A New Chapter Begins for Sean Sherk

[FUZO]

TweetA New Chapter Begins for Sean Sherk

The youtube.com video clip made the rounds of MMA websites and message boards pretty fast when it hit the ‘net a couple weeks back, and simply watching Sean



Sherk going through what was dubbed ‘The Caveman Workout’ was exhausting. So you can imagine how he felt. But to the former UFC lightweight champion, working out like that wasn’t that big a deal.

“That workout was one of the easier ones that I do,” said Sherk, who is preparing for his UFC 90 bout this Saturday against Tyson Griffin. “He (Scott Ramsdell of Athletic Performance Inc) puts me through different workouts all the time, but the ones we’re doing now are ten times worse than that. That was six weeks out.”

They get worse?

“Yes, and whatever he wants me to do, I say let’s do it,” he continues. “It keeps me guessing and keeps the body guessing. You do the same routines over and over and the body gets used to it and can adjust to it. But if you do different routines every time, your body can’t adjust to it, so it actually benefits you a lot more because the body has to work harder.”

Sherk, known throughout the MMA world for his work ethic and insane conditioning, almost brushes off any pats on the back for his fight preparation, and as he puts it, things get easier for him in camp as he goes along, making him a fine-tuned machine come fight night. But if I was a future opponent, watching Sherk’s workouts would intimidate me a lot more than a mean stare or some trash talk.

“I don’t know, maybe it would intimidate some guys, but some guys might get motivated by it,” he said. “Everybody knows how I train from the All-Access show I did, so it’s not a secret, and that one (on youtube) was actually a pretty mellow one, so he (Griffin) might be watching that and thinking ‘well, that’s not that bad.’ He crosses me as the type of guy who works real hard too, and he’s probably watching that and saying ‘all right, I can do that.’”

He’s probably right, because if anything, Griffin seems to be cut from the same mold as Sherk stylistically – great wrestling, strength, and cardio – and he’s also one of those guys you really don’t want to spend 15 minutes in the Octagon with if you don’t have to. Sherk agrees.

“He’s got a lot of the same attributes I have with wrestling, the conditioning, and the work ethic, so yeah, I definitely see a piece of myself in him,” said Sherk of his opponent. “But he’s a lot further along than I was when I was 24 – I wasn’t even fighting at that point.”

When Sherk was 24, he was two years removed from his pro MMA debut, and even once he got into the game, he was looking at almost three years of fights before he got his shot in a UFC that looked vastly different from the way it looks now. Griffin, on the other hand, has sailed rapidly up the ranks in just under four years as a pro, beating guys like Urijah Faber and Duane Ludwig before getting his UFC shot in 2006. Since then, Griffin is 5-1 in the Octagon and looking to propel himself right into the title picture with a win on Saturday.

Sherk comes to the matchup from an entirely different direction, with this being his first fight since his third round TKO loss to BJ Penn in May. The loss ended a tumultuous ten month period for the Minnesota native, one which began when he successfully defended the UFC lightweight crown for the first time in July of 2007 against Hermes Franca. After the bout, he was stripped of the belt for testing positive for the banned substance Nandrolone, and despite his protests of innocence and passed lie detector and blood tests, he was forced to the shelf to serve out a suspension. When he came back, he was inserted into an immediate title fight against new champion Penn, but the lead-up to the fight was filled with constant questions about Sherk’s suspension and escalating trash talk between the two.

Then the fight started, and Sherk tried to throw a wrench into the works by standing with Penn until he could wear him down and then take him down.

“BJ is so hard to take down, and I didn’t want to go in there and shoot on him the entire first round and waste the round, saying maybe I’ll get it (the takedown) and maybe I won’t,” said Sherk. “Plus, no one had ever really seen me box before, so I thought, if anything, I
could catch him off guard and surprise him with my speed and my boxing and pick up a round or two. Then I would start shooting in the later rounds as he got tired and got easier to take down.”

Tt didn’t get that far though, as Penn caught Sherk, hurt him, and then took him out at the end of the third round. In one way, it was the end of that portion of Sherk’s career. Now he begins a new chapter where the past is just that – the past.

“I’ve completely put everything behind me, and it’s nice to be able to train for a fight without having all that on my back,” said Sherk. “I felt a lot of weight on my shoulders with the belt being taken away, even though I know I didn’t take Nandrolone. And a lot of people still probably don’t believe me regardless of the lie detector test, the blood test, and all the stuff the commission and the testing facility did. People don’t care. They want to believe I did it, and they’ll believe that I did it regardless. So I felt a lot of pressure because of that, I felt like the belt still belonged to me and was taken away for something I didn’t do, and then BJ’s running his mouth on top of that.”

“I’ve had a lot more opportunity to concentrate this time around, rather than last time, because there’s no pressure on me now,” he continues. “All I’ve got to do is train and get my hand raised – that’s all I’ve got to worry about now.”

And as far as ‘The Muscle Shark’ is concerned, a win over Griffin will put him right back in the title mix at 155 pounds.

“Right now, I look at it like there are four contenders – myself, Tyson Griffin, Kenny Florian, and Joe Stevenson,” said Sherk. “Of the three guys I can fight, I already fought Kenny, so I’m not interested in fighting him again, Joe and Tyson are the top two guys and that’s who I asked for. I thought that a win over one of those two guys will put me right back into title contention again, and ultimately that’s what I want – another shot at that belt.”

And surprisingly, after all the ups and downs and almost ten years and 40 fights in the game, Sherk’s enthusiasm hasn’t waned.

“I’m a big goal setter,” he said. “I set a lot of goals - small and big – and this is all about me getting after them. Right now, I want to be a two-time UFC champion. There’s a small group of people who can say they’ve won that belt twice, and I want to be one of the guys who can say that. That keeps me motivated and keeps this thing fresh for me.”

[tn94z]

TweetMaybe he will come back with a different style. I don't like him because his fights are so boring. He has this LnP style where he just holds you down and hopes to pull the win.

[FUZO]

TweetHe wont be back Imo