It’s definitely not easy, but it’s a challenge Song is happy to take on because he feels a victory on Saturday night will answer some lingering questions people may have about his grappling abilities inside the Octagon.
“I haven’t fought a lot of wrestlers, so I need to prove to people how good my wrestling and jiu jitsu are,” he said, smiling. “This guy is good, and now we have more wrestlers, more strong guys in this division, in the Top 15, like Umar (Nurmagomedov), Merab (Dvalishvili), (Aljamain) Sterling.
“That reminds me that I need to train wrestling more, more, more; not just striking.”
To that end, Song made a training trip down to Austin prior to kicking off his camp for this fight to train with some of the elite grapplers that have taken up residence in the Texas capital over the last few years.
Combined with a number of years working in a wrestling-heavy room in Sacramento with the Alpha Male crew, and the powerful striker has good reason to be confident in his grappling skills when he steps in with Simon this weekend.
“He’s a wrestler — he likes to take people down — but his ground control is not that good,” he offered. “If he takes me down, I can get up, for sure.
“So I think (I just have to) give him some heavy punches, defend the takedown, or take him down. It’s just the details; I have tools to use against him.”
