Sergio Pettis has fought some of the most beloved champions in UFC and Bellator history, but his toughest fight has yet to taste gold in the sport’s biggest promotion.
The bantamweight contender returns to the cage against Raufeon Stots for the first time under the PFL banner in Chicago on June 27. It is expected that the winner of this fight will take on the winner of this year’s world tournament to determine a true PFL champion at 135lb.
In order to make it to that title bout, Pettis will need to become just the third man to defeat Stots. The other two are current UFC champion Merab Dvalishvili and the recently-signed Patchy Mix, with the Texan boasting wins over the likes of Magomed Magomedov and Juan Archuleta.
Sergio Pettis’ toughest opponent isn’t Henry Cejudo or Brandon Moreno
Over his years in the fight game, Sergio Pettis has taken on the best of the best in his quests for flyweight and bantamweight gold. Before winning the belt in Bellator, he had a solid UFC run that included a win over eventual champion Brandon Moreno and the legendary Joseph Benavidez.
However, the name that stands out on his CV is a decision loss to Henry Cejudo in a 2017 title eliminator which ended up setting ‘Triple C’ to dethrone Demetrious Johnson and become an icon. However, one name rose above all when he spoke to Bloody Elbow in an exclusive chat ahead of June 27 in Chicago.
“I’ve had so many tough fights and at different points in my career I was in a different mentality, different maturity,” he explained. “I fought Cejudo when I had just turned 24 or 25 so I was still pretty fresh in the game and he exposed my game.
“He’s a strong wrestler, once he held my leg it felt like I got bit by a shark, there’s no escaping that, the pressure was different. Rob Font was another really tough fight, he jabbed me up in front of my hometown when I moved up to 135lb so that was a tough night to swallow.
“Then Patchy Mix too, he went out there and subbed me, which hadn’t happened since I was 20-years-old. But man, the toughest has to be Kyoji Horiguchi, he was a beast too – the way he tore up my legs and exposed me for four rounds, that was probably the most frustrated I’ve been in a fight.
“I left that fight extremely sore, for two weeks I couldn’t let nothing touch my shin, he kept blasting through it. So I’d say [the hardest fight] was Kyoji.”
Sergio Pettis opens up about Raufeon Stots fight as he plots MMA comeback
After a year out following his second fight with Horiguchi and a brief boxing effort, Pettis is heading back to the PFL cage in pursuit of another world title. The first stop on that journey is a short trip from his hometown of Milwaukee to Chicago for a showdown with Stots three years in the making.
“I automatically said ‘yes’ when PFL offered me a fight June 27,” he noted. “I didn’t even know who it was against until I got the contract and it said Raufeon Stots, so I’m like ‘for sure, it is what it is,’ I was supposed to fight him a few years ago before I tore my ACL.
“So mentally I’ve been prepared to fight Raufeon so now it’s going to actually happen. I’ve been in the gym very much prepping for this opportunity. They sent the numbers and the contract, I actually spoke to Raufeon beforehand because he and I are still good friends.
“We gave each other a call and he said ‘I got you next, you got me next’. He just had his third kid and I had my first kid so we’re kind of in a situation where we need to take it to provide for our families.”