It’s hard to put your hand on someones shoulder who you care about and say: ‘hey, time to hang em up’. No one wants to tell anyone to stop doing what they love, even if it’s on Celebrity Rehab with Dr Drew, it’s awkward, ya know? After Andre Arlovski made the announcement last week that he would be moving his camp from Chicago to Albuquerque with Coach Jackson full time. The now former coach of The Pitbull, Mike “The Fly” Garcia spoke to ProMMAnow.com to clear the air about all things Arlovski:
“I didn’t mean it like he doesn’t have the skills.” “I just don’t want to see him get hurt. There’s something not clicking, and you can see in his last couple fights he’s not the same Andrei. He says he wants to fight, I hope he does. But if he doesn’t , I just don’t want to see him get hurt.”
“This last one was kind of brutal. It scared me a little bit. He was doing good for the first two minutes then all a sudden he just shut down, and I don’t know what happened.”
“If Greg Jackson can bring the best out of him. God bless him, I hope he does. I’d like to see him get back on top.”
“I just think a lot of it is confusion. Andrei’s last good fight that he looked awesome in was Ben Rothwell and we were with him. He worked with Freddie like the first two weeks, then he stayed with us like five weeks in the camp with us with Dino, Sean and John, his wrestling coach and jiu-jitsu. We all gel pretty well together. We all know what to do and we all talk to each other as far as a team. … He looked awesome that night. Ever since then that’s when he started going back and forth with Freddie Roach and I just think it’s a lot of confusion for the kid. Hopefully maybe Greg Jackson, him being at one camp, listening to one instruction could work out. Because we didn’t go to Albuquerque with him so we don’t know what Greg Jackson is teaching him compared to our game plan, so… if he listens to us then goes out there and listens to them, then comes back and listens to us, there’s a lot of confusion. So, he needs one base. And we told him before if you feel like somebody else can bring the best out of you, by no means, take them. We’ll still be your friends, it’s strictly business, we understand it.”
“People say he ain’t got no chin. He’s got a chin, it’s just that, I don’t care who you are, with four ounce mitts, anybody hits you… Look at when he fought Bigfoot Silva. His mind wasn’t there a hundred percent. He got hit with some shots in that first round and he took the hits no problem. When he fought Tim Sylvia the third time, they both beat the shit out of each other for 25 minutes. They both took some shots and they both stood there. So, for people to say he has no chin is bulls—.”
“I would like to see him (retire) because like I said, you got to really want it and at this point he should really want it. And sometimes when you really want it, it shows. I don’t know if he really wants it. Maybe he thinks he does, but then when he gets in there maybe he’s doubting himself. I don’t know. That’s one thing you would have to ask him. Like I said, I love the kid to death. I don’t want to see nothing happen to him. I wish he would [stop fighting]. But he wants to continue. He’s still young. Could he come back? Sure he could, you know? Hopefully he will, but we’ll see.”
Albuquerque is a silly name.
