My mental preparation on fight day begins in my hotel room before I go to the arena.  Don’t ask me why, but I always clean my room.  It helps me to start feeling organized and ready for the day.  Maybe the line of thinking is that if everything is in place in my room, everything will fall into place later in the day as well….

 

    Unlike most fighters who listen to music to get pumped up before a fight, music is not used as motivation for me.  I spend the first portion of time in my locker room keeping my mind off the fight.  I don’t want to peak too soon in the day. 

 

    As the fight begins to approach, I do visualization exercises.  I picture myself going through the fight, executing the drills we have worked on.  My mental conditioning coach (Brian Cain) gave me audio tracks of locker room sounds and arena sounds during the fight…including introductions by Bruce Buffer.

 

   These things make up my fight day ritual.