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By David West Murray Back in Training; Teammates Reid and Gilbert Prepare for Cage Rage
Asked if Murray has suffered any after-effects from his injuries, Demetriades responds emphatically, "There are absolutely no long term effects. He got stabbed four times. He got stabbed in the heart. The heart's a muscle that will repair like any other muscle. He had to have open-heart surgery because obviously he got stabbed through into his heart so they had to get to it, they broke his chest plate and they opened him up with clamps and did open heart surgery. So the thing that will take the longest time to recover will be the bone fuse, his actual chest plate. Pad work is no problem, a lot of the kicking, punching, the stand-up wrestling stuff is okay, but the jiu-jitsu, the ground work, he's still not able to have somebody on top of him fully and put their weight on him, because obviously he's in pain. Murray is already hungry to get back in competition, says Demetriades. "He wanted us to pencil in a fight for him, but we're waiting. After the new year we're looking to start training properly and get a fight within two or three months. Murray has faced a series of setbacks in the past year, from being denied a visa to return to the UFC to breaking his hip in the gym. "We were signed to fight Baroni," says Demetriades. "It was going to be announced the day before he got into trouble. There are loads of great fights happening at the moment in Cage Rage [though]. We're real interested in Curtis Stout, Anderson Silva, Matt Lindland, any of these fights would be great for us. It's just a matter of Lee recovering really well and having a warm-up fight before he jumps into top-level competition. We're definitely looking forward to getting him back in the ring as soon as possible." On the subject of a return to the UFC, the trainer explains, "We should be applying for a visa within the next two or three months, which should allow us to go. There's nothing wrong with his visa application; the American Embassy were a little bit fussy because he didn't do it at a certain time and you're not allowed to reapply. If you apply and fail once you can't reapply within a certain amount of time, you have to allow a period of time before you can apply again. So we have to wait. Hopefully within two months we'll apply again and there's no reason why he shouldn't get it." In the meantime, Lee Murray's teammates Alex Reid and Sol Gilbert will both be in action on December 3rd at Cage Rage. Reid will face the very experienced Daijiro Matsui. "I think it's going to be a real hard fight for him," says Demetriades. "He's going to rise to the occasion. He's had a little bit of bad luck with injuries and slow starts lately, but he's got his ass into gear and he's very, very aggressive for this fight, which is what he has to be." Sol Gilbert will face French striker Xavier Foupa-Pokam in his last outing as a middleweight. "He was up here sparring on Saturday," says Demetriades of Gilbert. "We had him do a couple of light fights in the cage. His sparring is going really well; his fitness is phenomenal. He's dropping to welterweight after this fight. For his last two fights he has been a small middleweight. He's cruising at like 81-82 kilos for his fights which is really small. A lot of guys cut to middleweight, which is 84. He's nowhere near cutting so he's a bona fide welterweight." Cage Warriors Line-Up Changes Women's Champ Rosi Sexton will now defend her title against Holland's Dina Van Den Hooven after original opponent Sabrina Cohen was injured in training. Van Den Hooven has an MMA record of 2-0-0 and knocked out Erica Paes in her last fight, plus she has been making a name for herself on the European Submission Circuit. Man-mountain Antonio Silva (3-0-0) will contest the vacant Super-Heavyweight Title against Ruben Villarreal (9-6-1). Silva is the larger of the two giants, but 6'4", 280-pound Villarreal has the experience, having fought the likes of Dan Bobish and Bobby Hoffman at King Of The Cage. The Ultimate Fighter hits London On December 2nd Dana White, Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar will be holding auditions for the third season of The Ultimate Fighter in London, England. The try-outs are open to anyone in the middleweight and light-heavyweight divisions and apparently White hopes to recruit two British competitors for TUF 3. The venue is the Colombo Gym in South London. |
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