Ultimate Fighter: Team Nogueira Profile - Shane Primm
Source: UFC - Thomas Gerbasi
Nov 2, 2008 - 9:47:13 AM
|
|
Do a Google search on Shane Primm, a member of Team Nogueira on the current season of The Ultimate Fighter, and one of the first results that comes up is a video of the light heavyweight prospect draining his cauliflower ear. How’s that for a look into the life of a pro fighter?
“It’s not too often that you have a profession where you have to perform your own medical procedures on yourself,” laughed Primm, who admits that the video didn’t even show the whole procedure. “I actually drained ten syringes on the one ear – it looked like a softball. I got it and I had a fight in six weeks and I didn’t have time to tape it and give it a couple days rest.”
Think it’s all glory and signing autographs, eh? At least there’s a happy ending though.
“It hasn’t come back in three years – it’s just solid cauliflower ear.”
And a badge of honor for the 24-year old…or at least a warning.
“To get it, I got head kicked on that ear,” said Primm. “It’s more of a reminder to keep your damn hands up.”
It’s also part of the learning process for the Murfreesboro, Tennessee product, a lifelong competition fiend who found nothing more addicting than participating in something where there was a winner and a loser in the end, whether it was high school baseball, pro paintball, or eventually, combat sports. First for Primm was boxing, an eight year passion that he admits he wasn’t particularly skilled at, a point made even clearer when sparring with longtime veteran and former ‘Contender’ cast member Jonathan Reid.
“I’m not actually that good at boxing; I did it just because it was fun,” said Primm. “I understood that I was never gonna be a professional boxer. One round with Reid and you’ll walk away questioning whether you can fight like a man.”
Next was Muay Thai, and Primm found that he was more suited for the art of eight limbs, but he still wanted more, and as pondered a career in the military, he started wrestling and soon walked into a local jiu-jitsu school, where he rolled with someone who he outweighed by nearly 100 pounds.
“He tapped me seven times in five minutes,” said Primm, and the die was cast. There would be no military for him, only fighting, and in February of this year, with $500 in his pocket and no place to stay, he packed his bags and made his way to Gracie Tampa in Florida to train with Rob Kahn.
“I’m not the typical 9 to 5 guy,” said Primm, who has worked jobs in security, landscaping, and roofing. “I get a kick out of doing this, I figure I’m pretty good at it, give me a couple of more years of working on my skills and I think I’ll be a force in the 205 pound division. I think my goal, just like anybody else, is to win the belt.”
First things first though, and with just five amateur fights and one pro fight under his belt, Primm was added to the cast of The Ultimate Fighter: Team Nogueira vs Team Mir, the fourth member of his gym to hit the Spike TV series, following Matt Arroyo, Allen Berube, and Brandon Sene.
“It actually happened a year earlier than I was hoping it would,” said Primm. “I wanted another year of jiu-jitsu under Rob so I would have gone in as the favorite as opposed to the guy with only one fight. It didn’t work out the way I planned it, but it still worked out well anyway.”
And for him, going on the show was a no-brainer, even though the idea of having cameras around him all the time wasn’t the reason why.
“The cameras part is the part that I didn’t want to do,” he said. “The training part, going in there and training four hours a day with the coaches, that’s what I wanted to do. Getting locked in a house with a bunch of guys trying to cause drama so they can make TV is not on my things to do list.”
So did he get advice from his gym mates back in Florida on how to deal with six weeks in the reality TV fishbowl?
“The best advice they gave was find a hobby, but there was nothing to do and they won’t give you anything to form a hobby,” he laughs. “You’ve got to just suck it up because you’re going to be bored out of your mind. The first week, you’re excited just because you’re there, and then
the next week you realize that this is your life for the next five. You can only play so many games of pool. I won’t shoot a basketball for the next two years.”
After Primm made it into the TUF house with a submission win over Sean O’Connell, he would lose his next match to Elliot Marshall, but even though he didn’t make it to the finals, he has no regrets about the entire process. In fact, he believes it has made him a better fighter.
“What it does the most is highlight the things you need to work on that you were being lazy on or just didn’t understand that you had a weakness in,” said Primm of his stay in the house. “A lot of mine was that I had solid jiu-jitsu, but I don’t play my takedown game as well as I should. I have a solid wrestling base, but I just don’t force the takedown as much. I want to try and bang it out with everybody and it winds up getting me on my back, and that causes problems. So we’ve adjusted that whole game since I’ve been back, but mainly it’s not so much improving in the six weeks you’re there as figuring out the things you need to work on. I don’t care who walks in there; if you’re gonna fight, you’re gonna find out that you don’t know anything in a lot of positions.”
It’s that knowledge that builds contenders, and eventually, champions. That’s the road Shane Primm wants to travel.
| Additional News from UFC - Thomas Gerbasi |
|
| Visitor News: |
We're Sorry, No Additional Articles Were Found.
|
|
| Entertainment Calendar: |
We're Sorry, No Additional Articles Were Found.
|
|
