James Vick is well aware of what he needs to improve as a fighter.
The 33-year-old said he has pinpointed the technical issues in his game that he thinks have been responsible for many of his losses in the UFC. Vick (13-5 MMA, 9-5 UFC), who recently returned home to Texas after taking a trip to Thailand to sharpen his craft, won’t deny any of the technical deficiencies he’s carried throughout his career. But Vick, who has lost four consecutive fights after winning nine out of his first 10 UFC bouts, is trying to address those issues in hopes of turning his career around.
“A lot of it this trip was me falling back in love with fighting – I felt like I lost interest,” Vick told MMA Junkie Radio. “I always did what was required, but all my losses were technical issues. My last fight sucked because I worked with my friend Dorian and I felt like he really helped me better than anyone to keep my hands up and fix these technical issues. And last time I didn’t get to show that – I got caught with a damn upkick. But besides that, all the issues were technical. Fighting with my hands down and my chin up in the air has been a problem my whole career, and no one ever made me pay for it until I got a top-10 level guy.
“It’s hard to talk about that and not offend people. I worked with some great coaches, but sometimes a great coach can’t fix your particular issue. A lot of the coaches I’ve trained with, I know if they took a kid and built them from the ground up, that kid would have great technique. But having someone come to you after four, five years of bad technique and then try to fix those issues, I think that’s what I dealt with in the past – coming to coaches basically already having (expletive) up technique. And that’s my fault, too, for staying with a coach that wasn’t correcting my technique.
“My first boxing coach ever, I had 20 fights under him and I won most of those fights. I was a two-time boxing Golden Gloves champion, so you don’t know what you don’t know. Since, we’ve had a falling out, but I trained with that man for almost 12 years. He was like a second father to me, but he never fixed my problems – so I started with bad technique.”
Vick most recently fought in October, when he lost to Niko Price by first-round knockout. It was his first fight in the UFC at welterweight.
“A lot of people talk (expletive), but at the end of the day, to say I don’t belong in the UFC – that’s delusional,” Vick said. “You can say I don’t belong in the top 10, and that’s fine and understandable. But besides getting caught with an up-kick, I’ve never lost to an opponent that hasn’t been a top-10 fighter.”
Vick is no longer with his original boxing coach. He’s still with Team Lloyd Irvin, but his new boxing coach is Kendrick Releford, a former IBF Atlantic Coast and WBO Latino heavyweight champion. Vick is confident his technical issues are now being addressed.
As far as his whether he’s still with the UFC or not, the Texas native gave no definite answer since everything seems uncertain in the global coronavirus pandemic. But it seems he’s still on the roster despite his losing skid.
“I talked to (matchmaker) Sean Shelby, and I don’t know how much I want to say specially with no fights going on right now – but I’m still in the phase of figuring stuff out,” Vick said. “I’m still in the (U.S. Anti-Doping Agency) testing pool, and if anything happens, if a fight happens soon, I’m already in shape. I basically did a training camp in Thailand, so I don’t really know my exact status at the moment with everything going on. I’m not going to talk to Sean at the moment because what’s the point with everything that’s going on? But he did say I’m staying in the USADA pool.”
James Vick assesses technical flaws: 'Hands down and my chin up in the air has been a problem'
