BROOKLYN, N.Y. – After Ion Cutelaba had to drop out of their scheduled UFC on ESPN+ 1 meeting, Glover Teixeira had one very direct instruction for his manager.

“‘Hey, please get me a fight,’” Teixeira said at Barclays Center on Saturday. “‘I’m ready to fight. I’ve been long out of this fight. My shoulder feels great and I just want to fight. Find me a fight, I don’t care who it is. If you find a King Kong, don’t even tell me who it’s going to be.’”

Thankfully, they didn’t have to go all the way to Skull Island to find Teixeira an opponent: On a little more than a week’s notice, middleweight Karl Roberson agreed to step in and meet him at 205 pounds. The two opened the main card of Saturday’s event in Brooklyn.

There was a bit of catch, though.

“Of course, they found a southpaw,” Teixeira said. “I mean, it’s hard enough to fight a southpaw.

“But I’ve been very successful with them. It’s not my first rodeo. I lost the distance there, but the key was to take it to the ground. Take it to the ground, there’s no southpaw or orthodox, it doesn’t matter.”

Teixeira (28-7 MMA, 11-5 UFC) ended up finishing Roberson (7-2 MMA, 2-2 UFC), who’s more than a decade his junior, with an arm-triangle choke in the first round of the bout. But Teixeira has no problem acknowledging what we all saw: That it wasn’t a breeze.

On his end, Teixeira says he made a mistake by insisting on the takedown for too long at the fence. There, he left himself exposed to the massive elbows that came dangerously close to spelling the beginning of the end for the Brazilian.

Teixeira hung in there, though, and eventually felt his opponent was getting tired from pursuing the finish. “Don’t get me wrong: I went to the guard and it’s not because I wanted to,” Teixeira said, but he was still aware enough to neutralize what could have potentially been clean elbows and, eventually, turn the tides in his favor.

As a result, Teixeira bounced back from a loss to Corey Anderson last July. Teixeira also finally returned, after a lingering shoulder injury that flared up again shortly before a scheduled meeting with Jimi Manuwa at UFC Fight Night 137 last September.

Speaking of which: Had Teixeira been able to move forward with the fight with Manuwa, that would have meant headlining a card in his native Brazil for the first time since 2013.

But, as bummed as he was to miss that chance then, he is still holding out hope for a new opportunity.

“Fighting in Brazil is my goal, especially if it could be the main event,” Teixeira said. “… And I’d love to have that fight with (Mauricio Rua). If ‘Shogun’ accepts that fight, I’d love to take that fight.”

That was a smart call-out in a few fronts. Not only is “Shogun” Rua (26-11 MMA, 10-9 UFC) a big name who could feasibly headline a card in Brazil, but he’s also a native of Curitiba – where the UFC is reportedly targeting an outing in May. In fact, Rua, himself, talked about his desire to fight there after his own recent comeback win.

Teixeira stresses that the call-out is by no means a diss to his fellow countryman and that he has a lot of respect for him. Given both of their styles, though, he believes the fans might be in for a treat.

“The way he fights, the way I fight – you know, we’re going to go in there and brawl,” Teixeira said. “‘Shogun,’ he’s a legend. We’re in this sport for this. We want to fight those guys. We want to fight the legend like Shogun. Dangerous, experienced guys. Everything, everything. He’s a legend, man. Who doesn’t want to fight ‘Shogun’?”

To hear more from Teixeira, check out the video above.

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