and I respect that. He asked UK grapplers who they wanted
to fight him and after my success with Densetsu, people went
crazy and put my name down.So, it works. As I pointed out; he had to ask a thousand of my
Facebook friends to like his post because he doesn’t have any
of his own. That works for him, but he has me in front of him
now. The community delivered my name and I’m grateful.He’s gone for his usual public marketing strategy and it’s
coughed up me. I think this time he has gone “Oh s**t!”. Last
time he got smeared by Jake Shields; it was a tough fight for
him, yeah. This time, he’s looked out to the UK but I think he
was counting on somebody he could just tune up with and
make himself look good.But he hasn’t. He’s got me, he looks at my recent submission
record and he’s getting messages online telling him he’s going
to get his feet ripped off. He’s kinda gone “Wait, this is a lot
more complicated than I planned!”Regardless of what he says, I think he’s already conceded the first
defeat in this battle by insisting it is in the gi and that I drop weight.That must feel great in your mind.
I said to the organisers, he’s been a multiple time world cham-
pion at various belts and been a black belt since I was a purple,
but he can’t fight up one weight class in nogi?He’s the professional athlete, he’s the one travelling the world
and I’m the one grafting fifty hours a week and trying to do
jiu jitsu in my spare time. He’s calling the shots, but it doesn’t
matter to me where he wants to fight, when he wants to fight,
however he wants to fight ... I’m pumped up and I want to go
to war with him.You have fought sub-only from purple to black. Maybe the
size of the stage is going to be a little different, but submis-
sion-only isn’t alien to you.
Mentally, I’ve done a lot of work with a guy called Gaz Ogden,
working with hypnotherapy. I honestly feel like I’m in an un-
shakable place mentally right now and I just go through my
process.Years ago, I’d get myself pumped by listening to heavy metal,
but then I’d end up over-stimulated and my performance wouldsuffer. Now I get myself into a positive, happy mindset. I listen
to reggae and I get my process going. It becomes about me, I
don’t think about the venue, I don’t think about any fans, I don’t
think about my opponent. I focus on what I’m going to do and
going to show.How long has this approach to mentality been going on?
The thing is, it’s a continuous cycle. It has to be something you
cultivate all the time and a constant development. In my purp-
belt days, I made a gear change and started working with Gaz.I came to realise that the hyper-aggressive mindset doesn’t work
for me and it became about adapting the change of mentality in
everything in life. I have to learn a lot about mental performance
at work and I can see a lot of parallels in that.In operations, my field, it’s about facing challenges and difficul-
ties, problem solving and getting the win despite outrageous
odds, so I try to draw a parallel between two aspects of my life
and it’s really been working, especially these last six months.
Facing AJ, I know he’s a world champ, but I am really, really
feeling confident in doing some damage against this guy.Let’s talk about your training then. You work 50 hours a
week and spend two hours commuting. That’s 12 hours a
day gone. We’ve seen you train in Manchester, in Bradford,
in Pontefract, in Goole.
So, when I originally started training, I spent a year in Sheffield
before moving to Manchester for five years during University. I
trained at Factory BJJ and actually ended up living with Adam
Adshead, so my life was saturated with jiu jitsu. He’s the guy
who taught me a proper work ethic and about getting s**t
done. Then I moved back to Yorkshire and have spent the last
three years at Combat Base HQ in Pontefract with Darren and
Helen Currie.There’s one question that I always ask myself in life and that is
whether it is hard or easy? If you have a s**t day at work, you
can make it hard and get in the gym and do the rounds, or you
can take it easy and go home.It’s about doing what you have to do and not what you want
to do. I try to think professionally in all my training. It’s a
grind, I’m busted up a lot of the time, that’s why I put my
efforts into yoga for BJJ too. You’re working all the time, you
do class, you spar with monsters.“There’s one
question that I
always ask myself
in life and that is
whether it is hard
or easy? If you have
a s**t day at work,
you can make it hard
and get in the gym
and do the rounds,
or you can take it
easy and go home”