After Health Scare, Vicente Luque Reflects on ‘Special Win’ at UFC on ESPN 51

This one meant a little bit more to Vicente Luque.

After suffering a brain bleed following his loss to Geoff Neal in August 2022, Luque was sidelined for a year before returning to the Octagon at UFC on ESPN 51, where he earned a unanimous decision triumph against Rafael dos Anjos in Saturday’s main event at the UFC Apex in Las Vegas.

“It was like having the most amazing win for me, just because of everything,” Luque said on the ESPN+ post-fight show. “So many changes in my life. I moved to Florida, moved my family, a new way of life and just training and going through the injury. At the beginning, not knowing if I was ever going to be able to do this again and then I got cleared. Then going through the training camp, I’m going to fight a legend like Rafael. It’s a special win.

“I feel blessed. I feel amazing. Now it’s like all the decisions that were taken and everybody that was around to help me, we did the right moves and we’re victorious. That’s beautiful.”

Luque, who has finished 13 opponents in UFC competition, adopted a different approach against dos Anjos. He landed a career best eight takedowns and racked up 12:01 of control time in a grinding win over the former lightweight champion. Luque said he felt like the bigger, stronger fighter in the cage.

“Kamaru [Usman] told me ‘you’re going to be the bigger guy in there, you’re going to be stronger because you always fought at 170,’” Luque said. “That’s what I felt in there. Once he shot, I stuffed it, I turned around and I was putting my weight on him and I could feel he had do a lot of power to move me and I was just maybe 70 percent controlling him so I could conserve some energy but still put pressure on him, throw the shots.”

Luque also admitted to feeling some trepidation regarding how his body might react to a fight following his health scare. Once the fight got going, those concerns were alleviated.

“There was another side of me that was worried,” Luque said. “Like before I took those shots, I didn’t know how I was going to be in a fight. I took those shots and OK, you’re good. That’s why you’re here, and you’re ready to go.”