Tom Theocharis on EFC 97 bout and Justin Bieber connection
Tom Theocharis tests skills with Pietie Coxen at EFC 97 on September 8th. This middleweight matchup emanates from EFC Performance Institute in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Theocharis returned to Bowks Talking Bouts and covered several subjects before this fight. Excerpts from our chat are below.
Tom Theocharis
Thoughts on game-planning for specific opponents vs sole focus on individual growth
“I definitely have (watched tape on Coxen). But for this training camp, you just kind of put it spot on, just kind of focus on myself. There’s a fight in particular in the past, it was against a guy named Kolton Menzak. I was just kind of obsessed with watching tape of his. When we both came out I hit him with the push kick that I saw was open the whole time I was watching video of him. I flatten him, he fell, and got back up. I just kept trying to do it over and over again because that’s all I had been really working on. What happened was I fucked up in that fight.”
“He didn’t come out the way I thought he was going to come out. So since that fight, I try not to go too, too hard in diving into watching my opponent’s fight because you never know what they could do. Just because they didn’t throw it in a fight doesn’t mean they’re not capable of it. For this fight, definitely, a lot more energy was put into myself. My weight’s super low right now. I wanted to get in the best shape possible because the elevation here (Johannesburg, South Africa) is super high. We all know what happened to a lot of the guys at the UFC Salt Lake City.”
EFC 97
Justin Bieber following Theocharis on Instagram and their connection since childhood
“So we actually grew up together. We played hockey growing up. He’s a year younger than me and he would get called up to my hockey team. Going to hockey games, we’d all bus together and spent a lot of time with him on the bus. Yeah, kind of grew up with him. He was just kind of always around. Randomly followed me. I hadn’t talked to him for years and he randomly followed me after our hometown did an article on me around Christmas time. He’s a really big supporter of anyone from Stratford.”
