Sanchez a Hungry Lion again
By Thomas Gerbasi
The first loss. It’s a traumatic event for most fighters, who in response will try to do anything in their power to erase the memory of that defeat as soon as it happens. For some, that means getting back into the gym within days. For others, the easiest way to deal with a setback is to demand another fight immediately to get a quick win and move on.
Diego Sanchez didn’t have those options after losing his first pro bout to Josh Koscheck at UFC 69 in April. For him, the weeks after the fight were spent on his couch as he healed from a staph infection in his leg and thought constantly about what went wrong during those 15 minutes in the Octagon.
What was wrong with me, he asked himself. Why wasn’t I myself? What was leading up to that?
The answers didn’t come quickly, but when they came, they were blunt and without a sugar coating. They forced Sanchez to look hard in the mirror at who he was and where he had come from. More importantly, they made him realize that he had to make some changes if he wanted to eventually establish himself as the best 170-pound fighter in the world.
"It was a slow process," said Sanchez, "but ever since I won the Ultimate Fighter TV show in 2005, even though I had good fights and great wins, slowly, the fame was changing me. And I had to look back, analyze everything and ask myself who I was. I wasn’t that same tiger when I went into the ring with Josh Koscheck that I was whenever I started getting into this game. I was going through the motions and I wasn’t focused."
“I wasn’t being myself," he continues. “I just need to be me and not think about anything else. I have to be that same hungry, King of The Cage fighter that was at the bottom of the barrel, that comes from Albuquerque, New Mexico, raised in poverty. That’s the Diego Sanchez that I need to be."
It’s a brutally honest assessment from the 25-year old, who could have easily blamed the pre-fight staph infection, the alignment of the stars, or anything for his first loss, especially given that it came against such a heated rival in Koscheck, but admirably, Sanchez just chalks it up to being one of those nights when the bell rang and nothing went right.
“Of course I wanted to stay undefeated and be an undefeated world champion, but in my eyes, God works in mysterious ways, and it was time," said Sanchez of his three round unanimous decision loss. “I could make a lot of excuses for the Koscheck fight, but it happened, and there’s nothing I can do about it but learn from it and look back at the mindset I was in. A lot of people say that fighting is 90 percent in the head, and it really is. And it took me a loss to figure that out. I could have easily won the fight with Koscheck. I could have imposed my will more, I could have taken the fight to the ground, I could have done a lot of things that would have put the fight to my advantage, but I didn’t. I wasn’t fighting like it was a 15 minute fight; I was taking my time, and it wasn’t me out there. I got caught thinking too much. For some people, that’s their style – the thinking man’s style. That’s not my style. I’m an aggressive, instinctive fighter that relies on my conditioning and my scrambles, and I go out there and get after it. So the loss really helped me find myself."
But Sanchez wasn’t through with making changes in his life. First came his attitude adjustment; next, he got engaged to UFC Octagon Girl Ali Sonoma, a move that has helped him focus more on the important things in his life.
“I’m growing up," said Sanchez. “I got a good girl, I’m engaged, and I don’t have the same mindset. A famous fighter is always gonna have the mindset of ‘let’s go out, let’s try to find girls.’ That’s just the way it is. But eventually, a good girl’s gonna come around and you’re gonna realize, ‘all right, now I’ve got something that’s more special, and now it’s time to grow up and have a serious relationship.’ When you do that, you can just focus on what you do, and that’s fighting. I know that settling down is what I needed to do. It’s part of growing up. I’ve been there and I’ve done it. I partied, I chased after women, and I’ve done that part of my life. I’ve got no regrets, but now it’s time to move on to the next step in life and move on from that. I’m not some college kid anymore, I’m an adult, and this is what I’ve been looking for for a long time. "
But the biggest change - from a fighting standpoint – was still to come, as he left Greg Jackson’s Fight Team in Albuquerque to move to San Diego and start working full-time with Rob Garcia and the Ribeiro brothers, Saulo and Xande.
“I’ve been doing the same thing for a long time," explained Sanchez. “I’ve been raised in Albuquerque my whole life and I was ready for a change. I had been wanting to go out to California. Every time I’d come out to San Diego, for a month or two months to do conditioning camps with Rob Garcia, I’d always be like ‘man, it’s so nice out here. I wish I could run the beach everyday or work on my boxing more.’ But there wasn’t a ground guy out there for me, and of course there was my loyalty to Greg Jackson. I had the Jackson Gaidojutsu team, New Mexico was my home state, and I knew everybody over there, but things happen and it was the right time. Saulo Ribeiro and Xande Ribeiro moved to San Diego and opened up a school, and those guys are, in my opinion, the two best ground guys in the world. I’ve rolled with Marcelo Garcia and some of the best guys, and there ain’t nothing like a Saulo Ribeiro or a Alexander Ribeiro."
It’s a big transition to make before a major fight - something Sanchez has on Saturday when he returns to the Octagon to face Jon Fitch at UFC 76 in Anaheim - but he insists that other than some early scheduling issues, things have gone beyond smoothly for this training camp, pointing specifically to sparring he got at Freddie Roach’s Wildcard Gym in Hollywood and his grappling work with the Ribeiros and some other BJJ Black Belts.
“The world championship of jiu-jitsu was on the same night as Randy Couture’s fight (against Gabriel Gonzaga on August 25th), so they were training for that, and there were like 16 other Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belts from Brazil that had come here to train, and I spent these grueling two hour sessions battling with these guys. I’m the white belt with the name, so these guys are going after me (Laughs), and I’m like, ‘I’m not having this. I don’t care if I have a gi on, I’m gonna get it with you guys.’ So I made a lot of new friends and teammates and it’s all worked out."
The proof will be on Saturday night, when Sanchez takes on Fitch, who happens to hail from the same AKA camp that Koscheck comes from and who actually imitated Sanchez for Koscheck in the lead-up to the April bout.
“He’s a very experienced fighter and a good wrestler," said Sanchez of Fitch. “I don’t think he’s quite as good as Josh Koscheck or Matt Hughes, but I do think he’s a great wrestler. As far as what he’s going to bring to the fight with me, I don’t know whether he’s gonna fight me and come forward the way he does in most of his fights. If he does, that will make for a great fight, but his camp, in the Koscheck fight, really didn’t engage that much, so we’ll see what he brings to the table. I’m hoping he comes and brings it."
Frankly, Sanchez can’t afford a repeat of the Koscheck fight, either in content or the end result. It would damage a career that was built on exciting battles with Karo Parisyan and Nick Diaz, and make many question whether ‘The Nightmare’s recent life changes have been in the fighter’s best interests. But as far as Sanchez is concerned, the only wake-up call he needed came in April, and from here on out, he won’t be worried about the next party, photo shoot, or magazine story – his job is to win fights, and without that, everything else doesn’t matter.
“I want to be a champion," he said. “I’m going to put everything aside, and I’m gonna work towards that. I’m not gonna wear any fancy clothes, I’m not gonna try to impress anybody. I’m gonna go back to doing what I do and being that hungry lion from Albuquerque, New Mexico. I know that on September 22nd, I’m just gonna let it go, and I’m gonna be so happy to let it go and fight. I’m gonna walk down the aisle, get in the cage, come forward and fight."
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WAR Diego.
Diego Sanchez - Return of the Lion
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