Northcutt: There wasn’t sparring at old gym, I’ll be going to Tristar

Sage Northcutt had the looks and flashy style that earned him notice and income beyond more fighters at a similar point their career. When the lost to The Fight Lab’s Bryan Barberena, via what appeared to be a less than impossible choke, the sport seemed to engage as one in a collective HAHA.

However, the 19 year old was not without his supporters as well.

Rafael dos Anjos @RdosAnjosMMA

Hey @sagenorthcutt keep your head up you’ll be back strong you have nothing but time

Michael McDonald @MaydayMcDonald

Haven’t met @sagenorthcutt, but he seems like a good guy. A loss only makes us better. The 1st loss is always hard. Give him a break guys.

khabib nurmagomedov @TeamKhabib

Hi @sagenorthcutt don’t worry about all this jealous people keep working hard @ufc @arielhelwani RT

Sergio Pettis @sergiopettis

@sagenorthcutt I know how you r feeling.Don’t worry about what others say. Clear your head, get back in the gym and start over #youngbeast

Cowboy Cerrone@Cowboycerrone

Keep your head up kid! Look what you have done at 19. Ask all talking s— what they were doing at 19?

Sage Northcutt @sagenorthcutt

@Cowboycerrone @ufc Thank you Mr. Cerrone for the positive words. I’m going to get back to training and come back better than ever!

Cowboy Cerrone @Cowboycerrone

You ever want to come on out to the ranch. Come’on f*** training I’ll show ya how to live 

michael@bisping

•Poor kid. So much pressure at a young age. So much potential though. You have a bright future sage!

•Take 6-8 months off and join a legit fight camp, @sagenorthcutt can be a world champion for sure. The potential is there. Time on his side

Late last year Northcutt trained at Firas Zahabi’sTristar in Montreal, Canada for several weeks, but did his entire camp for UFC on FOX 18 at his hometown academy Gracie Barra Katy, while studying petroleum engineering at Texas A&M University. Northcutt appeared recently on Ariel Helwani’s The MMA Hour, and announced he moving his training not just to a legitimate fight camp, but to arguably the best gym on Earth – Tristar.

“Yes sir, I will be up there full-time, it looks like,” said Northcutt, as transcribed by Shaun Al-Shatti for MMAFighting.com. “I do have schoolwork still, because I’m still at Texas A&M, so I’m trying to figure out how exactly that’s going to work. If I need to come back to do certain tests and quizzes, or how that’s going to work out. So I’m still playing out that schedule, but yes sir, I’ll be training at Tristar.”

Northcutt also said that he quick tapped because he had a throat infection.

“No one ever likes that, someone celebrating that someone lost,” he said, “So obviously it’s not something that you want to hear, you don’t want to listen to. But, I mean, it’s the sport of MMA, so I understand that they’re talking this and that or whatever. It might not be positive about me. But there’s people who are lifting me up and saying great things, so I’m focused on those things. I know that I have a ton of heart out there, so if people think that I was tapping out there because I panicked or the pressure, it wasn’t that. It was the fact that I was extremely sick.

“I made a post on my Instagram and my Twitter, and I got to see a lot of positive things that were uplifting, so that’s always nice to hear. Some comments from the champion of 155, Rafael dos Anjos. Donald Cerrone was awesome. Just so many different people who are so nice and sticking up for me, so it really means a lot.”

“I think (the criticism) could be because I’m very young. Like you said, I’m very young. I do have a lot to learn. So now I’m going to get to go up to Tristar and learn as much as I possibly can, and I think that [plays a big part] in everything. Just being 19 years old and being able to be in the UFC has a big effect on every single thing that people look at. So I’m honored and blessed to be in the UFC, much less be 19 years old in the UFC, knowing that I have so much time to learn, so much technique to learn, everything all around to make myself better. I think that has to do with what people are looking at or picking at.”

“Normally I do not spar leading up to fights. It’s just kind of protecting yourself from injuries, and for the moment being, I haven’t been at a gym where there is sparring or any MMA fighters at the gym. The gym I’m specifically at is a Gracie Barra gym, so in the future obviously I will. I can spar and train my technique in different ways, going up to Tristar, getting different training partners, different UFC fighters who are in there, very talented (fighters), and getting to learn the most I can out of everything.”