Wallace and UFC 111
Date: 2010-03-01 00:00:00
Source: http://www.thetandd.com/articles/2010/03/02/sports...
Submitted By: MMAFightsDump
Don’t expect Rodney Wallace to show up at UFC 111 at less than 100 percent. Less than a month out from his light heavyweight fight against Jared Hamman (10-2) March 27 at UFC 111 in Newark, New Jersey, Wallace (9-1), a former Bamberg-Ehrhardt High School star wrestler and football player, said Monday that he was hitting the peak point of his training. But, while some fighters live by the thinking that walking into a fight without some bumps and bruises indicates a less than stellar training camp, Wallace has taken an opposite approach, especially considering the recent rash of injuries -- most recently Vitor Belfort pulled out of his UFC 112 main event fight against Anderson Silva due to injury -- that has beset some of the company’s top fighters. “I don’t get into that,” Wallace said. “I think a lot of guys train differently. I train hard, but I train smart too. There are guys that don’t train like that, but I try to take that mentality. It’s like football. Guys in the NFL don’t get out there in full pads and rush into each other like they are in middle school. That doesn’t mean that I didn’t go in to the gym and learn something. I try to stay fresh, and (training differently) is why most of these guys are pulling out of fights with cuts under their eyes.” Wallace said he has taken the approach from the beginning of his MMA career, and credited his time as a star tailback at Catawba College with helping him develop his training philosophy. “Playing college ball, you notice how we practice,” he said. “Coach was always telling us to stay off the ground and not get hurt. When we train, we go hard, but we are not going in to hurt each other. We are just going in to learn something new and stay off the injury list. Once you get hurt, you miss at least a week. What good does that do?” Wallace said he has had a good camp thus far. “Right now, we are just getting there and doing a lot more sparring and things like that. I’ll probably simmer down the week before, but right now, I’m just in there trying to get all my footwork and combinations down that I plan on using going in.” MMA training is considered, perhaps, the most physically demanding form of training in sports today. For Wallace, his peak training schedule means hitting the gym by 10 a.m. for an extended session. “We warm up for the first half hour,” he said. “We do three or four five-minute rounds, have a five-minute break, then three or four more five-minute rounds. It’s pretty much a non-stop two and a half hour workout. Then, when you finish, later you go out and run and shadow box. You do some cardio, get some sit-ups and push-ups in. “If you love it, it’s not as tough as if you’re somebody that doesn’t love it,” he continued. “People that want to watch it will watch it. People that want to do it will do it. It’s tough, but you feel good about that exhausting feeling. Those little aches and pains just let you know that you put it in.” Wallace, who dropped his UFC debut to Brian Stann via unanimous decision on The Ultimate Fighter 10 Finale show, is confident heading into his fight with Hamman, who is known as a striker. “I love that type of stuff,” he said of Hamman’s approach. “I love people that go for knockouts in the first round. That’s my favorite type of person to fight, somebody that is confident to come in with their hands. “I don’t ever lose confidence when I’m fighting somebody,” Wallace added. “That is just me. You can beat me five times in a row, and the next time I feel like I am going to get you. There are a bunch of ways to lose. I know that it is possible, but prefight, I don’t feel like I can be beat.”
