Mike Malott explains how he leveled up ahead of UFC Winnipeg
Some things have changed, while others have stayed the same for Mike Malott.
Mike Malott is staying course. He's letting the performances do the talking for him, and leaving the rest up to the UFC. However, in order to perform at his highest level, as he did Saturday when he finished Gilbert Burns in the UFC Fight Night 273 main event in Winnipeg, Manitoba, sometimes Malott (14-2-1 MMA, 7-1 UFC) needs to make adjustments on the fly.
For this camp, there was one focus in particular that he thinks he paid its dividends. "I feel like my conditioning and cardio has leveled up like crazy," Malott said in a post-fight news conference. "That's something I've focused on a lot of the last six months.
I've been recognizing after winning my last fight there was potential I could be in the main event. I didn't want to be caught eight weeks out from a fight considering it then. So I spent six months working on my cardio and conditioning.
I felt great in there tonight and felt like I wasn't really breathing heavy in there. "That was without a doubt the most grueling camp I've had in the UFC so far. It was wave after wave of fresh opponent on me and shark tanks and a lot of driving in the gym, sitting in the parking lot for three minutes just like, 'Goddammit, what am I going to go through today?