A little fight at lunch, anyone? Probably not too much. On Sunday, Benoît Saint Denis will have to stick with it. Placed in the penultimate fight of UFC 325 in Sydney, the MMA fighter will enter the cage at around 2:30 p.m. to face Dan Hooker. An unusual schedule which can be explained by the time difference between Australia and the United States. It will in fact be 10:30 p.m. at the same time in New York (4:30 a.m. in France on the night of Saturday to Sunday), and Americans will be able to fully enjoy the show.
For the other fighters scheduled on the card, the schedule will be even earlier. Aaron Tau and Namsrai Batbayar, the first two to enter the octagon, will start at 9 a.m. Barely time to eat breakfast when it will already be time to fight for 15 minutes.
The entire program for the week was thus turned upside down. While the weigh-in is usually scheduled for Friday at 9 a.m., it has been moved to 3 p.m. There then remained two nights and more than 40 hours before the fights, a rare and appreciable delay for the fighters.
“We took all these changes into account, whether it was the time difference, the weigh-in, the ceremonial weigh-in and the fights,” promises Benoît Saint Denis. We arrived there early, on Wednesday, to absorb it all. And I am well surrounded professionally, with a dietitian who has been following me for several fights and with whom we have put everything in place to be in optimal conditions in the cage. »
“At 11 p.m. or midnight, you no longer want to go to bed”
For Kevin Jousset, a former UFC fighter who participated twice in an evening in Australia, this schedule should even benefit the Frenchman. “The change in weigh-in time can only be advantageous for Benoît because he is a bigger lightweight (-70 kg) than Dan Hooker,” he believes. He will have almost 48 hours before his fight, he will have two nights to gain weight correctly, it is very positive. »
Placed at the start of the card during this same UFC Sydney last year, the welterweight (-77 kg) enjoyed fighting at dawn. “At 10 p.m., 11 p.m. or midnight, these are not times when we are used to training, we no longer want to go to bed,” he emphasizes. In my opinion, it’s easier to fight in the morning or early afternoon, but it also depends on each person’s routine. »
“It’s something that was anticipated and prepared,” assures Maxime Petit, Benoît Saint Denis’ mental trainer. He regularly trained at the time of battle to see if the state of alertness was good, if the body temperature was adequate, if he was in a state of alertness. The pre-fight routine will be delayed, in terms of meals, warm-up or mental activation, but he is aware of this. »
“He’s really in a total control zone”
Before this duel, the two men tried to recreate the conditions of the fight to prepare for it. “We tried to reprogram his cues because his brain associates combat and the evening, so we included this new schedule in his mental imagery and our conversations,” explains the creator of MentalTop. And we planned a more progressive mental activation on D-Day, so as not to get excited too early but also not to lack intensity in the cage. »
Tuesday, five days before his duel against the 6th ranked UFC lightweight, Benoît Saint Denis had no apprehensions. “I trained mostly at that time and I was very focused, I feel ready to switch at the right time to ideally enter the fight,” assured the Frenchman, who has a well-established routine to immerse himself in his concentration in the hours preceding the duel.
This will also be essential. “The more atypical the schedule, the more the high-level athlete must have a solid mental routine,” confirms Maxime Petit. He must be even more vigilant in what he puts in place upstream. Benoît knows it, he has a plot to do as soon as he gets up, he knows breathing exercises that allow him to energize or calm down. I have no doubts about him, he really is in a total control zone. »
With already eleven fights in the UFC in a little over four years, Benoît Saint Denis is indeed starting to know himself perfectly. Despite everything, he remains less experienced than Dan Hooker, who arrived in the prestigious organization in 2014 and who fought eight times in Oceania.
