Aaron Jeffery Talks BTC 8 Title Defense
Aaron Jeffery defends his BTC middleweight championship on Saturday, November 30th. It goes at Scotia Bank Center in Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada. Jeffery looks to end off 2019 on a high note at BTC 8: Eliminator. He has had a memorable calendar year with several ups and a couple down points. While some parts of Canada get more regular MMA action than others, things have picked up big time in the Ontario scene lately. A lot of that momentum can be credited to BTC Fight Promotions’ efforts.
BTC 8
Jeffery prepares with some of the top-level martial artists across North America. He said, “I got all the Parabellum guys. They’re super consistent. Got a lot of good training partners here. Got Elias Theodorou, he’s always a great training partner for me. I was actually down at Syndicate in Vegas for a month. There’s a lot of solid dudes there.”
Early on, Jeffery went through Joanne Calderwood’s gear and had to buy her some coffee as a peace offering. Despite the early awkwardness of thinking Jojo’s gear was the lost and found, Jeffery had a thoroughly enjoying experience at Syndicate. Aaron Jeffery is digging switching up his training surroundings and seems to want to make more of a habit of that in the future.
Jeffery stated, “Being at the same gym day in and day out, year after year can sometimes get a little bit stale. It was just refreshing to just go down there. Get some different ideas and work with some different guys.”
One of the big moments of Jeffery’s 2019 run was appearing on Dana White’s Contender Series. He would end up losing to Brendan Allen, LFA middleweight champion, via first-round submission. As far as what takeaways Jeffery had from the experience, he quipped “I don’t think anything outside of a couple skillset issues. Made a couple technical mistakes in the fight. It was a really cool experience. I’d say the technical parts of my fighting game are the biggest takeaways.”
Aaron Jeffery
Jeffery would rebound from the Contender Series loss five weeks later. He would finish Dennis Olson via round two TKO at Combat Zone 71. In regards to this but, Jeffery stated “I had planned to take a bit of a break after the Contender Series fight. The fight didn’t go the way I wanted it to and I didn’t really want to take time after that. We got an offer so we jumped on it.”
A lot of Jeffery’s compatriots at Parabellum MMA are based in various parts of Ontario. This creates a training environment where people are working for individual goals but are collectively sharpening skills to all compete on the same night. Jeffery said, “The practices are always big. The room is always full. We’ve got lots of bodies out. Intensity is super high. Everyone’s kind of on the same wavelength. We’re all working towards one night that’s coming up.”
The opponent has fought in PFL, King of the Cage, and Bellator. He is an experienced opponent for Jeffery who is respectful of his skills but foresees a thorough victory for himself.
The location of Niagara Falls has significance to Aaron Jeffery. He began his MMA training at a gym in Welland, Ontario so the Niagara region has had great importance to him and that continues to be the case. He stated, “I still consider myself one of the Niagara boys. So there’s a bunch of guys back in Niagara, we all started at Modern Vision together. It’s cool to kind of come full circle and be back in Niagara with all of those guys.”
