By Josh Koscheck - Fight week - almost time to go to work.
During the days leading up to the fight, I make sure that I’ll peak because I’m taking pretty much the whole week off and that’s the big key in recovering my muscles and my mind, and getting everything fresh so that I’m hungry and anxious to get in there and do something because I don’t really do that much throughout fight week.
By Josh Koscheck
FIGHT WEEK
Fight week - almost time to go to work.
During the days leading up to the fight, I make sure that I’ll peak because I’m taking pretty much the whole week off and that’s the big key in recovering my muscles and my mind, and getting everything fresh so that I’m hungry and anxious to get in there and do something because I don’t really do that much throughout fight week.
Once I’m on site, I’m the type of person that wants to catch up on TV and pretty much lay in bed and sleep and almost become a zombie. I like to get my body acclimated to when it needs to be woken up and that’s around the fight time. So I won’t do anything pretty much all day until it’s time to go fight. I train every single day of the week for 30 minutes every night around fight time. It’s a three hour difference from California to Montreal, so I’ve been training at 7:30-8:00 here, which makes it 10:30-11:00 back east, and somewhere in that time frame is when I’m gonna be fighting, so I prep myself to get my body awake and ready to rock around that time.
As far as my weight cut goes, when I fly in, I schedule that to be my off-day and I want to have my weight around 180-182, somewhere in that range. Ten pounds the day of the cut is pretty hard, so I like to weed it down into the 70’s after working out. On Thursday night, I’ll throw on my plastics and do my workout, and lose five or six pounds. Then I’ll go up, eat, go to bed, wake up in the morning and see how much I’ve got to cut. Usually it’s under eight pounds, so it’s not too bad.
On weigh-in day, it only takes me about an hour to lose the weight and I’m never in the sauna more than an hour. It’s miserable, and obviously you guys have seen it on The Ultimate Fighter with Bobby Southworth how miserable it can be. But mentally, it’s just part of the game. You’ve got to be mentally tough for an hour and you’re on weight. It’s a rough one, but I’ve got it down pretty good to where it’s not too bad. I don’t make it too hard on myself.
Once that’s done, it’s just a waiting game until the bell rings. My homework for the fight was to show up to training twice a day every day and push myself as hard as I possibly can, and I did that. My coaches also came up with a good gameplan, and I know how I want to fight. I think that my skills are good enough to where I can stand up, I can wrestle, or I can play the jiu-jitsu game. Of course I’ve got to listen to my coaches because they’ve been around a long time, and they’re my coaches for a reason, so I value their opinion and the gameplan, but at the end of the day, I’m the guy in there fighting and the one risking it all, so I’ve got to feel comfortable with what I’m doing, and go out there, put the gameplan together, and do it.
When I’m in the Octagon before the fight, I know I’m ready. I’m enjoying Bruce Buffer announcing my name, I’m looking at the referee, and I just want to go out there, take him down, beat him up, choke him out, and make it easy.
And I know that fans are gonna love this fight. I’m definitely excited about going to Canada for this fight, especially Montreal, which is a great city, and I just can’t wait. It’s gonna be another exciting event for the UFC and people better tune in because when I come to fight, you better know that you’re gonna get your money’s worth. I’m coming to fight and I’m coming to end this fight.
This one’s gonna be a special win for me. I feel like I’ve been through a lot to get here, and it’s been a tough six months with training and with everything going on. I’ve never done drugs, but you hear about people getting addicted to something, and while I don’t have an addictive personality, God, I love winning. When you win, there’s always an emotion that goes through your body that most people will probably never get a chance to feel, and it’s definitely unique. I love to win, and I’m sure I’m gonna be pretty emotional after this fight just because of what I had to go through to get there. I’m super, super stoked about this fight, and I want it to be May 8th right now so I can get it over with and take the next step in my life.
