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“These guys are holding my spot for me,” Landwehr told UFC.com. “These bad mother****** belts, these self-proclaimed baddest dudes, savages, these knockout guys, these guys who they think are the tough guys, they’ve been holding my spot. The guys that you be like, ‘Man, he has an insane pace, and he’s crazy. He’s violent. He’s aggressive.’ That’s my spot.”
The 31-year-old featherweight is riding a seven-fight winning streak and spent the last few years cutting his teeth in the Russia-based M-1 Global promotion, where he was the featherweight champion. M-1 Global allows its fighters to break their contract and sign with the UFC if they defend the belt once, which Landwehr did, but instead of jumping to the big show, he had some “bad blood” with Victor Kolesnik to take care of first.
Now, though, the Tennessee-bred Landwehr is set to take on Herbert Burns as the opening bout in Raleigh, and it almost feels like he’s more excited for everyone else to finally learn his name more than he is about finally stepping into the Octagon.
“I’m going to seize it,” Landwehr said. “It’s going to be the moment where the people are like, ‘Oh, s***. That guy is the real deal. He can fight. Boom, checkmark. Walkout, checkmark. He can talk well, checkmark. Damn, (he) hit the backflip off the cage, checkmark.’ Everything is checking.”