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Brian Stann: Strategy Was Right Against Chael Sonnen, But Couldn’t Execute




Brian Stann will look to rebound from his loss to Chael Sonnen when he fights Alessio Sakara on Saturday at UFC on Fuel TV 2.

In an interview with the Sherdog Radio Network’s “Beatdown” show, Stann discussed the Sonnen bout at length, the improvements he’s made since, Sakara and more.

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On what he took away from the Sonnen loss: “I really believe that my coaches, Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn, they had the right game plan. I just think at that point in my career, I was unable to execute it that night. There were still some of the techniques I was trying to use that were still a little bit out of my comfort zone. I’ve really worked hard with a lot of people -- I mean, I’ve had no less than four Brazilian jiu-jitsu world-level black belts in the room with me for the last five months since that fight to become a lot more comfortable with things like butterfly guard, half-guard sweeps and things of that nature. Because while my ground game has progressed solidly and I am no slouch on the ground, being very fluent off your back at the elite level is a whole other area. That’s what you need to be to defeat guys like Chael Sonnen.”

On what makes Sonnen such a difficult opponent: “It’s pressure and pace. You cannot simulate the kind of pressure Chael puts on you in the gym. It’s just hard to do, especially if you’re a heavy-handed guy like me. The issue I had in the gym was, I would try to get wrestlers to pressure me because he actually crosses the cage in like one and a half seconds, and he is right in your face, shooting for a takedown. The issue is, you can stop one. It’s the second, third, fourth and fifth takedown attempts that he will go for that you don’t stop. And then the guy doesn’t stop when he’s on top of you. He is capable of going 15 or 25 minutes straight. You don’t get a lot of wrestlers that can do that.

“When you’re in practice and you’re trying to get guys to do that, well, when they fail, you’re hitting them and you’re hitting them very hard, which over the course of eight or nine weeks, they don’t really want to do that anymore. I’m not paying these guys to spar with me. [They] didn’t sign up to just run into Brian Stann’s uppercuts, knees and punches. I’ve had to go through and find different drills that allow people to simulate that kind of pressure because nobody does it quite like Chael does.”

On the role of strength and control against Sonnen: “I have never met a middleweight as strong as me in the gym at Jackson’s. None. The only guy who I’ve ever felt go toe-to-toe with me strength-wise is Tim Kennedy, and he’s a specimen himself. But I don’t know what the issue was [against Sonnen]. I can’t speak for anything Chael did in that fight because I don’t know it for a fact, but I didn’t feel like I had a strength advantage in that fight. He’s a strong guy. He’s a very controlling guy. You couple that with his technique and you’ve got a dominant, dominant fighter. There’s no doubt about it.”

On Sakara’s strategy: “I don’t believe Alessio Sakara’s game plan is to come out there and stand with me for three rounds. … When you go back to some of his earlier MMA fights, Sakara executes a lot of takedowns, uses his ground-and-pound and uses his jiu-jitsu. I think he’s going to try and coax me into a striking match, get me comfortable, shoot under my strikes and try to put me on my back and take the path of least resistance. It doesn’t make sense to just go toe-to-toe for three rounds and see where the judges send it.”

On what’s on the line against Sakara: “When you’re coming off a loss, it doesn’t matter who they throw you. When you’re at this level of the game, you know you need to perform and you need to get back on the winning track. I’ve got an awful lot to lose with this fight. My last fight, I didn’t have nearly as much to lose. When you’re coming off a performance where you lost, and lost the way I did, I’m anxious to get back in there and fight and get a ‘W.’ This is a huge fight for me.”

Listen to the full interview (beginning at 1:24:54).
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