Former WWE champion Jake Hager said he took J.W. Kiser down as quickly as possible because on the ground is where he feels most comfortable.
Jake Hager said after his MMA debut win he plans to make the sport his “main focus.”
Hager, a former WWE star who went by the name Jack Swagger during his pro wrestling days, stepped into the MMA cage for the first time on the main card of Bellator 214. He defeated J.W. Kiser by first-round submission, Saturday night at The Forum in Inglewood, California.
According to Hager, this crossover to MMA was far from a one-and-done.
“I want to fight again very soon,” Hager said at the Bellator 214 post-fight press conference. “I know I got a lot of work to do. After tonight, I’m very, very eager to get back in with my coaches and my team and get back to work.”
Hager, a former All-American collegiate wrestler, had his way with Kiser. Hager quickly got him down to the ground, where he landed elbows and eventually locked in an arm-triangle choke.
Hager had it easy in his MMA debut, in which he said he had a lot of fun, but he knows he has a lot of work still to do.
“I’ll be the first to say I have a lot to improve on,” Hager said. “I think it’s very exciting where I’m gonna be in six months, where I’m gonna be in a year, where I’m gonna be in a year and a half. Maybe at that time I can fight someone like Ryan Bader.”
Hager said before the fight he planned to take Kiser down as quickly as possible — and he certainly did so — because he excels in wrestling and is still a raw striker. Hager said he planned on using the cage to cut his opponent off, and then taking things slow when he got on top. He didn’t want to rush when landing ground-and-pound, Hager said.
“From the beginning he put his back to the cage very quickly,” Hager said. “I kinda felt like he was gonna try to sucker me in with something. But once we got on top, we knew he wasn’t gonna back up. (I was) very comfortable there, a lot of familiarity there. My team have done a great job of explaining it to me in an amateur wrestling way when it comes to jiu-jitsu or the ground-and-pound game so I understand it.”
Unsurprisingly, Hager said his main focus in his first MMA camp was striking. Ahead of his second fight, he wants to return to his wrestling roots a bit more.
“This last camp we focused specifically on a lot of striking, a lot of kickboxing, because I was very raw at it and we needed to work there,” Hager said. “I think in this next camp, I’d like to go with some more high-level wrestlers and focus on the girl that got me to the dance.”