Jury on critics: Everyone thinks ‘they know something about fighting’
Myles Jury theorizes that combat sports athletes are more regularly criticized because everyone thinks they can fight.
Myles Jury says everybody has a fight or flight response and so everybody thinks they are capable of coaching world caliber fighters.
Everybody knows what it is like: You’re watching fights with some friends — probably a Conor McGregor card because that is the only time your pals seem to care. The fighter in red gloves has his opponent pressed against the fence. “Why doesn’t he just tickle him?” blurts out one friend. “I’d totally punch him in the boob, like this,” shouts another.
Jury was a top-tier prospect in the UFC, amassing a mammoth 15-0 record with wins over Takanori Gomi, Diego Sanchez and Michael Johnson. Then he ran into Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone and what came next was a lackluster 2-5 stretch. It is easy to say that Jury has fallen off, but it is also easy to forget that three of those losses were to champions or title challengers.
“People like to look at the past and look at how they fail as evidence for why you’ll fail in the future. That is their opinion, that is their own limiting beliefs. I live life on my own terms. What I believe is up to me,” Jury told Bloody Elbow ahead of his fight with Brandon Girtz at Bellator 239. “Those critics, a lot of times they look at something — and all athletes get it — but with fighting, I think everybody inside has that fight or flight in them, so everybody consciously thinks they know something about fighting.”
“It’s easy to chime in and say stuff when they’re not actually out there and they don’t put in the work and they don’t know what it’s actually like,” he continued. “You don’t know what you don’t know, and that’s what a lot of these critics and people who hate and say negative things don’t get. They just don’t know what they’re talking about.”
Jury tasted defeat at the hands of Benson Henderson in his Bellator debut, but the 31-year-old is confident he still possesses the skills to be a world-beater.
“Coming up, I knew and still know my potential and what I’m capable of,” he assured. “My coaches know what I’m capable of. That is beating anybody in the world on any given night. I have everything it takes.”
Girtz described Jury as a “point fighter” when speaking to Combat Press. Jury doesn’t think it is quite so simple.
“I consider myself a prize fighter, but also a prize fighter with a killer instinct... I’m definitely very diverse and not just in one lane. I can finish guys and I can outclass them with points. I can do it all,” Jury said. Flipping the script, he labelled Girtz “as a wrestler that likes to throw bombs.”
There was a degree of financial insensitive in Jury’s move to Bellator. Since the beginning of his career, however, the lightweight fighter has been conscious of his business.
“As a fighter you always need to be fighting in the aspect of, ‘it wont be here forever.’ When I first got into the UFC and even now fighting with Bellator, I see this as a gift. This is an opportunity,” he explained. “I could get hurt tomorrow and never be able to do this again. The money that I’m making, I need to put it somewhere where it can grow and it can pay me for years and years after I’m done fighting.”
Jury vs. Girtz serves as the co-main event of Bellator 239 on Feb. 21. The card is headlined by Ed Ruth vs. Yaroslav Amosov.