[Problematique]

Josh Koscheck Looking to Leave His Mark
By Chuck Mindenhall

For opponents reading into Josh Koscheck these days, it’s a bit like reading the fine print: Wrestling with “Kos” may result in serious injury…those who refuse to wrestle are subject to getting holes punched in their face…some submissions may apply.

In other words, Koscheck has come a long way from his Edinboro University wrestling days, when it was all about ground control; this is a well-rounded mixed martial arts fighter who destroyed Dustin Hazelett at UFC 82 with strikes, and who defeated Diego Sanchez while focusing on a disciplined standup attack.

And love him or hate him, Josh Koscheck is his own man. He’s a strutter, he knows how to fish a nymph on a cold river, he takes acting classes under Alan Autry (“The Heat of the Night”) in his spare time, and he’d like to be a UFC commentator down the line. He owns his own clothing company, Mar Clothing, because “I’m the type of person that can’t have a boss, man.” So he’s got to be his own boss.

Oh, and at some point in the “eight to ten years” he has left in his fighting career, he hopes to be the UFC’s Welterweight champion too. It’s easy to dream that way when you make yourself so hard to beat.

“My goal isn’t to get into a position to challenge for the title, my goal is to win the title— but right now my short-term goal is to beat Chris Lytle,” he says, referring to his UFC 86 opponent. “He’s the next guy that I’ve got to fight, and I can’t look past him because he’s a tough guy. He’s had almost 50 fights. So for me, I’ve got to win one fight at a time and hopefully get an opportunity in the future to get a chance to redeem a loss to Georges St- Pierre or whoever has that belt.”

Though he’s still a wrestler first, Koscheck is slowly evolving since his collegiate days, when he learned under the tutelage of four-time Olympic medalist Bruce Baumgartner. Going into the inaugural season of The Ultimate Fighter, Koscheck - a former NCAA champion and four-time All American - brought a storied wrestling history onto the show and a considerable amount of swagger, but he also bore the most dreaded distinction in mixed martial arts—that of being one-dimensional.

“If you go back and watch The Ultimate Fighter, and watch the technique that I had back then versus now, you’re going to see that everything—even my wrestling—has gotten better,” he says. “I was just pretty much a wrestler on TUF. Now, I think I have the capability of doing everything, jiu-jitsu, kickboxing, boxing, Muay Thai and MMA, which is putting it all together.”

Which is one of the reasons he’s 8-2 since being knocked out of contention by Diego Sanchez in the semi finals during that first season. Heading into his fight with Octagon vet Lytle, Koscheck is working on a little bit of everything in that arsenal with his guys at the American Kickboxing Academy—Jon Fitch, Phil Baroni, Mike Swick, et al—but is divulging absolutely nothing. Ask him about his game plan heading into the bout and he grows surprisingly terse.

“You’ll just have to watch the fight,” he says, like a man who’s been spurned by tipping his hand in the past. But the likelier truth is that his game plan is to simply win every position as they happen, to shoot when the time is right, and to react—just as he’s always done. Difference between today’s Koscheck and the one back from TUF is that he knows how to stay out of trouble, when to be aggressive, and when to strike (his haters would call this “being tentative”). If nothing else, he at least concedes that there’ll be desperation on both ends, which makes for a good fight.

“For me, this fight is one I have to win. There’s a lot of pressure on both of us to win and the loser could be out of the UFC, you know? There are many
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fighters that are getting dropped, and there are many fighters that are not performing—we’re in a contract business. You don’t perform, you could be gone. ”

Being under that kind of pressure is something Koscheck is used to, having been a high-level competitor for so long. But unlike some of his fellow fighters, pressure does not equal nervousness or anxiety.

“Oh, no, actually at this point in my career I sleep the night before very well. I wake up, I have good food and I just relax, you know—just try and lay in bed all day. There really aren’t any nerves. I know at the end of the day I can train hard and go in and do what I do, and that’s win fights.”

He’s not only super chill, he’s super-athletic too. Koscheck has never been dominated in his professional MMA career, even in the unofficial loss to Sanchez (which he later avenged at UFC 69). His other losses came against Drew Fickett, who, after being dominated for 14 minutes of a 15-minute fight, caught Koscheck with a knee before choking him out with 22 seconds left. In his fight against Georges St. Pierre at UFC 74, Koscheck showed well but made “a few too many mistakes.”

But right now he is zeroing in on Chris “Lights Out” Lytle, a gritty boxer with excellent jiu-jitsu who would like nothing more than to catch Koscheck with a haymaker and end the suspense early, just as he did with his last opponent, Kyle Bradley, in 33 seconds at UFC 81.

“Yeah, it’s a matter of who can make their game plan work, or impose their will on the other,” says Kos almost casually. “I’ve just got to be ready to fight in every aspect and to win every position. At end of the day, it’s about winning and losing, and my goal is just to win.”

Which seems like a particularly unspecific game plan (or a very specific confidence) for Koscheck, but it’s probably that he doesn’t really know how he’s going to beat Lytle, just that he will.

For some reason I am interested in seeing the Lytle v Kos fight.
Good read.