Special UFC Sparring Session
by: DarthMolen 1 year, 8 months, 1 week, 5 days, 27 minutes ago 7
Email Article Print ArticleKomikazee was invited by the UFC to a special fighter workout session at Houston Metro Fight Club owned by Saul Soliz and we want to bring you, the fans, an inside peek.
Roger Huerta, Pete Spratt, Melvin Guillard, Diego Sanchez, and Pachito Mojado (a boxer) all participated and literally sparred each other with boxing gloves in rotation for a good hour and a half. It was a unique opportunity to see fighters from different gyms spar each other outside the octagon even if it was in a friendly manner.
Diego started the boxing session out. He looked surprisingly quick and you can tell that he has been working boxing a lot. His hands are quick and his feet move with his body but he isn’t as light on his feet as the other fighters. He had the hardest time with Pete and Mojado but I can tell that he has improved his boxing skills greatly since his inept Ultimate Fighter days.
Mojado was next and Melvin was the fighter that had the hardest time with him. This was surprising since I considered Melvin a solid boxing type. Melvin kept getting hit in the body and refused to drop his weight to lower the surface area that Mojado could target. When he did hit, it was fast and hard and you can tell that Melvin has knock out power.
Roger Huerta was next and it was hard to tell with him. He wasn’t as quick on his feet as Pete Spratt but he used his angles pretty well until he gassed and then he started to just walk in on the punches. The last person he had to spar was Melvin and it was like he hit a buzzsaw. Roger had already gassed and Melvin turned up the heat and started to throw at full speed and 75% power. Roger tried to counter and did a pretty good job but he wasn’t keeping his hands up and he got nailed a lot of times. After the sparring match he had a huge blood pocket, a la Rich Franklin, underneath his left eye.
When all the sparring was done, Diego then got into the ring and did some conditioning drills that centered around his core. The guy went for nearly 30 minutes straight with no breaks. Melvin tried to jump in but even he tired and dropped out after awhile.
It was a unique opportunity to see where a couple of the fighters were in their training cycles and their boxing skills. Komikazee would like to thank Saul Soliz and the UFC for inviting us out to the press coverage for UFC 69 which will be in Houston, TX and PPV on April 7th.
Follow this link to see a full list of all the photos Komikazee took of the sparring session. The Houston Chronicle was also there and you can find video of the sparring session on their site here.
If you look really closely at the video that the Houston Chronicle did, I am the one in the blue striped polo taking mad picture.
Nice Job D.M.! Not many of us get the chance to see this kind of stuff up close like you.
I have wondered how much and what type of conditioning work these guys have to do. I have seen boxers who could fight but they really weren’t athletes. Some guys are real athletes but that doesn’t transfer to being a great fighter and that includes the guys who look like body builders. Some of the big muscle guys have no endurance or mental toughness.
Well, they have plenty of endurance.
I watched both Pete Spratt and Melvin Guillard go 5 6 minute rounds full bore on the ground and up top with changeout of partners every 2 minutes. Meaning there were no gassed partners. They were allowed 30 seconds to rest in between rounds.
After Pete was done, he would then rotate in as a training dummy with Melvin and Vice-Versa.
It was pretty grueling and they were toast by the end of the session. They do this same routine every day.
These guys are quite fit.
Do you know if these guy do stuff like running distances or do they just stay in the gym and lift weights and punch bags?
A lot of them do, yes. Tito Ortiz is famous for running in the mountains near Bear Lake in California.
Well Mark. Go listen to my weekly show.
http://www.komikazee.com/news/comments/komikazees_mma_smackdown_15/
Pete has an interview on there.
Just so you know, I watched him training last Monday and he looks really good. He’s been doing a lot of ground work with Saul so I think Pete is going to be turning a corner.