Next Big Thing out of Cage Warriors went across the pond for his model

Growing up in the UK, there was no shortage of fighters for young Jack Shore to follow. His future home, Cage Warriors, was home to many of the stars that are known by even the most casual MMA fans today. Now making the same shift as many of those he grew up watching, Shore is buoyed by their success.

It definitely gives me extra confidence, if I’m honest,” said Shore on The Top Turtle MMA Podcast. Look at the track record of the stars that have come from Cage Warriors: Michael Bisping, Dan Hardy, Conor McGregor, Joanna Jedrzeczyk. There’s plenty of talent that has come from there. There the biggest promotion in Europe, so the opposition I’ve been facing in Cage Warriors has been the toughest available. It’s instilled confidence in me that I’m ready for that next level.

Although he spent a great deal of time watching those stars and is inspired by their path, it’s not where he trained. Instead, he has been and seemingly always will be beside his other countrymen in Wales.

We get behind our own in Wales. We are a close-knit community – the MMA community, Shore boasts. I train at the same gym as Jack Marshman, my father coaches us both. And although me and Brett Johns don’t train under the same coach, we do a lot of training together. Brett [Johns] comes up to the gym once, twice a week a lot of the time to get some rounds in and some wrestling.

Even though he grew up watching those European stars and trains beside other top Welsh talent, he sees himself in a different light than those before him.

It’s surreal because I believe I’m sort of the first one of the new breed of Welsh fighters to come through, he said. Again I grew up watching Jack, John [Phillips] and Brett. I grew up watching those guys as a 14, 15 year old kid.

And that new breed comes from his youth. Shore became a fan of MMA at a very young age, and while doing so, he gravitated towards the style he found most appealing and most dominant.

Coming up, I was always a massive GSP fan,” said Shore. “I was a young kid when I first got into the sport. As a youngster watching it, GSP was always the man. He could really do it all – he could strike, he could take you down at any time, he’s a top-level black belt, so you’d see him pull off those sick submissions from time to time. That was always something I wanted to do – I wanted to be one of those guys that you couldn’t really pick a weak area for. I always wanted to be someone who you would look at and think ‘whether I stand, wrestle or grapple – it’s gonna be a tough night anywhere.’

Shore will look to show off that GSP-esque style when he means Nohelin Hernandez on the UFC Copenhagen prelims on ESPN+ this Saturday.

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Author Daniel Vreeland is a co-founder of the Top Turtle Podcast, and a brown belt in Jiu-Jitsu at New England Submission Fighting in Amherst, Massachusetts.