“It’s super similar,” said Johns of the philosophies of his current and past gyms. “Trey’s just added on some things, but it’s all following that same system and I’m getting what I was looking for when I came here. He was a student of his (Krause) for a long, long time, was one of those guys who wrote everything down, who knew he wanted to open a gym and was just very particular with keeping that system and adding on his own things. So I’m really happy that I landed here with Trey. Obviously, you want good bodies in the gym and we have really good bodies, but there’s also more of a hands-on approach with Trey. We don’t have quite as many guys, so we’re really working through it together.”
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It doesn’t hurt that Ogden is also a member of the active UFC roster, with three fights under his belt, so, like Krause, he knows exactly what a fighter is going through in those tense moments before a fight. And Johns had plenty of those before the Morales fight, as he was coming off a loss to John Castaneda, a suspension that sidelined him for nine months, and now he was going to step into the Octagon without his head coach in his first bout since leaving his longtime team at Fortis MMA. It was not a recipe for a good night at the office. But Johns’ mental game was strong.
“I knew in my heart that I was making the right decision, and just seeing as you’re going down the path that you think you’re supposed to be down, sometimes there’s bumps in the road or there’s hard things that you had to get through,” Johns said. “So there was some pressure on my back going into that last fight. It was the first fight without Fortis, and of course the gym that I went to, they weren’t even able to be in my corner. I’m coming off a loss and suspension, so I really wanted to get that win. It was two weeks’ notice, so I don’t think I was myself. I think I was in there just to win and that took a toll on my performance, but I got through it and the experience is priceless. So I’m happy that I got that experience and I’m ready to just move on from that now.”
