After starting his professional mixed martial arts career with two straight victories, its been a tough time for Team Alpha Male’s Matt Wagy as he has dropped three of his last four fights.
Three of those defeats have come by guillotine choke submission and the most recent defeat came in February against Benito Lopez.
With his last three defeats coming by the same hold, has Wagy made any changes?
“The only thing is really my mental aspect,” Wagy told The MMA Report. “Right now, I basically know how good I am and I am constantly working on choke defenses even thought I have trained it my entire life. For some reason, I keep getting caught with the same thing and that is the reason I have been losing. Every time after practice I make sure I get some rolls in with people that get me in bad positions. If they grab my neck, I throw them off. I am just making sure that never happens again.”
Another change for Wagy heading into his fight on Saturday night in California is confidence. He has finally figured out the kind of style he wants to fight with, mainly due the confidence in his striking.
“It’s just not a matter of feeling confident with my skill set. I feel like now that I actually know what I want to do,” Wagy explained. “When I was transitioning into my pro career, I was figuring out what kind of fighter I want to be. As far as do you want to be the grappler, knockout guy, or do you want to mix everything together? Now that my striking is coming along, I kind of figured out what kind of style fighter I want to be.”
“I come from a grappling background so with that grappling background, I was constantly looking for takedowns and I didn’t have striking in the beginning. Now after three striking coaches, I am more comfortable on the feet and I realize that I can stand with people. I can stand with the best fighters in the world. I can stand with T.J. Dillashaw. It was one of those things that I did not know what I really wanted to do and I just reacted. Now I know what I want to do so I am just confident in what I want to do in the fight.”
Be sure to check out Wagy’s full interview with The MMA Report on Friday’s edition of The MMA Report Live.