Mandel Nallo is preparing to make his long-awaited main stage UFC debut this Saturday. Jai Herbert will stand on the other end of the cage from ‘Rat Garbage’ at UFC Winnipeg on April 18th.

Herbert has a certain level of combative cache, having competed with some notable mixed martial artists in the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Touching upon the notion that he is lined up against a quality opponent to serve having a breakout performance and getting his ideal outcome as a UFC debutant, Nallo said [via MMA Canada],

“Yeah, I think it’s a cool first fight. Like there aren’t; I feel pretty lucky to be fighting a guy with as well established a name as Jai Herbert. Like it’s always a bonus to fight a guy who fans understand the level of. So that if you have a good performance against them, they can kind of use that as a meter stick of like ‘oh this other guy who did well against Jai Herbert went this far.’”

“Like you can see Fares Ziam who beat Jai is now cracking into the top 10 and like Ilia Topuria obviously became world champion and Jai had a good performance against him.”

Mandel Nallo on the quantifiable component of fighting Jai Herbert at UFC Winnipeg

As the Contender Series graduate and former Bellator MMA vet kept expounding upon his thoughts on the machinations of this Manitoba matchup, Mandel Nallo continued [via MMA Canada],

“So like it’s always better to fight somebody who’s known rather than another guy who’s just sort of a random guy making his debut or one and 0 or 0 and one in the sport. Because then like nobody really knows what to do with you.”

“You can have an amazing finish but like it doesn’t really; it’s not quantifiable in the same way that fighting a guy like Jai [Herbert] is. Then yeah, as far as the matchup goes, he’s got sick skills and that’s another exciting thing. Like you want to be threatened by the guy you’re fighting. You don’t want to think it’s going to be a walkover. Because that’s an easy way to lose a fight that you should win.”