To prepare for his upcoming heavyweight title fight against Alistair Overeem on May 15, Brett “the Grim” Rogers pushed himself harder than ever before. Having become comfortable with his training camp in Minnesota, Rogers knew that it was time to seek other opportunities. So, for the first time, the former tire repairman hit the road in a quest to learn new techniques from some of the best camps in America.

Eventually, Rogers made his way to Southern California and Las Vegas, aligning himself with the Body Shop team, Millennia MMA, Xtreme Couture and the Throwdown crew. His allegiance remains with his hometown training partners, but this trip gave “the Grim” the chance to cast away any distractions and focus solely on improving his game.

“I’m kind of all over the place trying to pick and choose the best of the best and try to figure out a strategy. I love my training in Minnesota, but I feel I’m best when I’m out of town, new personalities, new bodies, they don’t know about me, I don’t know about them. There’s less distractions. Out here, I just have to think about three things: wake up, work out, and whup ass.”

Coming off the first loss of his career to Fedor Emelianenko, Rogers was able to clearly see which areas he needed to work on the most, something that wasn’t as defined back home in Minnesota where he is one of the best fighters in his training camp.

“That loss kind of helped me to be myself and see things that I was doing wrong. Before the Fedor fight, I couldn’t really judge off things that I was doing wrong. I’m definitely going to be a lot more aware in this fight…keeping myself out of bad situations. From here on out, I’m just going to stay on hard conditioning. People expect (heavyweights) to have just power and that’s it, so I want to change the script on that so we can kind of move around like light heavyweights too.”

Rogers has also taken a lot of flack from fans, many of which don’t believe the 29-year-old is deserving of a title shot immediately after losing a fight. Rogers has heard the criticisms and channels it into his training regime.

“People say that I don’t deserve this and I’m feeling a lot of pressure on just doing more, anything, to prove (that I do).”

His new stable of partners have helped “the Grim” prepare for the formidable challenge of facing Overeem, a massive striker who also possesses a vicious standing guillotine.

“I’ve got guys in the gym that act kind of ‘kangorooish,’ you know? Overeem’s a really choppy (fighter) and all you have to do is kind of calm that person out, take him where he doesn’t like to be on his back.”

Championships or not, Rogers wants to evolve as an athlete. He wants to shut up the naysayers and, most of all, he wants to be victorious on May 15.

“I’ve definitely stepped up the game. Every fight I always step up the game somehow, some way. I don’t like every fight to look the same.”

Strikeforce: Heavy Artillery will air on Showtime.

(Source: Sherdog)