Jake Quickenden has put his life as a reality TV star on hold and is currently preparing to make his professional MMA debut later this year.
Quickenden found fame on X-Factor in 2014 and has since won Dancing on Ice, finished runner-up on I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, and appeared on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins.
Clearly, not one to shy away from a new challenge, the 35-year-old has agreed to undergo a rigorous year of training before squaring off against comedian Paul Smith, a fellow newbie to the sport, in the OKTAGON cage this November.
“I’m 35 now and I just feel like I want to challenge myself and do different things,” Quickenden told talkSPORT about his decision to transition from reality TV to MMA.
“I’ve always been a huge fan of Mixed Martial Arts… I love sports. I love testing myself. For me, it was just about that growth, doing something new, stepping outside your comfort zone, and doing something scary.
“I don’t feel like you can really grow as a person without doing something that tests you. That’s what it’s all about but most times I sit down most nights after I’ve trained and go, ‘Why the hell am I doing this?’”
Like any fight fan, Quickenden has been known to hit the heavy bag from time to time and he even thought he looked good doing so.
However, any illusions about his natural fighting ability were quickly shattered when he began his MMA journey.
He added: “I’ve kind of boxed a little bit. I say boxed a bit, I had a little bit of a camp when I fought Marcel from Blazin’ Squad. We had a kind of white-collar-ish fight and that was the first training camp I’d done.
“I’ve always gone to the gym and hit the punch bag thinking that I’m Rocky Balboa, but I’ve never classed myself as any good. So, I’ve been training in MMA now for 12 weeks and I’m training every day.
“It’s humbling. The first day at the gym I got absolutely leathered by a 16-year-old and I was like, ‘This isn’t going too great.’ But it’s about the journey, and there’s so much to pick up from it.”
After years of competing on mentally and physically demanding reality TV shows, Quickenden insists only one came close to what he’s currently going through while training in MMA.
He concluded: “It was nothing, man. Training for a few hours skating on the ice was easy compared to doing two or three [MMA] sessions a day.
“I’m feeling my body change. I’m getting stronger. I’m getting heavier somehow, just lifting weights and then I think, ‘Frig, I’ve gotta do a weight cut.’
“The only one that kind of gets anywhere near to it was the SAS: Who Dares Wins. Like, that was taxing! That was hard work, but it put me in good stead for this because it is all mental and I think that with everything.
“I’m running the [London] Marathon, so that’s going to be all mental because I stopped running and just trained boxing and stuff like that. So, that’s going to be a bit taxing running 26 miles but if you think and you believe you can do it, then you can.”
Source link: https://talksport.com/sport/mma/1396319/jake-quickenden-x-factor-reality-tv-mma-debut/
