“I want to make sure that I replicate, as much as possible, the feeling that I’m going to feel in there because I don’t want it to feel foreign,” Usman told UFC.com when we visited the champion in Denver, Colorado. “Most cases, when people are hurt, when people are definitely injured or people lose fights is because things that are happening to them out there are foreign, and they don’t know how to deal with it, so I want to make sure that I’m putting myself in that position as much as possible, so when I get out there, it’s second nature. I’ve been there before.“
“I got to a certain point in my career to where I needed to hone my energy,” Usman said. “I needed to work on it. I needed to control it, and I needed to know where to thrive, where to excel, where to step on the gas, where to step back, and that was a perfect thing about this gym. Some days, I come in and it’s just me and Trevor. Most days, it’s just me and Trevor during that time slot, so mentally, I am always in my head.”
Although Usman seems like the same fighter, that time spent in his own head and sharpening his skills is paying off. His striking is sharper than ever, and he hasn’t strayed far from the suffocating, pressure-forward wrestling style that brought him up the welterweight ladder.
In his last fight against Masvidal at UFC 261, he had literally been in that matchup before and got the job done in stunning fashion. A huge right hand to Masvidal’s jaw put “Gamebred” to sleep, putting to bed any doubt about Usman’s first, admittedly underwhelming, victory over him on UFC Fight Island.
