Jon Fitch  The Road to the Championship  Week Four

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By Jon Fitch

Sparring’s still intense as I get closer to my fight against Georges St-Pierre on August 9th. I’m using fresh guys all the time, so as I’m getting more tired, I’m still getting fresh guys put on me.

I’m also fine-tuning technique and my gameplan, but going back to sparring, I think it’s hard for anybody to really understand how hard it is in the AKA gym until you actually get in there and do it. It raises your game to another level when the guys you’re training with are on that elite level. You can cycle through a lot of guys who are C-level fighters throughout a sparring session, but it’s still not the same as cycling through a bunch of A-level fighters. It’s that much harder, their game is tighter, their abilities are phenomenal, they’ve been around the game for a long time, they know what’s going on, they know what they’re doing, they’re in shape and you’re getting guys put on you who have a specific purpose throughout that round. You might have someone in there whose sole purpose is to take you down. The next guy might just use speed and try to stand with you and mix things up. It adds a whole other element to your sparring.

Working like we do, when people are talking about how good certain fighters are, one of our first questions is, ‘who does he train with?’ That’s always a big question because I don’t care how good you are; if you don’t train with anybody at your level, you’re very limited in how good you can be and how good you actually are.

Outside of training, I’ve heard some talk over the last few weeks about BJ Penn moving up to 170 to fight GSP at the end of the year. Of course, they’ve forgotten that GSP has a fight with me first. But that just shows you where some people really are still in this sport and how they still have no idea what’s going on. There are a lot of so-called experts out there, but they know nothing about the sport. They’re spectators on the outside watching the sport through a telescope, and they think they’re on the inside and know everything, but they don’t. You can’t let that stuff bother you though. I think it’s funny and it’s just that little extra pleasure at the end of the day when you win and all those people are exposed.

I’m less than two weeks away from the fight, and ever since it was announced, it’s been real to me, but there’s definitely another level of excitement now because it’s been busy in the fight world. There have been a lot of shows going on the last few weeks, so seeing all these other fights, it heightens that level and lets you know that you’re coming up. There are more notes in the media about the fight, more advertisements on TV, people are talking about it on the forums and websites, so it’s building slowly, and it’s the right kind of excitement.

It’s pretty cool to get the recognition finally and to be in the spotlight you want to be in. It’s been such a slow go and such a gradual thing, so it’s not hard to deal with in any way. They had me in commercials for my fight against Diego (Sanchez), so I’ve slowly been introduced to that top tier. Nothing happened overnight for me, so there was no real shock or change for me. I’m a pretty focused individual, so I can lockdown, keep my mind on what’s important, and nothing really throws me off – whether it’s positive or negative. I focus on training and the fight; everything else is just extra stuff that doesn’t really matter much.

But I’m happy that everyone’s getting into this fight. Even people in my gym are starting to get more excited about it. I had a mitt session with Javier (Mendez) the other night and it was in the middle of normal class hours, when the gym’s full of people taking classes. I didn’t even notice it, but by the time we got to our last round, most of the gym had stopped what they were doing and were just watching us work out. At the last bell, the gym started cheering, and I was like ‘what’s going on?’ But everybody’s pushing behind me, and they’re looking forward to seeing the fight. I feel that support and it’s a good thing.


For more information on Jon Fitch, visit www.fitchfighter.com

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