Last Updated on April 11, 2012.
Bellator 65’s ex-champ Lyman Good: ‘If you can’t get respect, beat it out of them’
by Steven Marrocco on Apr 10, 2012 – mmajunkie.com
ike many pro fighters, former Bellator welterweight champ Lyman Good is a big fan of Georges St-Pierre.
Sure, the UFC’s welterweight champ gets heat for smothering opponents on the mat. But Good respects his foundation for each fight, which isn’t built in all the places you’d expect.
“I’m inviting of those experiences because you only get better from it,” Good told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio). “You don’t get better from somebody pitter-pattering with you.”
St-Pierre has famously worked with Greg Jackson, Firas Zahabi and John Danaher in preparation for his fights. But Good said there’s another side of the champ, in which he shows up at gyms at which he doesn’t belong.
And when that gym’s specialty is striking, or more specifically boxing, St-Pierre must prove himself.
Good (11-2 MMA, 4-2 BFC) said the square circle has played a big part in his training, which recently kicked into high gear in advance of his fight with LeVon Maynard (12-8 MMA, 1-2 BFC) at Bellator 65, which takes place Friday at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, N.J. His bout streams live on Spike.com as part of a preliminary-card that leads into the MTV2-televised main card.
“A lot of these boxers don’t too much respect the MMA game,” Good said. “Those are the best people to work with because those are the ones that are going to go hard on you. Some of them have chips on their shoulders.
“But it’s all in your favor because you want to train like you fight.”
Such experiences have not only upped Good’s game but perhaps opened the eyes of a few nonbelievers.
“If you can’t get respect from somebody, you try to beat it out of them,” he said.
Of course, sometimes that kind of training leads to injuries, of which Good is all too aware. He injured a hamstring prior to a scheduled fight with Dan Hornbuckle at Bellator 44 this past May and was benched. Then his next fight was scrapped when opponent Michael Costa was injured in advance of Bellator 59.
“I guess karma bit me in the ass,” Good said.
Nonetheless, Bellator’s first tournament winner and 170-pound champ said he doesn’t make drastic changes to his training whether it’s for a tournament or an individual opponent such as Maynard.
“Your training is your training, and whether it’s for one person or three people, you can’t change it too much other than you’ve got to train a little bit smarter so you can be healthy between your fights,” Good said.
After losing his belt to current champ Ben Askren and falling short to Rick Hawn in the Bellator season-four tournament, Good has the opportunity to earn a sport in Bellator’s next tournament. The bout serves as a qualifier for the competition, which is expected to take place this summer. So he not only needs to beat Maynard but stay healthy doing so.
Good can’t guarantee that, of course, but he’s hoping karma will be a bit kinder to him this time around. He’s chomping at the bit to get back in the cage and prove his travels have brought him the tools to win back his belt.
“If you’re already thinking of a takedown or throwing a knee or a low kick two or three steps ahead, then that’s a good check on your side,” he said.
