Wood is told to go watch as well, and he slips on flip flops and heads to the arena floor, hands still taped, sweat still beading on his forehead. I go with him to get his thoughts on his performance.
“I felt good,” he says as we walk out to watch the fight. “I felt strong, I felt fast. Obviously there are some things I could work on, some things I didn’t do that well, but you know, listen to me. Give yourself some credit, Connor; you just won, right?”
I tell him I think the fact he’s picking apart the few mistakes he made is great, indicative of the focus and drive for perfection that runs throughout the team.
“It’s better than being out here thinking you’re great and have nothing to work on,” I suggest.
“That’s true,” Wood agrees. We stop really paying attention to the action in the cage and talk about the mindset of the team, the drive to be successful and lack of ego that struck me earlier in the day at the gym.
Wood credits it to Zugec, adding that each member of the team wants to be successful and is willing to make the sacrifices necessary to get there. We get back to the one-sided fight in the cage, where Wilson’s former opponent is in complete control, eventually winning by TKO in the third round.
Back in the dressing room, Driedger is now the one hitting pads with Dolby. Compact and powerful, good hands and strong wrestling have propelled him to a 4-1 record.
We laugh at the write-up on his opponent in the program, who was apparently brought in specifically to fight Driedger because he’s a brawler, a style description that doesn’t make sense to anyone in the room. Driedger is technically sound and workmanlike in the cage, the kind of fighter who should pick a brawler apart in theory.
He’s far more relaxed than Wood, joking about Kaufman’s poor choice of colors for her walkout shirt (grey) and how his shirt choice looks much better. A wrangler comes by and tries to explain when Driedger will head out, but it’s a confusing mess of numbers that leaves Jackson asking rhetorical questions, trying to work out the math in the corer of the dressing room.
“Did that even make sense? Someone will come and get you in five, and they’re doing a ten-minute intermission. Does that mean you’re fighting in 15 or standing there for the last five minutes of the break? And why are they doing a break anyway?”
As it turned out, the final five minutes of the intermission was spent in the on-deck circle, with Zugec asking for an assessment of the bantamweight contest from Wilson, Driedger bobbin and weaving with a towel over his head and the rest of us amused by the fact that unlike most MMA shows, intermission at AFC 5 takes place to souped-up Paul Simon, not heavy metal and rap.
A crowd reaction similar the the one that met Wood greets Driedger as he walks to the cage. Once he’s inside, he paces between the posts, marking off the red corner.
Like Wood, he starts quickly, a jab sending his opponent’s head straight back. Though his hands are landing and he’s not taking much damage in space, Driedger pushes in and clinches. Each time they separate, the same pattern repeats itself.
The first and second are mirror images, Driedger winning the exchanges and controlling the fight, but spending a lot of time clinched and working for takedowns. The third is more of the same.
In the final thirty seconds, Driedger is clipped with a spinning backfist, his opponent’s forearm opening up a gash over his right eye. Driedger pushes through it and earns a clean sweep on the scorecards, but it’s easy to tell he’s unhappy despite the fact that his win moves his team to 2-0 on the evening.
Everyone knows he’s worried about the size of the cut, and they do their best to downplay it. Jackson tells him it’s nothing and Dolby suggests a little super glue might do the trick. It won’t; the ringside doctor will put seven stitches into Driedger’s eyebrow thirty minutes later, but not until after the fighter tries to pawn him off on someone else and makes sure there will be freezing involved in the process.
The self-deprecation that soundtracked the afternoon in the gym is back, Driedger picking apart his performance mercilessly.
“That was horrible. I was doing great in the striking until I decided to push in and clinch, and gas myself out against the cage the whole time. It’s great that he cut me with a spinning backfist too because I don’t make fun of those all the time either.”
Zugec is quietly pleased with Driedger’s self-evaluation, saying the experience of going the full 15 minutes is a positive and that now they know some things to work on. He’ll later tell me he’s happy to hear Driedger picking himself apart, knowing that a three first-round victories that preceded tonight’s harder-than-expected encounter didn’t give him much cause to be critical of his performance.
As Driedger heads off to get his stitches, Kaufman begins warming up.
Dolby returns to holding pads, and as Kaufman delivers a series of kicks, Zugec takes digs at his star student.
“Sarah doesn’t throw leg kicks, she throws ass kicks,” he says, getting a smile from the corn-rowed title contender. “It’s all ass. Watch.”
Kaufman thuds another kick into the Thai pads. Considering she can kick my ass, I have no comment on Kaufman’s form, backside or how the two work in concert as she kicks.
While Jackson has been doling out advice during each of the previous two fights, he’s up and active in the dressing room for the first time. Kaufman has been down to Albuquerque to train on a number of occasions, and Jackson knows her skill set and what she needs to do against her opponent, Japanese veteran Megumi Yabushita.
With Kaufman working on throw defense with Dolby, Jackson reminders her about positioning, commending her movement with each successive practice exercise.
We head out to the waiting area, watching the co-main event of the evening from backstage, Kaufman bouncing around in her oversized hat covered in the logos of her sponsors.
Jackson and I discuss Zugec, the team he’s crafted and the fact that very few people acknowledge what he’s done as a coach, both locally and abroad.
“It’s not like he’s crafted a world champion or anything,” Jackson offers sarcastically as Kaufman throws punches at the air while awaiting her cue to walk to the cage. We agree to connect later in the week, once Jackson is back in Albuquerque. This isn’t the time for an interview.
The lights in the arena go out and the crowd starts to cheer.