(Video courtesy of YouTube/MMADigest)
Rashad Evans was in Toronto over the weekend to watch his friend and former training partner Georges St-Pierre’s UFC 129 bout against Jake Shields Saturday night at Rogers Centre.
The night before the event, Evans spoke to MMADigest at a pre-party at Muzik nightclub and touched on his recent break from Team Jackson as a result of Jon Jones becoming UFC light heavyweight champ.
For those of you who can’t watch the video at work, the meat and potatoes of the interview are transcribed below.
Here’s what “Suga” had to say about:
His new gym:
“I’m training at Imperial [Athletics]. I’ve got a few [training partners there]. Danilo Villefort, Yuri Villefort, JZ Cavalcante, Jorge Santiago, [Antonio] ‘Bigfoot’ [Silva], Rodney Brewer — just a little bit of everybody coming in there.
Whether or not it’s hard to put his trust in a new team when he still feels he was betrayed by Jones and Greg Jackson:
“I won’t put myself in the same situation again to train with somebody in the same weight class.”
The similarities between Jones and his replacement opponent Phil Davis:
“They’re both athletic, they’re both pretty good wrestlers, they both kinda have that ranginess to them. That’s about where [the similarities between Davis and Jones] ends. I’m gonna go in there and put on a good show and the result will be my hand raised. Phil Davis is a tough guy, so I’m gonna have to go in there and train hard and fight hard.”
His recent Twitter war with Jones:
“Just speaking the truth, man. Just speaking the truth. He made a comment about beating me in practice. If you beat me in practice, it was because it was designed for you to beat me in practice because I was helping you get ready for Ryan Bader. But it’s whatever.”
Whether or not he thinks calling “Bones” Milli Vanilli got to the UFC light heavyweight champ:
“I don’t know if it annoyed him or not. It don’t even matter because he is fake. When you’re fake, you’re fake.”
Whether or not one of them got the better of the other while training at Jackson’s MMA:
“No, not at all. When you have a training relationship with somebody, it’s not even about winning. It’s about getting each other better and helping each other out. Some days he may have an off day, some days I may have an off day, but more or less, it’s about trying to get the person who has a fight coming up the closest to peak at the right time. As his fights come closer, I would try to get him to be the best that he could be. So, it’s whatever.”
Quit Bitchin about having to do your job Rashad