Eric Crittendon has been involved in martial arts since early in his life and ended up taking a boxing fight in Kansas. After seeing what was going on in mixed martial arts, he decided to give the sport a shot and he will have his eleventh mixed martial arts fight tonight at Shamrock FC: Blitzkrieg.
Crittendon (5-5) took his first professional fight in 2005 and opened up his career with three straight victories. All of those victories came by stoppage and two of those wins came in the first round. However, he would go through a rough period in his career as he dropped four in a row and did that streak of losses cause him to make drastic changes?
“A lot of it was I was going to school as well and it took a lot of my time,” Crittendon told The MMA Report. “I could not the training I was supposed to around that time period. Then I got out of the career that I was doing and that is when you started to see my record go up again. Plus, I have trained with teams but I do not have a team. That kind of holds you back a little bit when you don’t have a for sure school to go to and fine tune your skills.”
Coming up tonight in St. Louis, Crittendon will look for his sixth victory in MMA when he faces Julius Anglickas. While this is the eleventh fight for Crittendon in his professional career, this will be the pro debut of Anglickas. Crittendon has looked up his opponent’s amateur career and simply put, he was not too impressed with what he saw.
“He is 5-0 as an amateur and when he gets to the pros, it’s going to be a little bit different,” said Crittendon. “I looked up his opponents and was not really impressed with his opponents. I am not much of a crap talker or anything like that. But I am sure when he gets in there, he will show me what he is there for. From what I saw, I am not too impressed.”
When it comes to the fight, Crittendon is not looking to score a stoppage victory. I know that may be odd to hear from a fighter and as Crittendon explained, he is looking to put on a show for the fans in attendance tonight in St. Louis.
“Just go in there and bang. Getting the victory — for real, I am hoping that there is a lot of blood and a lot of bruises. I hope it goes to the cards to be quite honest. It’s not really the victory isn’t what I usually look for. I usually look to put on a pretty good show. Hopefully the fans get their moneys worth.”