Teruto Ishihara is blunt. He’s not particularly an MMA fan.

This is kind of odd thinking for a man who fights for a living, but Ishihara has his reasons.

He’s 9-2-2 as a pro and 1-0-1 in the UFC heading into his featherweight bout Saturday at the Vivint Smart Home Arena in Salt Lake City against Horacio Gutierrez.

He’s 25, and squarely in the middle of the demographic that indicates a high likelihood of MMA fandom. But Ishihara, who is from Osaka, Japan, does it because it’s a means to an end.

“I don’t like MMA,” he said. “I don’t like boxing. I don’t like wrestling. I don’t like grappling. I like only [women]. I don’t want to fight. I really don’t. I’m not trying to get fans or be different from anyone else. I don’t want to fight.

“I do this because it’s the best way I know of to get girls. If you fight, and you get the knockout, you get the girls. That’s my thing, getting the girls.”

Ishihara has a one-track mind. Ask him about the weather and he’ll tell you he’s interested in girls. Ask him about his training and he’ll find a way to connect it to his dating life.

He’s a performer, and he gets a rise from people when he talks so bluntly. In a sport filled with fighters who are experts at using a lot of words to say very little, Ishihara is unabashedly outspoken.

Saying nothing about his virility, he seems to be pushing this obsession for the shock value in a way to garner attention.

It’s a perilous tightrope he must watch, because he needs to be careful he isn’t appearing to objectify women or demean them in any way.

“MMA is something I shine in and when I’m fighting is when I look my best,” he said. “I think I’m most attractive to girls when I’m doing this. If I thought I was good at something else that would get the girls to pay attention to me, I’d do that.

“If I thought soccer was that thing, I’d do soccer. Singing, I’d sing. I’d even do a cooking show if it brought me the girls.”

Many long-time fight trainers won’t allow their athletes to have sex before a bout, but Ishihara just scoffs at such talk. Never, he said, would he stay with a coach who required him to be abstinent during training camp.

He said it’s an outdated way of thinking.

“The people who say that are just scared-y cats,” Ishihara said. “I’ll stop 10 days out before a fight, but during the training camp is when I’m at my wildest.”

He appears to come by his obsession with the opposite sex naturally. His father, he said, had a similar drive.

He saw many strange things he said growing up.

“My Dad was a big playboy,” Ishihara said. “My Dad would take me with him to see a [woman] he was having an affair with. It wasn’t that uncommon. I grew up seeing that kind of stuff.”

He’s a part of Urijah Faber’s Team Alpha Male and credited Faber for teaching him what it takes to be a professional. Faber is one of the sport’s most popular fighters, but he’s also prepared each time he steps into the cage.

Ishihara has a long way to go to be in Faber’s class, but he said Faber has kept him on the right path.

“He is the man,” Ishihara said of Faber. “If it wasn’t for him, I don’t think I’d be in the UFC or fighting as a professional. If he didn’t help me to start Team Alpha Male Japan, I would have been slacking off and being with the women and forgetting about my goal.”

What goal, he was asked. And quickly he went back into character, like a pro wrestler who broke kayfabe for a split second.

“I want to experience as many women in the world as I can,” Ishihara said. “…The reason I’m in the UFC is that there are so many people who watch it and that’s the best way to help me become as popular as I can with them.”