am the best fighter that I could possibly be coming into this fight, and I’m going to dictate and show that. Every one of my fans knew that that wasn’t me that night, and I’m going to demonstrate that come January 25th.”
https://twitter.com/BellatorMMA/status/1216440583880708096
The matchup against Henry Corrales (17-4 MMA, 5-4 BMMA) is going to be a tough one, and as Archuleta freely admits, Corrales has thus far bested every one of Archuleta’s teammates that he’s come across.
“Henry’s no slouch,” Archuleta says. “I’m excited to go up and challenge him and try to derail him out of the winning streak he has against our team.”
Should Archuleta come away with a victory on Saturday, he says that he is hoping to get more fights in the future. “This has been the slowest few years of Bellator that I’ve had in my career,” he says. “I’m a guy that likes to fight 5 or 6 times a year,” and the current lack of fights is not exactly what he was hoping for. With a win on Saturday, he seems hopeful that he might see more windows open up for him in the future, but of course, he needs to first overcome the obstacle in his path – Henry Corrales.
And Archuleta had some parting words for his fans as well: “To all my fans out there, I love and support them, and they’re gonna be in for a treat come January 25th!”
