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Keith Jardine views his fight with Matt Hamill as a starting-over process
By Zach Arnold | June 18, 2010
His interview on The Ultimate Fighter podcast was an introspective one in many ways. Keith noted that he understands his losing streak going in perhaps puts his job in the UFC at jeopardy, but that it’s not weighing him down heavily and that he feels he has made some improvements to where he’s gone from 80% of his capability to getting up to 90% in the future and hopefully 100% when everything is said and done.
MIKE CHIAPPETTA: “What do you think was holding you back from showing [your top potential] Keith?”
KEITH JARDINE: “Just… probably it was an understanding of my own fight game. Until recently, I was working with Greg Jackson and I didn’t understood really what made me good and what made me not good. I never really understood like you know watching film I was like OK … what is it that makes me do well and I’m finally starting to get a real good understanding of that and I’ll be able to turn it on and off when I need to.”
MIKE CHIAPPETTA: “So what exactly is it, though, what is it that you saw?”
KEITH JARDINE: “I’m not giving that away. But it’s just a certain… I tried to make my boxing too clean because the thing with me is I work so hard and I’m always trying to get better but sometimes I was trying to get better in the wrong. I was trying to clean up my boxing too much and not work on what I was already good at and so now I feel like I can bring everything together and still use the real clean crisp boxing that I’ve been trying to learn.”
MIKE CHIAPPETTA: “Was there one kind of particular moment where this all came together in your mind or was it looking at tapes, you know, in you know progression of your fights that kind of put in your mind of what you did wrong or was it one of the coaches, what exactly led to this realization?”
KEITH JARDINE: “It was a combination of a lot of things. It was a combination of my coaches. I remember the video session sitting down with Greg Jackson and we’re looking at one of my sparring sessions and he’s saying… now it was really crap and now at this point on the video like you turn it around and you’re doing excellent and now what is it, we tried to break it down. And then my fights, fight by fight you can see how I’ll show glimpses of greatness and then I’ll be really boring and predictable and it’s just I know myself a lot better, I guess…”
MIKE CHIAPPETTA: “Well, I guess, these things takes time. I think people don’t always realize that you know fighters are work-in-progress and things take time, right? I mean, do you think people have a hard time wrapping their heads around that as well? Because people you know in this sport I think more than any other people jump to conclusions based off of one fight and you know they’re ready to kind of make someone The Next Big Thing or bury them based on one performance where we don’t always know the back story of what exactly led up to it.”
KEITH JARDINE: “Exactly and with those small gloves, anything can happen. Nobody goes undefeated in this sport. If you are, you just haven’t fought the right guys, yet. So, yeah, you can’t put too much stock into one fight but for me there’s been a common occurrence with my fights and a lot of is I was putting in the hard work, but I wasn’t necessarily working the right way. I wasn’t working necessarily what I needed to be working on and now I feel that I’m definitely on the right path. This goes beyond the (Ryan) Bader fight. After the Thiago Silva fight, I really started to break this stuff down and look at it and with the Bader fight I was just another step closer but I wasn’t there yet obviously and now I think I’m ready to shine a little bit.”
As far as Saturday’s fight coming up…
MIKE CHIAPPETTA: “OK, so what are your expectations on how Matt Hamill will go after you? Because obviously he’s got that great wrestling background but it seems like he doesn’t always use it.”
KEITH JARDINE: “Matt Hamill’s kind of a bully, actually, he’s going to run across the ring and try to put a lot of pressure on. He doesn’t care about getting hit, he just wants to go mix it up and if he’s starting to get the worst of it he’ll start working that take down and that’s pretty much what you’re going to get. There’s a not of whole lot to it.”
MIKE CHIAPPETTA: “Is that the kind of fight that you like to take, a guy who’s the bully as you put it?”
KEITH JARDINE: “Oh, absolutely, that’s the best. I want someone who’s going to try to bring the back and not dance around and try to win on points. I want someone who’s going to come and actually fight the fight and that’s what we’re going to get.”
Topics: Media, MMA, UFC, Zach Arnold | 4 Comments » | Permalink | Trackback |
Poor guy.
I’m not a big fan of Jardine or anything, but I’d like to see him break out of his opponent role & at least rebound to the level of those like Chris Lytle, Spencer Fisher, Okami etc.. Decent fighters who not only put up a good effort every time, but win most of the time.
He’s a good guy, trains ( very ) hard & deserves it.
This losing stretch that he’s suffered lately has been brutal. Hopefully he can break out of it.
Tough for him to do so though with a chin as vulnerable as his. Which allows for him to suffer losses to sub-par fighters like Alexander.
We’ll just have to see how it goes.
Eh, I figure Jardine will always be Jardine.
No “brand new me” for KJ IMO.
But thats pretty good.
As long as he keep sneaking those surprise elite wins in he’ll always be an intriguing wildcard.
He needs to win in this fight though. If he loses to Hamill especially if he gets KOd he mightbe done getting big fights.
I agree, if he loses this one he wont be headlining any more UFC cards to soon. Fightnight or otherwise.
But I suspect that even if he loses, his tenure isn’t over just yet.
I’m picturing a uniquely extended margin for error for Jardine due to the relatively astonishing and the sometimes even flashy nature of his wins AND losses.
We’ll know when he’s really in trouble because they’ll give him one last stand in the prelims before he’s really gone IMO.