Dino Costeas, the longtime trainer to Andrei “the Pitbull” Arlovski could see the slow demise of his student. After 10 years of coaching and bouts in the UFC, Affliction and EliteXC, Costeas knew something was amiss.

Never was that more apparent than when he visited Arlovski at the Wild Card Boxing Gym in Los Angeles, California. Watching “the Pitbull” work with famed boxing coach, Freddie Roach, less than a month before his fight against Brett Rogers, Costeas was shocked at what he saw.

“We were out there for three-and-a-half weeks, and the whole time, we were like, ‘This is a bust.’ Every night I wanted to drink a bottle of tequila.”

Rather than prepare the multifaceted skills necessary for MMA, Arlovski was sparring three-minute rounds instead of five, focusing only on boxing. The change in training, Costeas believes, stemmed from a meeting Arlovski had with a representative of Golden Boy Promotions, who urged the former UFC heavyweight champion to transition to boxing. An avid fan of the sweet science, Arlovski didn’t need much of a push. Soon after, he left his regular team and temporarily set up camp with Roach. Costeas looks back on that situation as one big mistake.

With the extensive boxing training behind him, Arlovski entered the bout with Rogers as the heavy favorite. Twenty-two seconds later, the Belarusian was knocked out.

At that point, Costeas and the rest of Arlovski’s training staff had seen enough.

“That was when [the] ultimatum came when we said, ‘We can’t do this anymore.’”

Costeas thought that Arlovski had grown accustomed to being the bigger man during training. As a result, he quickly became overwhelmed by the size of Rogers. To combat this, Costeas told Arlovski to hit the road and find people that can help him adjust to the growing size of the heavyweight division in MMA.

“We didn’t say you need to make the change to other trainers by any means. We were more upset about the circus sideshow that went on with the Rogers fight. [Arlovski] didn’t think, ‘Oh, man, my formula’s all wrong after these losses; I need to change trainers.’ We told him we need some really good heavyweights in the MMA industry. He needs to fly out and get some different looks. It’s so hard to get heavyweights, especially MMA heavyweights. Boxing? All day long. MMA heavyweights in the the Chicago area? Hard.”

After training with American Kickboxing Academy amongst others, Arlovski now has the opportunity to redeem himself. On May 25, Arlovski will face 6′4,” 265 pound Antonio Silva in the co-main event of Strikeforce: Heavy Artillery.

As Arlovski worked to make adjustments to his physical game, Costeas urged his fighter not to overlook the mental aspects of fighting.

“If he’s right upstairs, he can push anyone downstairs. I just think that as you get more popular, as the money comes, and you have all these opportunists working angles, telling you, ‘you need to do this,’ there’s no magic set of tricks. There’s no one guy. There’s no guru that can switch your game around. The magic is always going to be in the cage. You need to pull the trigger. Have confidence in yourself, confidence in your camp (and) know that you busted your ass. And on fight night, pull the damn trigger. Period. If Andrei pulls the trigger on fight night, we’re going to be in a good gun fight. That’s what he needs to do: pull the trigger.No one person or one camp or one camp or one thing is going to give you the answer. The answer is in your head, your heart and your work ethic. That’s the bottom line.”

(Source: MMA Junkie)