As the sport of Mixed Martial Arts continues to grow, so do the opportunities for up-and-coming fighters.
One place of opportunity on the new MMA landscape is Missouri-based promotion Shamrock FC that promotes prospects and allows their champions to sign with Bellator, and one of those champions is Jordan Howard.
Howard will look to defend his bantamweight strap against Danny Aguirre on the September 11th Shamrock FC card.
At the moment, Jordan Howard is enjoying a seven fight win streak that includes a victory over former Bellator fighter Owen Evinger, but the early chapters of Howard’s career presented real challenges – specifically a three fight losing streak following his professional debut.
“Those three losses were tough,” Howard said on The MMA Report Live. “Coming off of a 3-fight losing streak, I had to re-evaluate my career. I realized that at that time I was just treating Mixed Martial Arts as a hobby, and if I wanted to continue to pursue Mixed Martial Arts, I needed to make sure to treat it like a job.”
In order to right his career, Howard developed new habits and found a new gym.
“We amped up my training quite a bit,” Howard said. “I also started training with Cavalo Brazilian Jiu Jitsu under Zach Lenon, and I think that’s changed my game completely.”
Since the losing skid, the eventual Shamrock FC bantamweight champ finished six of his next seven opponents.
“I pride myself on finishing,” Howard said. “When people go to work on Monday and talk about the fights they saw over the weekend, very rarely are they talking about the decisions they saw. People want to see knockouts, they want to see slick submissions and I’m out to please the crowd.”
Against Danny Aguirre, Howard will look to continue his run of stoppage victories.
“I’m definitely looking for the finish, but I want to do it in impressive fashion,” Howard said. “I feel like my last fight wasn’t really the dominant performance that I wanted. I did get caught, so I don’t think it was a great fight to finish with Shamrock on. I’m glad that I get to do the title defense to go out and showcase my skills.”
Having done his proper prep work on his opponent, the bantamweight champion understands the problems that Aguirre could present on fight night.
“We’ve done a little bit of research, so I know that he’s more than just a slick jiu-jitsu guy,” Howard said. “He’s 6-foot-2, so he’s a very tall 135er, so I know he’s going to have a lot of range. He’s going to be able to kick and punch from distance. The challenge is going to be closing that gap and finding a way to finish him.”
“I have some great training partners at Cavalo Brazilian Jiu Jitsu that are tall, lanky guys, and they’re high level jiu-jitsu practitioners, so he’s not going to throw anything at me that I haven’t seen.”
A cliche in the fight game is that the biggest fight in one’s career is always the next one, but for Howard in his upcoming Shamrock FC title fight, that cliche rings true. A memorable win could end up with him finding himself in the Bellator cage.
“I’m definitely looking forward to fighting for Bellator. I’m concentrating on this fight 100%. I don’t want to start thinking about my next fight yet, until this one’s finished and in the books.”