By Josh Koscheck - By the time you read this, it will be one more week until my fight with Paul Daley at UFC 113. This past week, I pretty much focused on making sure I got no cuts or injuries, and I worked my cardio hard, because the other hard work is pretty much done.
By Josh Koscheck
By the time you read this, it will be one more week until my fight with Paul Daley at UFC 113. This past week, I pretty much focused on making sure I got no cuts or injuries, and I worked my cardio hard, because the other hard work is pretty much done.
There’s not much you can do in the last week of training, so I just pace myself, try to be safe, and work on every area that needs to be worked on. I touch everything up and make it all come together so that come fight time, I know that I’ve done everything, I’m prepared and it’s time to go have some fun.
May 8th is the payoff for all my hard work during this camp in more ways than one. Money’s a big motivation, and that’s one of the primary reasons why I fight. I have good skills and I love to win, but at the end of the day, it comes down to making that money and providing for myself and for my future, so I can just focus on training, getting better, and bringing new people in and paying them to help me become a champion. And everything I’ve been doing over the past couple years has been working up to this: getting some momentum to where I can put on a great show, win this fight, become the number one contender, fight for the title, and become the UFC welterweight champion by beating Georges St-Pierre.
I feel that my time is coming, and while I’ve been close a couple times to fighting a rematch with St-Pierre in the past, I haven’t gotten there yet. Things happen for a reason though, and when one door closes, another one opens. So now that I’m back here again, I believe that my time and my hard work will pay off.
Of course, with the fight getting closer, there are a lot more interviews and media obligations, and thank God I have Heidi (Seibert) and Zinkin Entertainment around me. They’re a great support system, and I have a lot of good people that back me up and really care about me. They make things a lot easier, and I’m very thankful for that, that’s for sure. But I enjoy doing interviews; it helps promote the sport and the fights, and I like to be a team player to the UFC and show them that I’m on their team. I want to get as many viewers as we possibly can to help grow this sport, and I just want to keep winning fights, putting on a good show, and choking people out.
In these interviews though, there are a lot of people speculating a lot of things out there and every one I’ve done, they’re saying ‘oh, you’re gonna be fighting St-Pierre next.’ But to be honest, I don’t look that far ahead. I believe that if I look past Paul Daley, I’m a fool, and by no means am I looking past him. My only focus is on Paul Daley and beating him. He’s been talking a lot of garbage and I like it. I like the fact that he’s so confident, and I like that he says that he’s ready to go, because that means that after I whip his ass, there are gonna be no excuses. And if he does make excuses, then we’re gonna see what kind of character he has and what type of person Paul Daley is.
And while every victory’s sweet for me, it’s gonna be an even sweeter victory over Paul Daley because like I said in my last blog, I’ve been through hell to get here. I’ve been through a war, I’ve had a lot of personal issues, I’ve had some injuries, I’ve won some fights, I’ve lost some fights, and I’ve made mistakes throughout my career, but it’s gonna be a sweet feeling to get a victory over Paul Daley.
The funny thing is, Paul Daley keeps saying ‘stand toe-to-toe with me.’ Well, how ‘bout we go out there and get in a wrestling stance? There’s a good chance of that. I’ve got 50 takedowns in me in 15 minutes, I can guarantee you that. And every time Paul Daley goes to bed at night, he’s gotta think “Oh $%^%, Josh Koscheck’s probably gonna take me down and throw me on my head.’ Every single time he throws a punch, he’s gonna have to worry about getting thrown on his head with a takedown, and that’s where I would be worried if I were Paul Daley.
So if you’re a betting man, you better go to Vegas right now, and put money on Josh Koscheck because now that the guy has pissed me off, I can guarantee you that I’m gonna go in there and wrestle his ass down and rear naked choke him in round one. There you have it. I’ll probably beat him up a little bit before I choke him out, but in round one, he’s getting choked out. And that’s what he’s gonna have to sleep with over the next week – ‘How the hell am I gonna stop from getting taken down and put on my ass?’
I’ll check back in next week from Montreal.
Read Part I of Josh Koscheck’s UFC 113 blog
For more information on Josh Koscheck, visit www.kosmma.com or follow him on twitter @joshkoscheck.