Jiri Prochazka isn’t interested in defending himself inside the Octagon.
The former UFC light heavyweight champion scored another big win on MMA’s biggest stage earlier this month, scoring a third-round knockout against ex-titleholder Jamahal Hill at UFC 311 in Los Angeles.
Prochazka’s clash with Hill was nothing short of a slugfest with the Czech often choosing to keep his hands low and eating anything and everything ‘Sweet Dreams’ threw his way. It was a familiar sight as Prochazka often deploys this style of fighting, and thus far it has served him pretty well aside from a couple of brutal knockout losses against the division’s reigning champion, Alex Pereira.
Jiri Prochazka tries to read his opponent’s mind
Offering some insight into why he chooses to keep his hands low, Prochazka explained it in very simple terms — he doesn’t need to defend himself.
“With the hands up is one way,” Prochazka said during an appearance on The Joe Rogan Experience. “With the hands down, this is your natural posture. You spend most of the time in this. This, for me, means defending. I don’t need to defend myself when I see everything, when I feel everything. That’s why I don’t need to keep my hands up, because I’m crazy enough to go through, to be in the moment, to stress my body so much in this situation—to see every movement, every start of the movement of my opponent—that I can react before he starts.
“The next level is to try to read the thinking of the opponent, to know what he wants to do before he does it.”
In 31 career wins, Jiri Prochazka has 27 career knockouts, four of those coming under the UFC banner. What’s next for ‘BJP’ remains to be seen, but if Pereira manages to get past Magomed Ankalaev in March, we could be looking at a third showdown between Prochazka and ‘Poatan’ this summer.
