Brazilian heavyweight Junior Albini is ready to move on from a unanimous-decision loss to Andrei Arlovski, but he’s not above acknowledging the mistakes he made there. Albini was off to a hell of a start in the UFC. Having fought mostly on the local circuit by then, the then-unbeaten heavyweight came into his UFC on FOX 25 meeting with Timothy Johnson an unknown, but a massive first-round knockout guaranteed he didn’t leave that way. The attention was enough to grant the then-26-year-old a stab at a former UFC champion in Arlovski, who remained a big name despite the five-fight skid he was riding. Albini had always admired Arlovski, but, at the time, he told MMAjunkie that he was trying to see the veteran as if he was just any other opponent. Now, as he prepares for a UFC 224 meeting with Aleksei Oleinik (55-11-1 MMA, 4-2 UFC), Albini (14-3 MMA, 1-1 UFC) admits he couldn’t quite ignore Arlovski’s name value going in.
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