McCully talks coaching Browne for Mitrione fight
“When you have people coming into camps late in the game and there are other coaches, you’re going to kind of butt heads, and you have different theories.”
Retired heavyweight Justin McCully has gloves will travel. He is a sort of fight consultant, and was brought in by Browne to work with Travis Browne him for his latest camp, vs Matt Mitrione.
McCully appeared recently on MMAjunkie Radio to talk about the challenges. Browne is coached by Edmond Tarverdyan for striking and Ricky Lundell for his ground and wrestling game. The integration was not seamless.
When you have people coming into camps late in the game and there are other coaches, you’re going to kind of butt heads, and you have different theories, said McCully, as transcribed by Steven Marrocco, for MMAjunkie. You can’t have too many chefs on one pot of stew. When you come in to a group and you want to throw a spoonful of pepper in another chef’s soup and they say, ‘Don’t throw any pepper in there,’ well, you know the pepper’s going to make it taste better. So it’s a little bit tough to get that OK to get in there.
Sometimes it’s tough to come into a camp late, but I think the temperament of everybody allowed it to transpire and to become a really good environment. I was grateful to be a part of it.
I really think he’s got the potential and ability. It’s just about going into these fights and being smart and having the right game plan.
(Against Arlovski), he was working against his old coach. They had a lot of information there, a lot of game planning there. Maybe he was talking confident about Arlovski, who he’d owned in practice all the time. So he got sloppy and lazy out there and got caught. It was another big lesson that I think he learned. We’re looking for a better, smarter gameplan to come out of Travis on Jan. 17.
There’s plenty of things that make (Mitrione) dangerous. He’s one of those sleeper-type guys, those tough journeyman types that you might take light, and next thing you know, you’re taking a barrage of punches you didn’t want to see. There’s obvious holes in his game, where if he hadn’t made an adjustment, you could attack and expose. But people make adjustments in this game.
I think he’s beatable. He is beatable. We’re looking at that as an advantageous fight. I think Travis with his skill set matched up against Mitrione’s skill set, I think we have a slight if not a pretty good advantage.
That’s the new era of heavyweight – these big guys that can run and shoot in all areas, kind of like the small men, but just in a big man’s body, and that makes for a really exciting fight.”
UFC heavyweights Travis Browne and Matt Mitrione fight on the main card of UFC Fight Night 81 on Sunday in Boston, live on FOX Sports 1.
