“It’s a bit of both,” he admits. “I was wondering what’s going on. And also, once you get ranked, everything kind of slows down the division. That’s one thing that I figured out the hard way. After that Tony Kelley fight, I got ranked and then boom, it turns into ‘I don’t want to fight him because he is behind me; I don’t want to fight this guy.’ I talked about it even before I got ranked, that most of the ranked guys don’t want to fight a unranked guy because they don’t want to lose their spot. There’s always that fear. But on my end, I’m just like, I want to fight. I don’t care who I fight. I just want to fight.”
He gets his wish, but if the rest of the bantamweights think that a 10-month absence has taken something off his fastball or has him less than sharp for his return, think again, because Yanez believes he’s leveled up since the Kelley fight.
“It was a rollercoaster ride, but I was learning, I stayed in the gym and trained consistently two times a day and three times a day, at times. I was consistently on the grind and worked on a lot of technique, so I’ve only grown. I feel the best I’ve ever felt on the technical aspect because it helped me close a lot of holes that I didn’t know I had.”
Add former UFC star Yves Edwards to the training mix as a coach, and Yanez made the time off work for him professionally, while he also got more downtime to spend with his son.
