Three weeks prior to UFC 239,
Diego Sanchez made a massive career change ahead of his fight against Michael Chiesa.
Sanchez decided it was time to
leave Jackson Wink MMA after years of being one of the faces of the gym and linked up with Josh Fabia, the founder of the
School of Self-Awareness.
Fabia will serve as the lone cornerman for Sanchez when “The Ultimate Fighter 1” winner makes his 30th walk to the octagon for the welterweight matchup with Chiesa at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. But who is Fabia?
According to him, he’s a person with a special skillset that allows him to offer something that doesn’t exist elsewhere in MMA.
“What I’ve done is I’ve revived ancient wisdom with modern technology,” Fabia told MMA Junkie. “It’s very unique; it’s very different. I have my own message. It is not like anything else out there. I’m addressing things that start at the time of earth and last to the day you die. So, yes, I have valuable martial and combative context to help Diego (with MMA), but on another level. I’m teaching him how to control himself and how to become aware of himself by becoming aware of everything around him.
“What I’m trying to show you is, you can invest the time and energy in yourself and create yourself into something special. You can enhance your senses. You can create an energy in you that is non-comparable by anybody else.”
Fabia first started working with Sanchez privately, before his last fight with Mickey Gall at UFC 235 in March. It proved to be one of Sanchez’s best performances in a more than 14-year UFC tenure. He produced a dominant
second-round TKO finish, and he looked as ruthless as ever.
So, what brought Sanchez and Fabia together? Sanchez said he reached a point where he wasn’t getting the individual focus that he felt he needed from Jackson Wink at this stage in his career. “The universe” brought him to Fabia, a man with many hats, and the pair have since been working together to help Sanchez realize his full potential.
“He’s in a situation where something’s got to change, and if it’s not changing positively, the change will automatically feel negative,” Fabia said. “I think having some time with somebody with some different sets of skills, showing that the basics and the fundamentals of a lot of things have been skipped. A lot of people go to school 10 years, 15 years, you got all these degrees on the wall. How many of these people know how to breathe? So, you don’t know how to do the basic physiological functions of your body, but you want to run your mouth?”
Fabia, who owns the School of Self-Awareness, typically works with special forces and law enforcement, he said. He also works with thousands of people across the globe, traveling all around the world. He said he has helped people deal with emotional trauma and has helped Sanchez prepare for his upcoming fight in all areas, in ways that he believes nobody else can, including Jackson Wink namesakes Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn.
“Yeah, we do mitts. Yeah, I’m wrestling with him,” Fabia said. “I’m the one cooking the meals. I’m the one handling the body work. I’m the one doing nine jobs. So, yeah, it’s a little different than ‘Wink’ and Greg and any other trainer, coach in the world. There’s nobody else doing all that. There’s nobody else that can do all that because they’ve compartmentalized it, and they got their degrees in one area.”