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By David West Remedios Comes Out Of Retirement Britain's Leigh Remedios was long considered the top 145-pound fighter in the country, until he announced his retirement in late 2005. He started his competitive career in Canada, making his debut at Raw Combat in Vancouver in July 1997. Remedios had seven fights in Canada before he returned to the UK, where he carried on fighting, making trips to the US to win the Hook'n'Shoot title before being one of the locals selected to represent Britain when the UFC came to the Royal Albert Hall in 2002. However, given the low profile and low pay cheques of MMA fighters at the time, Remedios decided to call it a day and devote his energy to his career in engineering and to raising a family. Now that the MMA boom is in full swing, he entered the cage at FX3 last weekend to issue a challenge to newly crowned featherweight champion Emanuel Fernandez, who accepted. Remedios should make his return to the cage in November against the very tough Frenchman. FCF caught up with the British Bulldog to find out why he's coming back. FCF: You announced your retirement after beating Sami Berik in October 2005. What has tempted you to put the gloves back on now? Is it the chance to win the title? Leigh Remedios: Well, I quit to return to full time work to start a family, as I earn much more as an engineer than as a fighter. However, recently MMA has started to blow up and promotions like FX3 and Cage Rage are paying purses that make it viable to have time off work to train. And yes, it's the title I want. FCF: After spending time up north with Team Quannam, you are now running VT Ju Jitsu in Chippenham in the West Country. When did you put that together and who are some of your top guys on the team? LR: Serena [Leigh's wife] and I decided to try teaching some classes when we moved to Chippenham. Actually, she decided - she pretty much runs the whole thing and has the drive and vision. She had some flyers made up and put them about. When our first class started we expected five or six people, we had well into double figures. The classes have been running for almost a year and we have some really good guys and girls. We have Paul Reed who fights professionally and just extended his record to 5-0 on the weekend by stopping Wesley Felix. We also have a few amateur fighters and a number of students competing in grappling competitions and we've done quite well. FCF: You know Emanuel Fernandez very well, having fought him twice - with a draw and one loss by decision. What do you think his strengths are as a fighter and what weaknesses do you hope to exploit? LR: Well, watching him fight Alex Owen on Saturday, it's clear that his strengths are still the same - he is a BJJ black belt with good Judo and an aggressive style. I think he also imposes his game very well, as he completely dominated Owen, although that was expected. I didn't really want to have to fight Emanuel again; if I'm completely honest, I saw Alex as a bit of an easy fight and would have liked to have taken the title from him. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way, as I think Alex is a very good fighter, but his skill set matches up badly against fighters with better grappling. But he turned the fight down and chose Emanuel instead - actually that's not fair and maybe I should elaborate. FX3 asked me to fight Alex on this show. I said I would need to see how my training goes before I can commit, which they understood. After a few weeks, my training had some hiccups, so I told FX3 I couldn't take a championship level fight, as my fitness wasn't up to speed. However, I had a think about it and figured I could beat Alex in a round, or maybe two, so I called FX3 up a couple of days later and told them as much and that I would take the fight. I think at that point they had already started to work with Emanuel but the response that I got was that Alex refused the fight. Back to the question, as you say, both Emanuel and I are good grapplers. I think Emanuel is the more accomplished BJJ player and I am probably a sharper striker. In our last fight, I wanted to keep it standing and he wanted to go to the ground and it ended up as a stale mate, due to our similar level of wrestling. I think the striking is where I would have an advantage but he is very good at shutting you down when you open to strike, so I don't think I'll get a chance to use it. I actually think that Emanuel is more dangerous off his back than on top, so I'm considering letting him take me down and trying to finish from the bottom like Danny Batten did, although if I can't, I'll end up losing the decision. With no decisions, my game plan would be to fire off submission attempts non-stop, as I think I could catch him, but under the current rule set