“I really like it here,” he said. “I’m still learning, still evolving, and Eddie Cha and Santino (DeFranco), I think they’re some of the better minds in the sport, and they’re around guys like the Korean Zombie (Chan Sung Jung), Henry Cejudo, (Zhang) Weili and Deiveson Figueiredo all the time, so they have a lot of fight experience. They know what sticks, what to bring to the table, what didn’t work so well – they just have a plethora of experience, and I think that’s the thing that you need the most when it comes to fight, especially from the coaching staff.”
With his training situation set, the next step for the 35-year-old is putting everything he’s learned over the years into each and every fight, not just every other trip to the Octagon.
“The thing with me is taking practice into the cage,” he said. “I think the thing that separates the champions from everyone else and the greats from everyone else is consistency in performance. And that’s one thing you haven’t seen out of me. One fight I look like a world beater, the next fight I get submitted in the first round. I don’t think it’s so much like a coaching thing; I think it’s a me thing, and something I gotta figure out, how to show up time in and time out.”
Will he have it figured out by this Saturday, when he looks to bounce back from a December loss to Andre Muniz by beating Junyong Park in Las Vegas?
“I hope so,” he said. “This fight will tell a lot.”
