..he should go just basic striking; cross, hook, cross, hook, cross, inside, outside low kicks maybe after punching, not just kicking. Always set it up I say. You know, and the clinch, make sure you have a great clinch. And once you start fighting like that and you know really well how to throw a cross-hook the correct way, and hit it hard and solid, and you aim for the shots. Then of course liver shots is not that big of a stretch, or a right straight to the body and a left kick to the head. It's all the same movements, you’re only changing to high step. So from a simple cross-hook-cross, or a cross-hook, you can make eight combinations. And if you do that and keep it basic, he’s not going to be taken down probably because it’s basic; and you know after your short combination you might have to defend a takedown. So that’s possible.”
“The trick is to do it a lot, to go spar with good guys. And I really hope he finds a great camp. I already said, if he wants to jump in my classes some time to give him the basic stuff and to see, you know I work on that, please be my guest. Because I would love to do a thing like that; same as what I did with Kimbo Slice. But really, if I have to give him some advice, I say go to Holland. Forget America right now, go to Holland. Go to a gym like a Maeng Ho gym [with] really great strikers there, and start training with those guys. These guys are so good that they won’t beat you up in training. Because if you have a guy a little bit less technical, they will hit you by accident, they’ll knock you out by accident, they’ll hurt you by accident. Guys like that in Holland, it’s what they do. It’s one of their main sports in Holland; kickboxing, Thai boxing. So if you go there and just everyday you work on your striking - and don’t worry, they have great wrestlers there as well - but three times a week or four times a week you grapple, and then eight times a week you do solid striking. That’s what I would suggest for him. And then do it for four months in a row or something. Then you’re going to come back, and then you make big steps. But go into gym and say - I've had some guys that were world champions already; I say “I want to teach you some striking” [and they say] “just hold up the focus mitts for me”. I say “well you can pay somebody for that. I’m not going to do that”, you know. That’s the dumbest thing that you can tell me. You don’t know how to strike, I want to show you how to strike. If you hit the focus mitt with no technique, what is that going to do in a fight? You know, they think that they are there. They think that if they do it three times a week - no double it up. It's what I did with ground fighting. I lost my last fight by ground fighting. And then I said “ok, two, three times a day, seven days a week we’re going to do ground now” and it changed my life. Like I said, I never lost anymore. But I just flipped it. You have to flip it [training]. If he already has a solid ground game, start striking, and do it a lot.”
