As many of you know, Spencer “The King” Fisher trained with us out in Seattle for the last 5 weeks or so to get ready for his UFC 90 fight against newcomer Shannon Gugerty. All his hard work in training paid off on Saturday night in Chicago as he was able to secure the win with a 3rd round triangle choke of the BJJ brown belt. Not only did Spencer get the win, he also received the “submission of the night” honors from the UFC for his ground work.
This win was especially gratifying for all of us because what many don’t know is that Spencer came into this traning camp with a serious shoulder injury that severly limited any upper body training we could do and hampered his training in general. This is the behind the scenes kind of thing that fighters have to deal with on a daily basis that the fans don’t often see. Injuries are a part of training, more often than not fighters have to deal with little injuries here and there that affect how well they can train and how well they can perfom.
Spencer said his cardio felt as good as it ever has and all of his family and friends commented to me that he looked in better shape than he has in a long time, the only thing he felt was his shoulders getting tired towards the end of the fight. This is to be expected though because we simply couldn’t train upper body at all for about the last 3 weeks of his camp. He was also in a great deal of pain much of the time in camp, so much so that he often had a hard time sleeping, but he pushed through it because he didn’t want to cancel the fight.
I’ve referred Spencer to the top shoulder surgeon in the U.S. in Birmingham, Alabama to get his shoulder repaired ASAP so that he can resume training and get back to the octagon. We expect a full recovery and will look to see him back in action sometime next year. He said he learned a great deal and got in great shape training out here with us and will be back as soon as he can to continue where he left off.
I’ll be posting some interviews we did with him and Jens along with some training footage of them soon. He was a fun guy to work with, next time hopefully I can get him to share some of his North Carolina hillbilly stories because most of them are hilarious.
Next up is Jens who will be leaving here on Friday I believe to head down to Florida for his WEC fight against Garcia. We’ll also have Matt Brown showing up early next week to train with us for a few weeks and Rich Franklin will be here at some point in November for a week or so and then he’ll return after Thanksgiving to train with us up until Christmas. Look for training photos and videos of all of this to be up on the site.