Sherk Targets One Last Title Run, Summer Return

As he enters the twilight of his tenure in the mixed martial arts game, Sean Sherk has ascertained what the goal is before hanging up the little four ounce baby gloves and calling it a career.  The goal: a second bite of the championship apple, another reign with the UFC lightweight title. Sherk recently spoke about the intoxicating nature of holding the belt and the legacy that a double reign as champ leaves:

“For me to fulfill my career, to really, really be happy with it, I’d like to win the belt one more time,” Sherk said, speaking to the Timmins Daily Press. “The feeling when I had when I won that belt was great. I loved being a UFC champion. It’s a whole different class of athlete when you look at who has won the belt twice. There are only five or six guys in history.”

The road back to the lightweight title will be a perilous one.  While his one time conqueror BJ Penn has seemingly taken permanent leave of the lightweight ranks, there are still a slew  of elite fighters that will greatly complicate Sherk’s plans at lightweight domination.  The twin capos of the current lightweight scene – Champion Frank Edgar and the undefeated Gray Maynard – both possess a better stand up game as well superior wrestling to Sherk.  A second battalion of hungry young challengers – from Dunham, Sotiropoulous, Pettis, among a host of others- will be a particularly hard-to-navigate minefield to be negotiated if Sherk is attain championship redemption.

Sherk will look to start his last round up sometime over the summer, as that is the target for his return to the Octagon.  As of now the former lightweight champ is biding his time and allowing old injuries to heal so that he can totally commit to his last shot:

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Sherk told the paper. “I want to jump in there and train. I want to get in there and win another belt, but I look at the other side and if I’m training hurt, I’m not 100%, that goal is going to be farther and farther away.  I want to go into a fight 100% healthy. Then I know there’s nobody who can beat me on my best day.”

One of the problems that Sherk is running into as he gets older is the effect on his body of the almost maniacal workouts that he is known for. As you get older and the body is faced with increasing physical limitations, there is a need to shift the emphasis from training harder to training smarter, a philosophy that may be dawning on Sherk, as he spoke to the topic: “It all comes back to how hard I train and how much I put into this. It’s the reason I’ve been so successful and also the reason why I’ve been injured as well. You can’t have the best of both worlds.”  Sherk seems to have the self-awareness to know what problem is but the inability to successfully tread the middle ground needed.  The inability to throttle down his efforts is going to be a detriment, and likely the undoing of Sherk if he is  indeed looking to close his career on a high note with championship gold.