(Frank Trigg throws on Josh Koscheck.)
Frank Trigg has been a lot of things in his mixed martial arts career: a boxer-wrestler, commentator, TV/radio host and entrepreneur. When he steps into the Octagon against Matt Serra at UFC 109 from the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, Nev. this Saturday, Trigg hopes to add submission artist to his resume.
“Before I was a two-dimensional fighter. I could punch and ground and pound and that’s really all I could do. Now I can actually do jiu-jitsu as well,” said the 37-year-old, who worked his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu at Cobrai Kai with Marc Laimon. “I have a couple of submissions I can pull off. I have a couple of things I can do that are probably gonna surprise him on Saturday night. I finally became a three-dimensional fighter.”
Trigg returned to the UFC at UFC 103 last Sept. and was stopped by Josh Koscheck in 85 seconds after four years and nine fights in seven organizations away.
“I begged, let’s be honest, I begged Joe Silva to bring me back and he was just gracious enough to do it,” said Trigg.
“There are no favors in the UFC. They don’t care who you are or what you do, they’re gonna throw you to the wolves right away,” said the PRIDE and Strikeforce veteran. “If Josh Koscheck is the coyote coming after you, just hope you’re the bigger coyote. Sometime you are, and sometimes you aren’t and on that night I definitely wasn’t.”
Trigg knows this fight is his last best shot to be relevant at the sports’ highest levels, so the Xtreme Couture fighter sharpened his game alongside Okalahoma State University wrestlers-turned-fighters Shane Roller and Johny Hendricks. Trigg coached Hendricks when the UFC welterweight was 10 years old, but the younger fighters have taught the veteran some new tricks—some he plans on using Saturday night.
And if things don’t go his way?
“It doesn’t bother me. It is what it is,” he said. “There’s so many younger guys, there’s so many new guys coming in that at some point, eventually, you’re just gonna have to leave town. That’s just the way it works.”
The only question left to answer is whether Trigg will be the bigger coyote when he steps into the cage with Serra.
“Have you seen Matt?” he quipped.
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