James Vick: Hands Down, Chin Up Has Been A Problem My Whole Career
James Vick has admitted to having serious technical flaws in his game after suffering four straight losses.
The 33-year-old Ultimate Fighter veteran last fought at UFC Tampa in October 2019. He met Niko Price in his return to welterweight and was knocked out by an upkick in the first round. Before that he suffered three straight defeats at lightweight, against Dan Hooker, Paul Felder and Justin Gaethje – two of which were also by knockout.
Speaking to MMA Junkie Radio, Vick admitted he has some pretty basic technical holes in his game that have left him susceptible to being stopped throughout his career, he said.
“A lot of it this trip was me falling back in love with fighting – I felt like I lost interest. I always did what was required, but all my losses were technical issues. My last fight sucked because I worked with my friend Dorian and I felt like he really helped me better than anyone to keep my hands up and fix these technical issues. And last time I didn’t get to show that – I got caught with a damn upkick. But besides that, all the issues were technical. Fighting with my hands down and my chin up in the air has been a problem my whole career, and no one ever made me pay for it until I got a top-10 level guy.
“It’s hard to talk about that and not offend people. I worked with some great coaches, but sometimes a great coach can’t fix your particular issue. A lot of the coaches I’ve trained with, I know if they took a kid and built them from the ground up, that kid would have great technique. But having someone come to you after four, five years of bad technique and then try to fix those issues, I think that’s what I dealt with in the past – coming to coaches basically already having (expletive) up technique. And that’s my fault, too, for staying with a coach that wasn’t correcting my technique.
“My first boxing coach ever, I had 20 fights under him and I won most of those fights. I was a two-time boxing Golden Gloves champion, so you don’t know what you don’t know. Since, we’ve had a falling out, but I trained with that man for almost 12 years. He was like a second father to me, but he never fixed my problems – so I started with bad technique.”
“A lot of people talk (expletive), but at the end of the day, to say I don’t belong in the UFC – that’s delusional. You can say I don’t belong in the top 10, and that’s fine and understandable. But besides getting caught with an up-kick, I’ve never lost to an opponent that hasn’t been a top-10 fighter.”
Can James Vick fix the technical flaws in his game?
