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By Tony Reid



Highly touted UFC featherweight Yair Rodriguez will appear in the first main event of his career Saturday night at UFC Fight Night Salt Lake City when he trades highlight reel strikes with the always entertaining and charismatic TUF alum Alex Caceres.



The fight between these two rising stars has "Performance of the Night" written all over it as both men bring incredibly entertaining and unorthodox styles of striking into the Octagon. The fight-finishing Rodriguez takes it a step further, as he feels this fight will be an instant classic.



"I think it's going to be a good scrap in there." Rodriguez said. "This guy throws crazy kicks. He moves in a crazy way. You never know what he is going to throw in there, just like me. He has a good left hand and he's pretty fast but he's sloppy. I think we are going to make history. It's going to be an amazing scrap."



The thought of a main event fight on a major television outlet in a prime time slot would weigh heavy on the mind of most 23-year-old young men but it's nothing compared to what Rodriguez has experienced growing up in the extremely dangerous drug infested city of Parral, Mexico.



Parral is a city with heavy drug trafficking and the all too common violence associated with such trades. Residents of Parral and surrounding cities suffer through the potential of daily kidnapping, rape, extortion and even murder of their friends, family and neighbors. The young Rodriguez has experienced unspeakable tragedies that have hit very close to home that most of us, thankfully, will never have to endure.



"There is stuff you cannot talk about." Rodriguez said. "There have been so many situations. It's something you live with every single day. Some people you know and some people you don't even know make you are afraid to say anything. It's hard to talk about stuff like that because you never know who is listening. They will come after your family.



"When you live in that area you never stop being hard. There are a lot of people being kidnapped. There are lot of people being killed. People that you now, people that your parents know…getting killed. Family members are getting killed. It's just hard to be there. Some people don't have a way out. There is just no work. There are no opportunities. It's not easy when you grow up in a place like that. I feel like nobody deserves to live like that."



As a young, aspiring fighter, Rodriguez found inspiration in a few well known former UFC champions that he watched and studied as they performed inside the Octagon. What's more, now that he is a UFC fighter and a star in his own right, he has become friends with many of those greats that he idolized from afar not so long ago.



"My inspiration inside the Octagon is watching Jon Jones." Rodriguez said. "I looked up to him a lot when I was younger. I looked up to Anderson Silva a lot, too. Anthony Pettis is an inspiration, too. Now these guys are my friends. Jon Jones is my friend. Anthony Pettis is my friend. I feel blessed. They talk to me about this opportunity I have. They tell me their thoughts about how I'm doing in the sport. It's amazing that I looked up to these guys for motivation and then I got to go meet them and become friends."



With all that Rodriguez has experienced and all the darkness that has surrounded him throughout his life, he continues to be a bright light of hope in and outside of the MMA community. He plans on spreading that positivity to future generations of fighters and fight fans.



"While I'm here in this this sport I want to teach kids that they don't have to live that negative lifestyle," Rodriguez said. "They can become whatever they want. They can become a lawyer or a doctor. They can become a champion. They just need to push themselves. They need to make things happen. Life is not easy. It is rough. It will hit you hard if you let it.



"I want to be able to tell the kids this myself. I want to be their inspiration."

