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An underdog going into the fight, Erosa tagged Christian Rodriguez on the feet before submitting him with a guillotine late in the first round at UFC on ESPN 59 in Denver last weekend. Erosa recently weighed in on his guillotine, which has now earned a quite reputation for itself around Las Vegas.
Erosa claims to have already had a decent guillotine choke when he started training at 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu in Las Vegas. There Erosa met Varela, who according to him has one of the best guillotines in the world. “Juicy J” credits Varela for helping him make small adjustments to his own guillotine, which he claims is now nearly “unstoppable.”
“I would say I moved to Vegas about almost seven years ago now,” Erosa said on UFC Unfiltered. “And when I first moved to Vegas, I walked into 10th Planet in Henderson here and met a kid named Andy Varela. And Andy Varela has one of the best guillotines in the world, in my opinion. And I kind of just modeled my guillotine after his.
“I had a pretty good guillotine before that, but he really helped a couple of the small details that he likes to do that I use in mine as well. And it’s become a bit unstoppable. Also my D'Arce is fantastic, but the guillotine I’ve got to attribute a big percentage of it getting better to Andy Varela.”
A seasoned grappler, Varela is 1-2 in MMA, with his last fight dating back to 2018, a second round TKO loss against Keoni Diggs under the Legacy Fighting Alliance banner. Varela most recently won the Professional Grappling Federation World Season 6 tournament in Las Vegas this past April.
Erosa also revealed his love for skateboarding and snowboarding, which he credits for his elite kicking game. Additionally, Erosa claims to have become tougher due to falls from skateboarding.
“I was a skateboarder and a snowboarder, and I was actually pretty good at skateboarding at the time,” he said. “I actually attribute a lot of my kicking ability to having good dexterity and good balance from skateboarding and snowboarding. People have good hand-eye coordination; I feel like have really good foot-eye coordination as well because of all the years of skateboarding. Just made me kind of made me tough, too. You know, concrete’s pretty unforgiving. So, I think that helped build my tenacity and my toughness as well.”
Erosa belongs to a long list of MMA fighters who love skateboarding such as Payton Talbott, Jalin Turner, Luke Rockhold, Andre Fili and others. Erosa agrees that skateboarding is risky sport, which is why he has grown more careful about falling with age. But thankfully, Erosa has never had a serious injury in his skateboarding and MMA journey combined. Erosa believes he has been able to avoid injuries by learning how to fall.
“I turn 35 at the end of this year,” Erosa said. “I’ve had 15 UFC fights, 41 professional fights. I have never broken anything, never torn anything. I’ve been really blessed with that… Never anything [in skateboarding as well]. It was always learning how to fall before I learn how to do the trick. So I would always figure out how to fall so I could do it a 100 times until I could land it.”
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