Ovince Saint Preux: ‘It’s going to be hard before it gets easy’
Ovince Saint Preux is one of the most exciting fighters in the stacked UFC light heavyweight division.
He has gained notoriety for defeating his opponents with the Von Flue choke, a submission technique used to counter the guillotine choke, named after MMA fighter, Jason Lee Von Flue.
He was on a three-fight winning streak before a recent submission loss to Ilir Latifi back in February. Curiously, his upcoming opponent, 26-year-old Tyson Pedro, also suffered a loss to Latifi in September last year.
OSP, as he is fondly called, and Pedro are included in the upcoming UFC Fight Night Singapore card on June 23, headlined by the main event: “Cowboy” Cerrone and “Rocky” Edwards.
The UFC recently granted the Philippine STAR an exclusive interview with the MMA star.
Philippine Star: How important is it for you to win this fight?
Ovince Saint Preux: It’s not that important I win the fight, what’s more important is my performance. Once I get my head together and be where I need to be in a fight, I will win. As long as I do what I need to do, I’d be perfectly fine. If I perform well, that’s more important.
At what particular stage are you now in preparing for Tyson?
I’m always training so I can’t really say at what stage I’m at right now. I’ve actually taken some fights on short notice. I can even fight tomorrow if needed. I just need to continue to stay sharp and stay healthy.
What are your thoughts on the light heavyweight division right now? There’s so much talent all over.
There is and that’s why I wanted to be able to fight and continue to establish myself. It’s not easy to break into the top 10 but it’s important to get there because you are noticed a lot more. I’ been there for the past three years. So now the goal is to get into the top five, but it’s not easy. The division is such that anybody can beat anybody on a given night.
At the age of 35, you’re still fighting at a very high level. How many more years do you think you’ll still fight?
As long as I can keep myself healthy. I tell people I’m 35 and they don’t believe me. The crazy thing is my movement. I feel I’m moving even better than I was before. Compared to when I was 25 or 26 years old, I’m a lot stronger and definitely more experienced. When I was around 26 years old, I wasn’t fighting top caliber fighters. If I was fighting the guys now, when I was 26 years old, it wouldn’t work out for me. I’d be the young punk getting embarrassed by the older guys.
With all your skills right now, what would you need to add to become a more complete fighter?
To be honest there’s no such thing as a complete fighter. You can’t be great at everything. There’s always gonna be someone out there that’s better than you. There’s always gonna be new moves and techniques that are coming up. If you look at fighters now versus fighters of five to10 years ago, you will see the styles are completely different. The skills sets can always get better but everybody has different skills.
Some guys can do a spinning-back kick but I don’t do that very well. As long as I know about my own skills and that will damage my opponent. I will stick to that.
Some advice to all the young kids that want to get into MMA?
You get a lot of guys saying work hard and train hard, or find a good gym to train in. But I will ask them “what are you willing to give up?” In order to make it, in order to do something in life, you have to give up something. You have to give up more than one thing like I gave up a lot, I gave up a lot of time, I gave up a career, I gave up spending time with my family. So what are you willing to give up? You have to be able to sacrifice something. It’s going to be hard before it gets easy. So what are you willing to give up, I always tell them.
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