An amateur MMA fighter making his debut is a wonder to behold, as you never know what will happen. At Fightstar Championship 23 we had an amazing opportunity to witness 2 amateurs making their debuts against one another in Joe Pryor vs Fillipo Chiereghin.
Not only did they push themselves to the limit, but most would have thought they already had a fair few bouts already, taking the war through all 3 rounds and leaving it in the hands of the judges.
There could be only one winner, Joe Pryor took the unanimous decision victory and kick started his MMA journey in winning fashion.
I caught up with Joe soon after his 3 round war at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre.
Congratulations on that absolutely outstanding debut victory Joe, how are you feeling after your performance out there?
“Yeah, I feel really good, he was a lot tougher than I thought. I thought he was gonna shoot straight away and try to take me to the ground, but he stood up with me, which is fair play, good on him, he’s a decent striker. He caught me by surprise but I felt like I controlled the fight, it was a good scrap, it was fun.”
For someone taking their 1st trip into the cage, you showed incredible resistance to the clock, lasting all 3 rounds. In the later rounds, your opponent seemed to be tiring and you took full advantage of that, was this the game plan going into this one?
“It wasn’t really my game plan, my plan was to keep the pace high and to see if he could keep up with it, which he did. To be fair, we both started to fade in that last round. I think he gassed himself out more than I did in the wrestling exchanges, shooting a lot and maybe using too much energy. My takedown attempts weren’t really worth it, I have to watch the fight back because it’s difficult to think about it all now. But I did feel that my gas tank sort of took control of the fight towards the end of it. But the 1st round was definitely quite good scrap, I caught a good few kicks of his which I think helped, causing some mind games.”
An incredible 1st step out there man, what’s next for you, would you be looking to get back out there as soon as you can?
“Erm, I don’t know, I think going down to Welterweight might be a better weight class for me. Because I weighed in well under 84, I think I came in at about 82, and I didn’t really do a cut either. Looking at some of the guys at the weigh-ins, I could easily make Welterweight with maybe trimming down and doing a bigger weight cut, ao that might be next for me. But for a debut, man that guy was Fucking tough as nails, many fighters making there debut normality don’t fight that well, that was a good scrap, it was really fun.”
I couldn’t agree more man, definitely one of the fights of the night so far.
Before you go and celebrate with your team, is there anybody you’d like to give a shout-out to?
“I’d like to thank everyone at Carlson Gracie Hammersmith, all of my training partners, 2 of which are fighting tonight, thanks for everything.”
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