I wonder what the strategy of the fighters on the TUF and rolling backstage at UFC, etc is? Do you assert your dominance and attempt to school people to get a psychological edge? Or do you mislead or hold back your favorite technique to have an ace up your sleeve in case you end up fighting later down the road? What would you do?
I would mislead people making them think they had a definitive edge and hide a few techniques for the real fights.
I think they are training just like they normally would. In the first episode, the teams trained isolated from the other.
I had a similiar situation happen to me. I made my pro debut against Melvin Guillard, and a year later, moved to New Orleans and trained with him full time, twice a day for 2 months. For the interest of this topic I will divulge a LITTLE of what went on in those training sessions.
They were VERY intense and, at first, they were very competitive. Like we were competing against one another from the beggining in our training sessions. Our first full spar we were scheduled to go 5 rounds 3 minutes each. We would pick up the pace so that by the 3rd round, we were to go full speed.
In this third round, I hit a combo on him and ended with a high kick KO, and gave Melvin a concussion and he was out for a week. The next time he came in the gym, and we got a chance to spar, he hit me with a nice punch combo and broke my nose pretty badly.
After we both hurt each other, we then learned to calm down and train properly and really became like teammates. We were both traiing for the same tournament, and he ended up in the finals against Rich Clementi wear he lost. No shame in that. HE beart Carlo PRater on the way to the final. I had to pull out due to injury.
Anyway, 3 months go by, I had moved in with Rich Clementi, and the second fight I was scheduled with my new training team, was against Melvin Guillard. We were told to play this thing up, and talk some trash, which we did, both knowing that the other didnt mean anything said.
When we got in the ring against each other the second time, I think it was a totally knew mindset from the first time. Because now we both knew each other not only from the first fight, but even more intimately from the gym. We knew not only how we would perform under the lights, but exactly what each others strengths and weaknesses were. We knew just how much skill the other guy really had, and how much heart too, all from the gym.
All these things played a part in our second fight. In the first fight, he made no secret he wanted to KO me standing up. I made now secret I was going to try to sub him on the ground. For the second fight, he came out hand high protecting from the high kick, and I was looking to stay standing and throw some leather the whole time. He got the fight where he wanted it, on the ground and came away with the victory.
Afterwards, we were back to being friends again, even cornered him in his fight with Laverne Clarke.
Eddie Bravo posted a funny story about rolling/warming up with somebody before their ADCC match.
"Because now we both knew each other not only from the first fight, but even more intimately from the gym. We knew not only how we would perform under the lights, but exactly what each others strengths and weaknesses were. We knew just how much skill the other guy really had, and how much heart too, all from the gym."
KBreezy, very cool post. Cool to see that despite having to get it on you were able to be friends again.
Just because you train with someone, doesn't mean they will be able to use the skills you have in the same way..... right?
What's the Bravo story? I'm interested.