Marcin Held: Cardio problems from Brooks fight ‘will not happen again’

At just 24 years old, Marcin Held is already an old pro in MMA. Having started his career back in 2008, he’s reeled off a 20-4 record over the last 8 years. But, as his MMA career continues and his profile increases, he’s still finding new ways to improve and grow his game.

Most notably over the last couple years, Held has become a much more well-rounded and diverse performer than the exciting pure-grappler he started out as. But, he’s run into other problems than the limits of a grappling only game. Ahead of Bellator 155, Held has been working hard to combat cardio problems that have become a theme in his losses. He’ll be rematching Dave Jansen, who beat Held back in 2013, but the Polish fighter sounds confident that he’s done what he needed to do to win this time around:

“I’m still in the same gym,” Held assured, when asked if he’d made any big changes after losing to Brooks, “I have a lot of very good sparring partners over there. The only thing I changed is that I have a new coach for physical preparation. And the result is that now I feel really good, I feel really well prepared. I fit in this gym, Ankos MMA, and I think it’s enough for me.”

“It was a difficult situation,” he continued, speaking of what went wrong in his last loss, “I had no power after the first round, I put all my energy in the submission in the first round. And after that I had no power. Now I am focused a lot on my physical preparation, on my cardio. During this fight… Yeah, it will not happen again.”

As for his opponent, Held seems to feel that Jansen is a very different and much better fighter than the man he fought the first time. And while that may present new challenges, Marcin is looking forward to facing Jansen …

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