Andre Petroski has been criticizing multi-decorated wrestler Bo Nickal since before Nickal made his Ultimate Fighting Championship debut and continues to do so today.
Petroski had been calling for the three-time NCAA national champion to fight in grappling or MMA even before his unanimous decision win over Wellington Turman in November 2022. Petroski doubled down on those calls after Turman’s decision win over Gerald Meerschaert at UFC 292 in August 2023.
However, Petroski has since suffered consecutive stoppage losses to Michel Pereira and Jacob Markun. He will look to continue his winning streak on Saturday when he takes on Josh Fremd at UFC on ESPN 59. Petroski believes a win over Fremd would reopen the discussion for a potential fight with Nickal.
Markun recently announced he would face Nickal at UFC 302 in New Jersey, a move that was quickly denied by Nickal’s management and ultimately did not happen, but Petroski considered the announcement to be genuine, seeing it as a matchup that Nickal would have a stylistic advantage in.
Nickal’s first two UFC fights were first-round stoppage wins against less-talented opponents on the ground, and while Nickal most recently submitted grappler Cody Brundage at UFC 300 in April, it was the first time he’d gone two rounds in his professional and amateur MMA career. But the fact that Nickal is now fighting a wrestler gives Petroski hope for a potential matchup in the future.
“I think the Bo Nickal fight is coming up…Obviously, Bo hasn’t signed a contract to fight Markun, but when it was announced I thought it was official,” Petroski said on Just Scrap Radio. “I thought it was natural that they would watch our fight and see how easily I beat him and think, ‘This is the perfect match for Bo.’ On paper, Bo is a much higher level wrestler, but they’re still trying to fight a grappler, which is not what they wanted before. They’ve only fought grapplers. [Jamie] Pickett, or Val [Woodburn]… They didn’t fight grapplers. They didn’t fight guys who could grapple. Then he fought Cody Brundage, who is a grappler. I see myself somewhere along the line.”
