This weekend proved to be pretty eventful for me – I worked, got to spend a lot of time with my teammates in a 24 hour training session that we affectionately named “HellDay”, and watched some good fights.
For those wondering what the fun filled day called HellDay was about, it was a 24 hour training camp put on by my coach, Rob Nickerson, for all of the fighters that train at Reaction. We got to spend all day with each other while doing things like sparring, eating, training, training, and more training. One training session including running a hill with a heavy bag on our back. We bear crawled up some hills, ate again, pushed some cars, then we got to wind down and watch some fights at my coach’s house. Some of us worked at Trust until about 4 am, then we went back to the gym where the rest of our team members were sleeping and started another training session for an hour. As miserable as this might sound, our team grew together throughout the day and I would do it again… well, maybe in about a year or two.
As for the Strikeforce fights, I enjoyed watching most of these but only want to discuss a couple. Spang looked good striking although he got hit solid a couple of times by Burrell, who, in my opinion, spent too much time fixing his cup to worry about fighting. In the Melendez/Thomson fight, I felt like Melendez seemed a little complacent, and got hit quite a bit in a lot of the exchanges, though he fought back hard and got the W to retain his title. I think Melendez is good, but with the way he fought this weekend, he cannot hang with a lot of the top eight or ten lightweights in the UFC.
I was really excited about Barnett and Cormier to fight in Saturday night’s Main Event. I felt as if this was a great match up with Cormier being a great wrestler and Barnett being a seasoned vet and well-rounded fighter. Cormier came out hot in the first round and didn’t stop. Even though Barnett landed some nice strikes throughout the fight, Cormier’s elbows in round two and his slam followed with elbows in round three seemed to wear Barnett down.
I am not a huge Barnett fan, but would love to see him fight in the UFC in the future. There are a lot of very good match ups and marketable fights out there for him. Cormier is an excellent athlete and proved that he is willing to evolve with the sport this weekend. I’d like to see him fight some of the big guys in the UFC as well.
One of the fights I think fight fans would like to see take place is a match up between Barnett and Alistair Overeem. Now, for this to take place, Overeem has to be cleared by the commission for his high Testosterone “incident”. No, I don’t think that was an “incident” from eating too much horse meat. The man clearly is larger than others, but come on. You mean to tell me that all of that is natural? Please. It is obviously hard to stop people from using testosterone or from benefiting from TRT but I’m glad he got caught and I think he is overrated. I also wouldn’t mind watching Cormier fight anyone in the UFC Heavyweight division. I think a fight between him and Dos Santos would be awesome.
I want to take a minute to thank my sponsors that are supporting me while I get ready for this fight – On Point Athletics, Swole Sports Nutrition, BluegrassMMA, Lucky’s Auto Sports, Lexani and Catbird Printing.
For more information on the fight card, visit OfficialXFC.com and if you need to buy tickets, go HERE to find out how.
If you’re not already, make sure to follow me on Twitter, @Metts155, and be sure to watch for my blog entry next week! I know I promised a video blog and there is one coming!
“Words From a Wooly Headed Warrior” is a weekly ProMMAnow.com blog series written by professional fighter Matt Metts as he prepares for his June 22nd fight at XFC 18. “Words From a Wooly Headed Warrior” is part of our ongoing series of exclusive content written by individuals involved in the mixed martial arts industry. For more information on Metts, visit The Matthew Wellington Group.
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