Why OSP's short-notice preparation for Jon Jones has actually been a long time coming
Ovince Saint Preux once had dreams of playing professional football. As a member of the Tennessee Volunteers squad, OSP had plenty of examples of Vols gridiron greats to look up to.
"A lot of guys come in to college and their mindset is, 'I want to play football in the NFL,' and my mindset was along that, too," he said recently during filming of UFC 197 Countdown.
"It didn't happen the way I wanted it to. But, I'm always a firm believer in the idea that things happen for a reason."
After graduating, Saint Preux left football behind but soon picked up a new hobby that turned into a profession. The elite athlete met MMA coach Eric Turner in Knoxville, Tenn., and started training of a new kind.
Once he got positive feedback from his coach, OSP soon had a new dream sparked inside him -- to become UFC champion. "I asked him one day, 'how good do you think I could be?'" OSP remembers asking Turner.
"He said, 'you could be world champ.' That was all I needed to hear."
After years of training and fighting, Saint Preux finds himself on the eve of the chance to prove his coach right. On Saturday in Las Vegas, the light heavyweight contender will face the best fighter the division has ever known -- Jon Jones.
OSP took the fight on short notice, after champion Daniel Cormier pulled out a few weeks ago with an injury, but he says that his team has been preparing him for Jones for a lot longer than this abbreviated training camp.
"Pretty much everything Eric has been preparing me for, is this fight. Four years ago he was like, 'I need you to fight him. I want you to fight him,'" he recounted.
Turner confirmed that saying that with a talent like OSP, he always felt it worthwhile to have a high measuring stick. "It's kind of a test -- a mental test," the coach explained.
"[Jones] is the best, so if I have to fight him, how? So, we've been kind of evolving a gameplan for a long time. So, thankfully that's very much set."
As scary as Saint Preux has been in recent years, scoring TKO after TKO, his coach insists that he's been pulling his punches, so to speak. On Saturday, Jones can expect an entirely different OSP beast than has ever been seen.
"No one knows what 'Vince can do. I've always kind of held 'Vince back and never let him be as good as he could be, in certain situations, because I wanted this experience," Turner continued.
"I wanted a place where he could fight for the belt and he could really show off what he can really so. This is the first time that 'Vince gets to be 'Vince, and he doesn't have to hold back, at all."
For his part, OSP believes that, given his abilities and size, if he uses the right gameplan, he can give Jones some real problems. "A lot of times when people fight Jon, they fight him the way Jon wants them to fight. He keeps people at range and he picks people apart," he analyzed.
"When you actually stay in his face, it's something different. ... He has a lot of trouble with people his size."
The challenger also says Jones can expect him to be there all night long. OSP didn't take this opportunity at an interim title simply to lose, quickly.
"It's hard to put me away," he concluded.
"One hit is not going to put me away. Two, three, four, or five hits are not going to put me away."
