Interviews
04/02/10 - Marc Laimon breaks down training Trigg to fight Matt Serra
FO: You have been working with Frank Trigg for this fight. He is a wrestler at heart and at 37 years of age, not exactly a spring chicken. How do you go about teaching new things to a fighter like that?
I watched a bunch of Trigg’s fights recently and he was doing a lot of good things. When I coach, I don’t try and change somebody and say “you have to be a Mark Laimon clone” because if you were a Marc Laimon clone you would be a fat guy sitting on a couch, watching fights and playing video games. So you don’t want to be that guy!
FO: If you don’t teach them ‘the Laimon way’, what is it that you do?
What I try to do is see what the fighter brings to the table and maximise their attributes, see what Trigg does and see if I can make it a little bit better. That’s kind of what I do. Its like if you go to buy a suit - I don’t what they advertise her in Vegas, you can buy like three suits for a hundred bucks. That could be a decent suit but if you want a really nice, fitted suit you have to go to a tailor and he is going to custom-make it for you and your body type. That’s kind of the same way I approach jiu jitsu and MMA, you have to custom-build a game for that guy. You cant just have one system that works for everybody, one suit that fits everybody. You have to take what they have got and maximise it. And its not radically changing the suit, you don’t take it and cut off the sleeves. Its just making little adjustments to make it work that much better for him.
FO: Have you been able to add anything to Trigg’s game that makes you think he will have the extra edge on Saturday night?
If you look at Trigg’s history he has done very well with submissions guys, with grounding and pounding them. So we just took what he did and tried to make it a little bit better, and there are a couple of new wrinkles that we tried to add that’s all top secret stuff. Hopefully he will be able to unveil them in the fight with Serra.
FO: The beef between you and Serra on The Ultimate Fighter season four was seen by millions around the world. Has that been on your mind and does the prospect of having a hand in defeating Serra please you?
Matt Serra doesn’t really come into my thoughts too much other than that I study his game. He does things really well in MMA that I see him do and I teach my students and my fighters. Other than that I don’t think too much about him and I am sure he doesn’t think too much about me. Its just a fight. People can look at all the backstories and whatnot but I respect Serra as a fighter. He is very tough, only been stopped twice in his career and he does things very, very well that I think he is underappreciated for. Like, he did that leglock he was able to do against Yves Edwards and Shonie Carter where he does a leglock and uses it as a sweep - that’s awesome.
FO: What has it been like training with someone like Trigg, who has been around the MMA game for many years?
Its been fun training Trigg. He is a little bit older, I think Serra is 35 and Trigg is 37. But he has been really receptive to learning and he has made a lot of improvements in his game that are starting to come together really nice. It should be a really good fight. I think him and Serra are the first fight on the pay per view. It should be an interesting fight, I know Serra has been training hard and I have been following the trash talk on the internet which has been entertaining.
Gary Alexander
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