Lance Gibson Jr looks for sophomore Bellator win at Bellator 257
Lance Gibson Jr fights Marcus Surin at Bellator 257 on April 16th. The lightweight bout broadcasts on Showtime.
A myriad of subjects was covered and you can check out the excerpts from my recent conversation with Lance Gibson Jr below.
Lance Gibson Jr
Being on the same card as Stepmom/ former featherweight champion Julia Budd
“It’s awesome to finally have it come to fruition obviously. We train side by side every day so it’s nothing new. But it’s really fun to be able to put on spectacular performances in the cage and for the whole world. It’s pretty awesome, no going to lie. I’m pretty happy.”
The learning curve associated with beekeeping
“I kind of compare it to like when somebody starts in MMA. And they’re like ‘I want to fight. Well, you gotta learn lots of things. You’ve got to learn how to strike, you’ve got to learn how to wrestle and grapple.”
“Definitely a learning curve and I tend to see that’s kind of the way with a lot of things in life in general…And I feel like that helps my martial arts because it allows me to just accept things that I cannot accept. Be able to do the things that I know I can do. So just adapting to that experience and not quitting. So this year we’re going to try again.”
Bellator MMA
His legendary surname in Canadian MMA and being in the gym since he was 2
“You know, to be 100% honest because everybody wants to have that story like ‘oh yeah, I knew from the day I first started’ but I had no clue. My dad bribed me with Power Rangers when I was a kid. He was like ‘If you train twice today, you get to go up the street to the stores. Get a slurpie, candy, and all this stuff’. So I’m like ‘twice? Okay, I’ll train three times’. He had some really good tactics back then.”
“I think it was probably when I was a teenager where I kind of decided when I was wrestling. Because wrestling was, I didn’t so much feel limited. But I was like ‘I have all these other skills, and I can’t use them’. It would frustrate me when I was on the wrestling mat. So I kind of found out that I was gonna transition to MMA eventually. And it happened.”
“And I think it happened exactly how it was supposed to happen. Because what I noticed is, children that are phenoms from the beginning, don’t generally end up phenoms at the end. What happens is that they get burnt out too early because they’ve been so far forced into it. My dad did a really good job of keeping it fun. I always really enjoyed it and now I do it for fun still. It’s a part of my life.”
His Mamba Fight Night 6 performance where he was the co-main event for Kultar Gill‘s sendoff bout
“Actually, looking at life overall…When I was talking about when my dad bribed me to go, Kultar was in the gym training with my dad. So I knew Kultar when I was a kid like that…To get that opportunity to get to fight back to back is pretty funny. We have a pretty funny picture of us all smiling and laughing.”
Bellator 257
The tape study takeaways leading into the Marcus Surin fight
“I believe my kind of tactic as a fighter, I’m a strategist. I don’t just go in there blindly and kind of just like allow my coaches to tell me what to do. Do a war strategy and I plan as well. Game plan as well. See my openings and my options and I’ve watched pretty much every single one of his fights. I’ve seen his fights before we were even scheduled to fight. He’s a good fighter. He wrestles, he grapples, he kind of fights long fights. And I don’t plan on fighting a long fight.”
“I’ve seen several fights before. Seen some stuff I know I can capitalize on. I’ve seen his strengths.”
His expressiveness as an artist through mediums like poetry and how that extends to the cage
“I’m totally an artist, I’m not just a fighter. It’s not called mixed martial fighting. It’s mixed martial arts. At the end of the day, I want to represent myself as an artist. Paint the canvas.”
