Alberto Del Rio On If He Would Fight CM Punk In UFC, If Punk Will Actually Fight, New MMA Series
I spoke with Alberto El Patron today, who will be doing color commentary in Spanish for the new MMA series Combate Americas, which launches on NBC Universo this Thursday, September 17th at 11 pm ET/8 pm PT from The D in Las Vegas. The series comes a year after the reality series became the first fight-themed program in history to win a major TV award – "Best Variety or Reality Show" – at the 29th annual Imagen Awards last August. Fighters from the reality series as well as new, up and coming Latino talent and established, free agents will be featured in the live event series
"Combate Americas is going to be my first time in the role of an announcer," El Patron said. "I'm starting with them this Thursday, it's going to be Mexican Independence Day, so we're going to celebrate this with a series of fights. There are going to be other celebrities from Latin America there, and I'm really excited about it."
During the interview, which will be published in its entirety next week, El Patron talked about CM Punk signing with the UFC. Despite a lot of people thinking that Punk will never actually make it into the Octagon, El Patron thinks that he is taking his new career seriously.
"Punk is a great athlete, he's been training to do this for a while," El Patron said. "Even before he left WWE, he was already doing jiu jitsu and Thai boxing. He was just doing it to be in shape, back then he didn't know that he was going to be in the UFC one day. Now he's taking his time and he's getting ready. He's smart. I'm sure the promoters would like to put him in the cage already because they know he's going to sell PPVs. Phil is a really smart person. He's going to be for sure. There are people saying that he's not going to fight, and it was just a promotion to get people to watch UFC, but it's not. He's fighting for sure. I can't tell you the specific date, because I know he's getting ready and he wants to do well. He wants to have a career in MMA."
Earlier in our interview, El Patron stated that if he were to return to MMA, he'd want to fight someone who was a good fighter. He did admit, however, that he would be open to facing Punk in his UFC debut.
"I'll do it, but they [UFC] need to offer the right money," El Patron admitted. "The offers I received from all of the organizations are so ridiculous that I didn't even think about it. It's really good money for the fighters, because I know what fighters do every time they fight, but I do so well in pro wrestling, why would I do something like that if I'm making the same money for pro wrestling appearances?"
You can listen to El Patron's comments about a potential fight with Punk in the video above.
Tickets for Combate Americas are priced from $14.99 are available for purchase online at Ticketmaster.com or by phone at 800-745-3000. Events will be held on Thursday nights in the same time slot. All preliminary card bouts will stream live on DirecTV's all-new Hispanic OTT platform, YAVEO. Thursday's show features Invicta FC veteran Nicdali-Rivera-Calanoc – the first woman fighter signed to Combate Americas – as well as Ozzie "The Outlaw" Alvarez, Ricky "El Gallero" Palacios from the reality series, WSOF veteran "Ruthless" Rudy Morales, Urijah Faber-protégé Erick Sanchez and more.