Julian Erosa: Enjoying balance between fighting and action sports
Julian Erosa is trying to enjoy life as much as possible.
Earning a first-round flying-knee knockout over Nate Landwehr at UFC Fight Night 185 on Feb. 23 is certainly contributing to the cause. Snowboarding and skateboarding also meet Erosa’s criteria for having fun.
The 31-year-old puts fighting first, but hitting the mountain or the skate park during training camps serve as a much-needed break in between.
“I’m not just going to buckle down and only just train, diet and all that stuff and just focus 100 percent on that,” Erosa said.
“I am going to enjoy my life in the process because if you make things so mundane and so monotonous, you can really lose your love for it.”
If Julian Erosa wants to skate, he will
Not everyone may agree with Erosa’s approach, but his record shows it’s working for him as of late. He is currently coming off back-to-back finishes in his first two appearances of his third UFC stint.
In the lead up to the fight Saturday, Erosa posted a clip of him skating a rail on Instagram. The video was old, but Christian Nielsen, one of Landwehr’s coaches, did not know this.
Either way, Erosa is doing his own thing. Look, it’s gotten him this far.
“That kid, Nate Landwehr’s coach, he goes by coach monkeys on Instagrsam, posted on that video and said, ‘Do not get injured’ in all caps,’ and I’m just like, ‘Bro, I do what ever the fuck I want, I don’t know you from anybody,’” Erosa said. “He didn’t know that video was old, but like that’s how I am. I am not going to just up and stop other things in my life because I have a fight.”
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Finding a passion or two
Erosa started skateboarding at 11 years old. He even once considered possibly pursuing the sport professionally. Fast forward 33 professional fights later, Erosa obviously chose MMA as a career path instead.
Luckily for Erosa, he is yet to suffer any serious injuries from both action sports. He’s needed to get the occasional stitches when some tricks went wrong, but it’s nothing this fighter is not accustomed to at this point.
MMA is by no means a burden for Erosa, he is passionate about his profession. Skating and snowboarding are just escapes from the everyday grind.
He plans to stick with all three for quite some time.
“I put almost as much time into skateboarding as I did into fighting. Anything I do, I want to do right,” Erosa said. “I’ll skateboard probably to the day I die. Probably the same with training, I’ll train till I die, I’ll snowboard till I die. I just have a love for those things that’s beyond trying to make money and make a career out of them, it’s just something I really love to do.”
