Jorge “Gamebred” Masvidal will be fighting at UFC 178 against James Krause. Masvidal is no stranger to MMA fans and has an impressive 27-8 record with wins over high level opponents such as Joe Lauzon, Yves Edwards, K.J. Noons, Michael Chiesa, and most recently Daron Cruickshank. He is currently riding a two fight winning streak heading into 178.
The talent pool is deep in the UFC’s Lightweight division and “Gamebred” is ready to get past Krause and make his way to the top five.
Aaron Robbins: Jorge, while I was doing background for this talk I came across some pretty wild things, not the least of which were two bare-knuckle fights with Kimbo Slice’s protégé “Ray”. It’s seems like you have always liked to fight. Tell the fans how you came up and got into MMA.
Jorge Masvidal: “Sure, I grew up in Miami, Florida. Growing up in Miami was cool man, it was an awesome experience. I grew up with my mom, my dad got in trouble when I was four or five years old and he wasn’t in the picture much. My mom and I moved around a lot. My mom busted her butt to keep us out of the bad neighborhoods. We experienced a lot of different circles, many different people so it was a good experience.
“I’ve always loved fighting; I’ve been doing it forever. I was told stories that I was into it even in my pre-school years. I have no idea what I was fighting about at that time (laughs). I’ve never really been into other sports, if I told you I’ve played 25 basketball games in my life that would probably be too many. The only sport that ever caught my eye was fighting. It wasn’t a macho thing or anything like that; it’s just that I like the competition. I look at it as a beautiful thing; it’s such a pretty and aggressive sport. It’s scientific and brutal at the same time, and you just have to want it to have success. At the end of the day it’s how much you put into it that determines how far you’ll get. So, yeah being in the rougher neighborhoods I got into fights, so that’s how I started my knuckle game.”
AR: At what age did you start formal training?
JM: “I can’t remember exactly how old I was, but the first kind of training I did was Karate. My mom put me into Karate classes because she said I had way too much energy. When she asked me what I wanted to do with all that energy, I said Kung Fu because I remember watching Bruce Lee movies, but there weren’t any Kung Fu schools around. I was too aggressive and so the Karate wasn’t a good fit for me. A few years later I ended up in a Middle School wrestling program. The program didn’t last long, but I loved it. I couldn’t wait to get there and just push it from beginning to end. After the program ended I didn’t get to wrestle again until High School.
“Right around the same time I found the second wrestling program I started at a boxing gym. It was perfect; it had a lot of good coaches and one national champ at the time. That’s when I started both wrestling and boxing.
“At 17 years old I found some local MMA gyms and started training at them. As I said I was already boxing and wrestling and I wanted to put it together. I didn’t really know anything about Jiu Jitsu except rear naked chokes that I saw Royce Gracie slapping on people. I loved it there because we trained everything. At the boxing gym you couldn’t mention wrestling, and vice versa. It felt amazing to be able to combine the two things I love the most in the world.”
AR: Seems like fighting it truly in your blood. You train out of American Top Team in Coconut Creek, Florida. That’s got to be a great place to train for a guy like you.
JM: “Yeah, the gym I came from was small and didn’t have a lot of structure or high level training partners, when I got to ATT they had two or three guys at Lightweight already ranked in the top ten. It was a night and day difference. I’m so grateful to them for letting me train there, I’m so happy to have found them and I’ll never go anywhere else.”
AR: Fantastic. Jorge, you are fighting at UFC 178 against James Krause, give us your thoughts on the fight.
JM: “Well no disrespect to Krause, but I was super disappointed when Bobby Green had to pull out of the fight. Krause isn’t ranked, and I was really hoping to get a win over a ranked guy. I want to fight the top guys so I can prepare myself to fight for the title one day. Like I said, I have nothing against Krause but I wanted to whip Green’s ass. This is the second time this fight has fallen apart and not because he’s injured or I’m injured so it’s frustrating. Green had the chance to take the fight after Eddie Alvarez got signed to fight Donald Cerrone, but he turned it down. I understand why he did it. He wants to hold on to that rank for as long as he can. He knows it was going to come to a quick end as soon as he got in the cage with me. Man to man he knows that I can put an ass whooping on him. He knows I’m not going to back down; I won’t be intimidated by his head-games. Green won’t be able to pull none of that shit on me. Back in Strikeforce he was hitting me up on Facebook talking all kinds of corny shit like ‘it’s going to be a war’. I told him it’s not going to be a war, I’m just going to beat you up. Between me and you, I don’t have anything against Bobby Green. I just want to finally fight him because there has already been so much back and forth between us.
“I’m not trying to dismiss or overlook James Krause, he has two arms and two legs and everybody has a chance, but if God allows me to win this fight I want the biggest name fighter I can get. I’m willing to fight anybody in the top five or ten.”
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