Jon Fitch Breaks Down His WSOF 24 Win Over Yushin Okami

Speaking after his WSOF 24 main event win against Yushin Okami (via MMAjunkie), Jon Fitch discussed his victory and what’s next. Fitch won the fight by unanimous decision.

Fitch on respecting Okami’s strength too much at first: “He’s definitely strong, but I’m a beast myself. In the first round, I gave him too much credit for how strong he was going to be. I kept waiting for him to hulk me over with the body lock, because he was locking his hands a few times. I think that I eventually overpowered him and made him constantly work, drain the oxygen from his muscles and slowed him down a little bit. He’s kind of awkward and big, long and difficult to deal with.”

Fitch on what he learned about Okami from Mike Swick’s fight: “I wish I hadn’t heard anything that Mike said about him. I just had this conversation with my manager, he said, ‘Do you know what Swick said when he came back to the corner after the first round of that fight? He said, ‘He’s the strongest guy I’ve ever felt.’’ I had heard that story before, so I was coming into this fight thinking he was going to be a gorilla. He was strong, but I think I gave him too much credit.”

Fitch on how he thought the fight would go: “I didn’t have too many expectations of where the fight was going to go. I figured he would be slower than me and I thought maybe I’d be able to take advantage in the standup a little more. But he turned out to be quite a bit faster. He got faster at welterweight. He wasn’t laboring through a lot of punches as he kind of appears to at 185. I think he’s got a career at 170 if he wants to keep fighting at that weight.”