Why AJ has a poor gas tank

Too much muscle but people underestimate the mental aspect of the sport, and in particular how nervous energy and fear can deplete your gas tanks real fast. Speaking as a gypsy warrior myself, we can sense fear in others like a dog because fighting is literally in our DNA and we are scrapping before we learn how to crawl, let alone learn how to walk. The KO loss to Fat Andy was an incredibly embarrassing and humiliating experience for AJ, a nightmarish one in fact, and it's plain to see he's still being haunted by the ghost of that defeat to the obese Mexican Oliver Hardy lookalike to this day.

Morphing into the running man in the rematch wasn't a good look either. He was petrified of standing still for a single second in case he got clipped again by that walking blob. No matter how you spin it muscle running from fat is terrible optics for someone who is vying for the distinction of being the Baddest Man on the Planet.

And then getting all panicky in your next outing on the rare occasions that Bulgarian senior citizen who isn't even a big puncher unleashed his right hand isn't good optics either.

And obviously he's been stopped in the amateurs and KO'd in the gym before too and I think the ghosts of those bad memories are never too far away, especially when things aren't going your way and self-doubt creeps in.

Look at how the drug-ravaged suicidal muscle atrophied inactive mere shell of Fury responded after getting flatlined by the hardest right hand The Tuscaloser has thrown or ever will throw - he bounced up like a Jack in the box like nothing had happened and proceeded to not only put his hands behind his back and taunt The Tuscaloser but he then took the fight to him and even hurt him within seconds of rising from the dead like Lazarus. I implore you go analyze his body language at that moment and see if you can detect a single ounce of self-doubt or fear in his eyes. I guarantee you won't be able to because he simply wasn't affected by it in the least whereas when Fat Andy dropped AJ he fell to pieces mentally and was in full on panic mode from that moment on which depleted his gas tanks.

I'm not saying AJ is mentally weak as such or that he doesn't possess the warrior spirit, all Brit Level fighters do, but rather when he's at the helm sometimes he fears the waves whereas when The Gypsy King is at the helm the waves fear him.

 

Great post Serge