As mentioned in our Mayhem video post, we had a catastrophic hard drive failure that took our Jake Shields video planned for release last week with it to the data cemetery.  However, the photos survived because they’re on a separate system — and because I’m just a lucky duck, and will promptly backup my entire world upon returning to Los Angeles.  We lost this awesome interview we did with Jake as well, which is a shame because Jake was quite candid about his fear of losing as a major motivation for his aggressive win streak as well as his daughter being a positive factor in shaping his life for the better and keeping him out of bad company.  His favorite wins were against Mach Sakurai, because nobody thought Shields would win, and winning the Rumble on the Rock Tournament because it included such notable fighters Yushin Okami, Anderson Silva, and Carlos Condit.  His last loss was five years ago, when he lost his Shooto belt, and it was by decision. So no matter what, Shields is a tough cookie.

I’ve been reading around the net once our Mayhem video got out that Jake couldn’t possibly be training as hard, and that’s balls because I was there to watch him train and Shields is training so hard he had to run up and down the California coast, taking everyone down in his path. So rest assured, both sides are killing it.  There’s no reason to underestimate either fighter in this title bout.

Expect an amazing fight.