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Joe Lauzon reveals how many sparring rounds he's accumulated during his UFC career
Joe Lauzon has been one of the most active fighters throughout his UFC career with 21 bouts thus far inside the Octagon with No. 22 coming up this weekend against Jim Miller.
Throughout his career, Lauzon has been known as one of the most ferocious fighters inside the gym because he's not only working for his own career but he's also developing the next generation of athletes inside his Massachusetts-based facility.
Despite his veteran experience, Lauzon admits that it took him 20 fights in the UFC to finally learn that he didn't need to bang away with his training partners for two and a half months to get ready for fights because those strenuous rounds were taking as much away as it was adding back to his arsenal.
"In the past when we first started, maybe not the very beginning, but we would spar for 10 weeks. So we would spar twice a week for 10 weeks," Lauzon explained when speaking to FOX Sports. "Then it was 10 weeks for a few fights and then it was eight weeks for a lot of fights and then for the last fight we sparred maybe three and a half weeks, four weeks tops and everything was just awesome. Even when we took this fight on short notice in the back of my mind I was thinking 'oh we've only got three weeks and then the fight's here' but we really had the same amount of time to train.
"I've had so many fights now, going back probably five or six years, every time we spar I have all those rounds and we video tape them. I have all those rounds for the past six years. I've had a lot of fights and a lot of rounds. It's like you kind of think back and I look at the files on my computer and I'm like what the (expletive). Each one of these is a four or five minutes of me sparring or fighting really, really hard. I've done those rounds so many times."
Lauzon can't pinpoint the exact amount of time he's spent sparring during his preparation for fights, but he knows it's been a lot.
There's been a real focus lately on fighter safety and the amount of damage athletes are putting on their bodies in the gym before the actual competition even begins.
Lauzon's most recent knockout over Diego Sanchez at UFC 200 helped him realize that a month or less worth of sparring not only got him sharp enough for the fight, but it didn't take the usual toll on his body ahead of a fight that he's been doing since first arriving in the Octagon a decade ago.
"We'll call it 20 fights, spar for probably eight weeks on average, twice a week. So that's 16 sparring sessions per camp for 20 fights. 320 sparring sessions and we do four, four minute rounds during camp so 1280 four minute rounds. The way we do sparring is I'll go with guys who are a little bit smaller than me, but also a bit faster. Sometimes we'll go with guys who are heavier and slower. I'm not getting cracked all those times. In those 10 years, I've probably gotten a concussion maybe once where I got really rocked, really bad," Lauzon revealed.
By Lauzon's numbers that adds up to over 5,000 minutes spent sparring partners and while he makes a note to say that the fighters in his gym also always wear protective head gear and bigger gloves, it can still wear on the body over the years.
Lauzon also says that his estimation for sparring rounds only takes into account his own career, but he's spent a lot more time in the cage while helping training partners and teammates prepare for their own fights as well.
"That's just for me, that's just for my fights. Never mind helping Joe Proctor get ready or any of my other guys get ready for their fights. It's crazy, it adds up," Lauzon said. "I think we're going to continue sparring three or four weeks out and somebody that didn't have all those rounds, they probably need to spar a little bit more. They need that experience.
"But for me, I've got all that experience, give me a couple of weeks and I'm good to go."
Much like middleweight champion Michael Bisping recently noted after a shortened training camp helped him avoid the pitfalls going into his title victory over Luke Rockhold at UFC 199, Lauzon says the days of sparring for two months to get ready for an opponent are over.
"I really don’t need eight or 10 weeks now," Lauzon said. "I think three or four weeks is more than enough."
