Trainer: Every fighter needs to go through a ‘Korean Zombie’ vs Rodriguez-type war

This past weekend (Sat., Nov. 10, 2018) at UFC Fight Night 139 in Denver, Colorado, Chan Sung Jung and Yair Rodriguez put on a memorable five-round performance for the ages culminating in a spectacular last-second knockout win for “Pantera.”

Relive it again here.

When it was all said and done, both men had to take post-fight trips to the local hospital to tend to their battle wounds (see the picture here).

Still, both Jung and Rodriguez will take a lot from the epic scrap, as Yair’s coach — Israel Martinez — says every fighters needs to go through one of those battles at least once in his or her career.

“We believe every fighter needs one of those. It’s one of those things you tell a young athlete, you tell a young fighter, even the older guys: You need to get your ass kicked to kinda be woken up a little bit, and you need to go through some dirty fights, some trenches,” said Martinez on a recent edition of The MMA Hour (via MMA Fighting).

And once is enough, says Martinez, as engaging in such fights on a regular basis can’t be good for the mind, body or soul.

“But you don’t need to do that every day. You don’t need to get punched in the head every day. And that’s one of those fights that we’re gonna have in our bag and we’re always going to be able to pull out all the things we’re learned from that, but there’s no way we want that type of fight again,” he added.

“Those things are deadly. Yair is beat up, and that’s going to be stuck in his head, good and bad, for the rest of his life. So we want to make sure that we take the positives over the negatives and move forward. But yeah, definitely, you know that — you don’t want to be getting hit in the head, you don’t want to get beat up every day, and those long five-round fights are good for the fans, but they’re not good for us. We want to try to [win] early.”

Battles such as the “Mile High City” classic have become the norm for “The Korean Zombie, for better or worse, and he has the countless post-fight bonuses and scars to prove it. As for Rodriguez, now that he has a win under his belt after a brief separation from the promotion, he could be in line to face another man who knows no other way to fight than to move forward.

All he has to do is say his name.