Caged Minds Pre UFC on Fox 6 Interview With Shawn “The Savage” Jordan

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Posted by Mika Frankl

Mika Frankl recently had the chance to talk with MMA Heavyweight Shawn “The Savage” Jordan about his upcoming UFC on Fox 6 bout with Mike Russow.

MF: I met you out here in Albuquerque before but heard that this time you’re having camp out in Florida, is that correct?

SJ: Yeah, actually when Travis Browne fought Bigfoot a member of this camp here, but Travis got injured in that fight and there’s not Heavyweight at Jackson’s right now. So I decided to kind of move around a little bit come out here and see how it felt to be out here and train with these guys and so far I love it. I love the coaches there some great guys and there’s lots of great training partners. One guy in particular, his name in Steve Mocco is an Olympian wrestler and is just a phenomenal competitor, so I’m having a good time out here.

MF: How much work have you been putting in on that wrestling especially considering we know Russow he likes to come in and get in that close range and use the wrestling skills he possess?

SJ: You know what, I been doing a lot of wrestling. Mostly with Steve because he’s really great at it and I just wanted to take advantage of it and use what I can to improve my ground game. I think regardless of whom my opponent would have been, I would have done a lot of wrestling just because I was given the opportunity to compete with such a great competitor.

MF: Then coming off that last fight, last time we had spoken to you; you had said there was something big in the works and that was stepping in for Nogueira taking on Kongo. The fight didn’t work out your way, what did you take away from that fight and learn from it?

SJ: That was the first major fight of my career on that big of stage. I took the fight on short notice. I came in I didn’t give it; it was a really poor performance. Well not really poor but not an exciting performance. It was a very technical clinch fight. Things I took from that was just to prepare myself mentally for my fights instead of just physically.

MF: What kind of or where did you think you lacked in that preparation leading up to the fight, what didn’t you do?

SJ: Not so much a lack of preparation, I don’t think I let myself mentally accept how big the fight was going to be and how much the crowd would affect me. Coming from a football background I used to competing in front of a large mass of people. During the fight I got in the cage and kind of just froze up and it turned into I pushing him against the cage, he’s pushing me against the cage and I kind of got exhausted trying to think of what to do next.

MF: Was there any kind of butterflies or a shock moment when you did walk out and see all those people or because of the football experience was it the fight itself?

SJ: When I got into the ring and we started going and with all those people, it was very thing altogether and just made me freeze up a little bit. But better it happen now than later in a bigger more important fight.

MF: When you went back and looked at the footage of the fight, what where your first thoughts?

SJ: It was just really frustrating to see myself get positions that I normally am dominant at, where I can kind of impose my will and not do anything with it. It gets frustrating overall through the entire fight, because looking at the film I know what I could have or should done and then knowing that I actually didn’t do it during the fight. It’s just kind of frustrating seeing yourself, seeing you shooting yourself in the foot.

MF: With the changes you’ve made, how do you feel you’ll handle that situation differently the next time you’re in it?

SJ: I think that I’ve kind of shook off the butterflies with that one and coming out and losing a fight in that fashion is kind of, I’m ok with losing a fight if we go in there and bang it out and it a tough fight and I just come up short, that’s easier to stomach than when neither one of you even fought.

MF: Would you say building off that performance, has it kind of reignited that fire and made it burn deeper; you kind of sound more motivated, is that the feeling I’m getting here?

SJ: Absolutely, it’s motivated me to come back out and really show what I know I can do and I want to get that taste out of my mouth and move forward with my career.

There’s even more to this interview in the video below…

 

Follow Mika Frankl on twitter @cagedmindsmma