Alex Morono had a different nickname before ‘The Great White’ and will fight Anthony Pettis next

This week’s UFC event sees one of the former champions, Anthony Pettis, fight on the prelim card against Alex Morono.

Pettis is a former Lightweight champion but isn’t upset about being taken out of the main card. His star has been waning a bit and he understands that this is part and parcel of the game.

Morono, for his part, is still growing in the UFC and is coming off an impressive win over Rhys McKee. He was speaking to WERMMA and was prepared to face the best Anthony Pettis possible.

Morono also prepared for the toughest fight possible and wasn’t going to take things lightly, even if Pettis wasn’t at the same level he was in the past.

The 30-year-old star also opened up on other topics like his nickname. Morono is called ‘The Great White’ but there is a huge story behind this.

A tough training session leads to the nickname

Morono highlighted that he had a different nickname before the latest one but credited it to some of his training partners:

“Before I got ‘The Great White’ moniker, they used to call me ‘Baby Fedor’ which is cool because I was kind of like baby-faced and I would throw down, not expressionless though.

“I wish I knew the details, if I had known the name was going to stick I would have paid attention.

“There is a Saturday hard sparring session at my gym. We are grappling hard and we spar hard. In this session there weren’t a lot of MMA guys there but there were some boxers.

“There was one of my buddies, Mexican dude, like classic tough Mexican boxers, names was peanut and none of these guys were in great shape.

“It was him and two or three other dudes and we do a shark tank drill.”

Morono added that he was in great shape when compared to his partners and also had a horrible tan after working for his father.

That led to his nickname of ‘The Great White’ being given and he also destroyed some of his partners during the training session:

“It was a shark tank drill, I was getting aggressive and I remember I had my shirt off and it was summer and I had a pretty wicked farmer’s tan. I used to work for dad’s company doing ground work labour for levelling grounds for pools.

“So, I would be super sunburned on my arms and head but my body was ghostly white. The mixture of the shark tank drill, the aggression and me being pale as a ghost, so peanut, my boy was like, ‘Man, you the Great White and the shark tank drill’.”

It will be interesting to see how he does against Pettis. Morono highlighted that he had trained hard for the fight with Pettis coming off the back of a win over Donald Cerrone.

This is an exclusive interview from WERMMA. For more exclusive interviews and content please follow the link.

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