There can be a subtle beauty
in someone who just doesn’t care. And Jason High? Well, he just doesn’t care.
Sort of. Of course he cares –
saying he doesn’t might imply High (16-3 MMA, 0-1 UFC) doesn’t want to win when
he meets Erick Silva (14-3 MMA, 2-2 UFC) on Saturday at UFC on FUEL TV 10. And
that, obviously, would be patently false.
But when it comes to what the
oddsmakers who have made Silva a 4-to-1 favorite, when it comes to what his
record is, when it comes to talking about his opponent, when it comes to
fighting Silva in Brazil on hostile turf? All that stuff, High doesn’t much
care about. And he has pretty much the textbook just-don’t-care way to phrase
it, too.
“I’m going to put the pressure
on him and make him uncomfortable,” High told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio). “He’s
fighting in front of his home (crowd) – and I don’t really care about all that
s—t. There’s going to be pressure, it’s going to be ugly, and I don’t really
give a s—t. It’s still a fight.”
There it is, in a nutshell,
for High: “I don’t really give a s—t.”
UFC on FUEL TV 10 takes place
at Paulo Sarasate Arena in Fortaleza, Ceara, Brazil. The main card, including
High vs. Silva, airs on FUEL TV following prelims on Facebook.
High comes into the fight
riding a seven-fight win streak, including three straight under the Strikeforce
banner. He’s been to the UFC dance before, and dropped a unanimous decision to
Charlie Brenneman in March 2010. Now, more than three years later, he’s been
invited back and believes he’s a significantly different fighter.
His wins since his loss to
Brenneman, which followed a knockout loss to Marius Zaromskis at DREAM.10,
include Jordan Mein, Hayato Sakurai, Quinn Mulhern and Nate Moore, the latter
two in Strikeforce.
“I’m light years better,” said
High, who in the middle of his seven-fight streak started training at American
Top Team for the bulk of his camps. “I’ve improved everywhere. My standup’s
definitely improved, and my grappling’s improved leaps and bounds. I don’t want
to be the same fighter I was three years ago.”
That’s what he’ll be
attempting to show Silva – and the oddsmakers – on Saturday. That the numbers
are skewed so heavily in his favor might be perplexing to High – if he cared.
He takes that with a grain of salt, too.
“I don’t pay attention to it,
man,” High said. “I’ve been an underdog a lot, so it really doesn’t matter to
me. It’s a bunch of fat guys smoking cigarettes handicapping fights. What the
f--- do I care what they think? I’m going to beat his ass. I don’t really pay
much attention to how many fights I’ve won. The only time I pay attention to
that is doing interviews like this.”
If High’s comments come off as
slightly annoyed, it’s because he is, and he knows it. Chalk it up to the
weight cut, chalk it up to being out of his element in Brazil, chalk it up to
being travel-weary.
But he’s attempting to turn
that aggravation into a positive when Saturday rolls around.
“The game face has been on all
week,” High said. “I’m getting irritable. I’ve got to see him around the
f---ing hotel, I’ve got to answer questions about him. Whatever. I’ll see him
at weigh-ins. But cutting weight, everything is a little more annoying at this
point.”
Being annoyed leading up to
the fight would likely be water under the bridge if High can pull off the
upset, and he’s seen a bit of a blueprint for beating Silva by watching Jon
Fitch outwrestle the Brazilian this past October, Silva’s most recent fight.
So if Silva believes the
oddsmakers and sees High as a walk-through on the way back to the win column,
High thinks he has another thing coming.
“Fitch kind of exposed him a
little bit, I feel like,” he said. “So I’ll be looking to go there and wear him
out, I think. He likes to finish early and he’s done that a lot. I want to take
him deep and put pressure on him.
“He knows what I’m trying to
do to him and he’s afraid of having it done to him. After that first round,
maybe his eyes are going to be opened up a bit when things aren’t going his way
and he’s getting beat up in front of his home (crowd).”
And if that’s the case, Silva
certainly won’t be happy. And High? It’s likely he just won’t give a s—t. (Source)
