At UFC 309, Bo Nickal looks to continue his ascent up the middleweight ladder by earning just the seventh win of his professional career. It’s not normal for a fighter with this much experience to be competing against a seasoned contender like Paul Craig on the main card at Madison Square Garden.
Nickal’s highly credentialed wrestling background singled him out as a super prospect from the moment he decided to begin training in MMA. His grappling gives him a huge advantage over many opponents but of course, developing the rest of his skillset is crucial to his success.
That will be put to the test in his fight against Scotland’s Craig who is an incredibly dangerous submission threat, specifically off his back. With Nickal making it clear that he won’t hesitate to test his own jiu-jitsu skills, this might be the first fight where we see him need to utilize his whole arsenal to get the victory.
During a recent podcast interview with Demetrious Johnson on The MightyCast, Nickal spoke about which aspects of the sport have been the easiest to pick up and which have taken him more time to get up to speed with.
“It’s interesting, I picked up jiu-jitsu pretty quick. Obviously still learning, still growing, trying to improve that area of my game but the jiu-jitsu came pretty fast. I always had a wrestling style that I think fit just because I was rolling on my back a lot. Like if I had to roll to my back to give up a couple points or to get the pin or to get some points, I was never afraid to do that and you mentioned earlier like I wrestled predominantly folk style but as a kid, I wrestled tons of freestyle and Greco, almost just as much as I had wrestled folk style and so just those different styles and I think my experience with scrambling and different things like that, I was really comfortable with that.”
Nickal then spoke about the aspect of the sport have been the hardest for him to pick up. Unsurprisingly, it’s an element of his striking that has taken him the most time to get used to given his grappling background.
“The hardest thing for me to learn honestly like kicks. Calf kicks, body kicks, throwing kicks, checking kicks. It’s like such a different thing and you have to be so loose. I noticed like at first when I’m throwing kicks and stuff, I can throw like three or four kicks and I’m gassed out.”
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