I'll need to come up with a different strategy. FCF: How do you see the rankings in the British featherweight division and where do you fit in? LR: Hmm, not really thought about it too much, as I'm not that interested in fighting UK guys. We have some really tough guys who don't get the credit they deserve, so they'd be bad fights for me to take at this stage. At a guess, I would say the top guys would be something like Danny Batten, Rob Olivier, Ronnie Mann, Alex Owen, Brad Pickett and Ashley Grimshaw, although possibly not in that order. I can't rank myself in there as I haven't fought for two years but I will say I think I could beat all of them but I'm not sure if I would. FCF: Are you worried about ring rust since you've been away from MMA competition? LR: No, not really. I've never had a problem with fighting but I think emotionally it could be a shock for me, as I don't really like the big crowds and just want to fight. That might put me off a bit. I would have liked an easier first fight back than a guy I was unable to beat in my prime but if we never took challenges, we'd still be living in caves. FCF: Will this fight mark a return to regular competition or is this just a one-off deal? LR: Well, let's see how it goes, hahaha. Ideally, I would like to win the FX3 world title and then beat up Imanari for the Cage Rage world title, but now that Zuffa have bought Pride, I think they will black list him from competing on Cage Rage. But I would like to unify the titles and then maybe set up a match with Danny Batten, the Cagewarriors champion. He is definitely the top UK guy at the moment and probably the only UK guy I would be interested in fighting. We both previously agreed that we would only do it if we got paid some good cash, so I guess I'd have to earn that by doing something like unifying the titles. FCF: What has been your toughest fight so far in your career? LR: Well, don't take this personally, but I've never liked that question. I didn't have a big competitive career before professional MMA, so I've been learning as I go. As such, sometimes I've been better prepared for one fight than another and have put on some good fights against good fighters and lacklustre ones against lesser skilled guys. Probably the worst I've ever felt was against Louis Beale, when I needed oxygen after the fight because my body was starting to shut down. I'm not going to disrespect him by making any excuses, but that was a pretty rough night for me. SFUK reported, "Beale tapped. Leigh collapsed exhausted on the ring floor. Beale looked like he'd just got warmed up." FCF: Many thanks! LR: Any time. Three Fights Announced For Cage Rage 23 Just ahead of their show this weekend, Cage Rage has announced three fights for the next big show in September, when they'll have to compete with the UFC in London for customers' ticket money. Mark "The Wizard" Weir will make his first appearance as a welterweight to challenge British champion Paul "Semtex" Daley. Both men have excellent striking, but at 6' 3" Weir will enjoy a substantial reach advantage. Daley may have the stronger grappling and against the taller Weir, he may well look for the takedown and try to pound Weir on the floor rather than risk getting caught on his feet by the Wizard's quick-fire combinations. On the same bill, James Zikic will make his first defence of his World light-heavyweight title against Vitor Belfort. Zikic absorbed a terrific beating from Evangelista "Cyborg" Santos in the first round of their title fight at Cage Rage 21 before coming back to dominate Santos in the second and third rounds to win the decision. Zikic will have to be faster getting into gear against Belfort or it could be a short night for the durable British fighter, as Belfort has much better hands than Santos, whose cardio let him down against Zikic. Thirdly, Tengiz Tedoradze, who headlines tomorrow's show against Butterbean, will defend his British heavyweight crown against London Shootfighters' Mustapha Al Turk. This will be a major step up in the quality of opposition for Turk, whose biggest win to date was over former MMA star, Mark Kerr at Cage Rage 20. Prior to that he demolished Henry Miller, whose 3-7-0 record speaks for itself and Al Turk has yet to fight a top five British heavyweight. Tedoradze, by contrast, holds a record of 21-7-1 and is the UK's leading proponent of the art of ground and pound, able to generate devastating power when striking on the floor. Combined with his world championship Greco-Roman wrestling, Tedoradze is a formidable champion whose only weakness in the past has been his rather unrefined stand-up, which will be tested against the heavy-handed Butterbean tomorrow night. Tedoradze will be a heavy favorite against Al Turk come September. |
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