Clark Kent
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01-12-2010 09:00 AM:
Gray Maynard thought he was ready to take on UFC lightweight champ B.J. Penn but after last night's win over Nate Diaz, he may have a few doubts. Mind games play a big part before and during a fight. Maynard, about as even keeled a fighter on the UFC roster, lost his head early against Diaz and his gameplan went out the window.
"He just tries to punk everybody. I was trying to keep it cool the whole time, the whole camp. I was a little pissed even before [saying to myself] he ain't going to try and punk me."
As a result, all that great boxing and footwork Maynard exhibited during his wins over Jim Miller and Roger Huerta were replace by crazy roundhouses, lunging and poor balance.
His mentor Randy Couture said Maynard learned a lesson:
"You can't let anybody get in your head. You can't allow that to distract from your job, your goal or what you're trained to do. He got caught up in Diaz's attitude."
This might make Maynard a target in the future.
"There's a lot of guys out there with an attitude and a persona. It's easy to get caught up in that,. That's what they look for, that's what they want. They want you to be emotional. They want to quit thinking about beating them. He was trying rip his head off with one good one."
As it moved along the fight got sloppy and nasty with both fighters talking and gesturing a lot. It actually brought more than a few booes from the 8,500 in attendace in Fairfax, Va.
"It was more of a scrap," said Maynard, who apologized in the cage. "I was probably more apologizing to [my boxing coach] Gil [Martinez]."
Now what happens if Maynard gets Penn? Penn is great fight prefight and in fight trash talker. Couture pointed that maybe this was a good thing, to get these kind of shenanigans out of the way.
More...
Yahoo! Sports.
Cagewriter is an MMA blog edited by Steve Cofield.
Gray Maynard thought he was ready to take on UFC lightweight champ B.J. Penn but after last night's win over Nate Diaz, he may have a few doubts. Mind games play a big part before and during a fight. Maynard, about as even keeled a fighter on the UFC roster, lost his head early against Diaz and his gameplan went out the window.
"He just tries to punk everybody. I was trying to keep it cool the whole time, the whole camp. I was a little pissed even before [saying to myself] he ain't going to try and punk me."
As a result, all that great boxing and footwork Maynard exhibited during his wins over Jim Miller and Roger Huerta were replace by crazy roundhouses, lunging and poor balance.
His mentor Randy Couture said Maynard learned a lesson:
"You can't let anybody get in your head. You can't allow that to distract from your job, your goal or what you're trained to do. He got caught up in Diaz's attitude."
This might make Maynard a target in the future.
"There's a lot of guys out there with an attitude and a persona. It's easy to get caught up in that,. That's what they look for, that's what they want. They want you to be emotional. They want to quit thinking about beating them. He was trying rip his head off with one good one."
As it moved along the fight got sloppy and nasty with both fighters talking and gesturing a lot. It actually brought more than a few booes from the 8,500 in attendace in Fairfax, Va.
"It was more of a scrap," said Maynard, who apologized in the cage. "I was probably more apologizing to [my boxing coach] Gil [Martinez]."
Now what happens if Maynard gets Penn? Penn is great fight prefight and in fight trash talker. Couture pointed that maybe this was a good thing, to get these kind of shenanigans out of the way.
More...
Yahoo! Sports.
Cagewriter is an MMA blog edited by Steve Cofield.
