Elevation Fight Team wrestling coach Leister Bowling talks about why elite UFC fighters like T.J. Dillashaw and Matt Brown and more are picking Denver to train.
If rankings don’t mean anything, what is the motivation to sacrifice everything you have to try to become the greatest fighter in the world? If title shots are supposedly the best against the best, how do washed-up veterans get title shots?
The answer is money.
The evolution of MMA as a mainstream sport which it still is not has come along a very bumpy road. It has taken decades of instituting everything from the Unified Rules to USADA to try to get a small inkling of a foothold in the mainstream-sports scene, and just when it got close to gaining true legitimacy, along came Conor McGregor.
UFC Champion T.J. Dillashaw: Faber Is the Drama, Cruz Is the Dream
One of the best aspects of MMA is that it has a level of purity. Relative to the pool of fighters that make up the major professional organizations all across the globe, very few fighters live glamorous lives, but all of them get put in the ring with only one opponent and one referee. The clothing is minimal, and the fighting is about as real as it can get.
When a fighter enters the cage, he is trusting that his coaches have given him the best possible training to not only win, but to win big. If a fighter is not properly prepared for battle, then bad things can happen. While there are a lot of coaches out there who focus all of their attention on their fighters, there are unfortunately many gyms in the world that are more concerned with promoting their own name and making money than they are about their fighters being truly prepared.