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Blog 18
15 Jun 2010 2:25PM
In just under 2 weeks Ill be involved in the main event at Knuckle up, just now I'm starting to taper off in terms of training intensity after over 4 weeks of training like a maniac. The next week and a half Ill be looking at covering technical aspects which should help me implement the game plan my coaches have devised way back when the fight was first confirmed.
I'm doing this for a number of reasons, the first is after 4 weeks of training, 6 days a week, 2 sessions a day I'm more likely to pick up niggling injury's now due to wear and tear and punishing my body for the last month. The second reason is I'm dieting just now to bring my weight down so my body is functioning on less energy in the run up to the weigh in.
The magnitude of the knuckle up fight has brought me a fair bit of attention, I've been interviewed a few times recently and a question that keeps getting asked is why do I fight? My usual answer is simply that I enjoy fighting, I see the fight as a reward for training. However I'm just finished reading some stuff written by a legendary Olympic coach called Frank Dick, when referring to why athletes compete he said '' The purpose of competition is too improve performance''. That sums up why I fight more than simply because I enjoy it. I want to get better at fighting so I fight, and the better quality of opponent I face the better I should ultimately become.
Frank Dick also had a famous spat with Sven Goran Errikson, the dude who looked like Mr Burns from the Simpsons but managed to bang Ulrika Jonsson while she was still relatively hot. The argument invoked the level of competition the English national side where playing in warm up games for some major competition, euro's or world cup I cant mind, Dirty old Sven was putting England against lesser teams like Malta, Frank Dick roasted him for it, saying the England team wouldn't get much competition out of Malta team of part timers, if the purpose of competition is to improve performance, the better the competition the more improvement of performance, this is something else that's got me thinking. Fight management is crucial especially with younger fighters and guys coming up through the ranks, so it makes sense to pick fights that will test them and bring them on, but established fighters shouldn't really be looking for easy fights, I've had guys ask me to get them an 'easy' fight, I cant get my head around that type of mentality really. Personally I want to fight any one who is decent in my weight class.
Its pretty telling that in the same year Erriksons England team bombed out of another major competition, Franks Dicks athletic squad cleaned up in almost every competition they entered. Regarding my next, Leigh Remedious has done everything in the sport, he is a great fighter and has fought some of the best guys around like Mike Brown, Genki Sudo, Emanuel Fernandez, Robbie Olivier and Jean Silva, at the same time I was asked to fight Leigh I had been offered a fight in Scotland against a good Slovenian fighter Miha Utrosa. Utrosa at 6-1 is a dangerous fighter but is relatively unknown and isn't really of the same caliber of Leigh so I took the harder fight because Ill get more out of the fight.(Nothing to do with the fight being on Sky Sports and the money being better honestly)
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