Joe Cason’s days are filled with what most of us would describe as torture. A round with Pat Barry here, work with Erik Koch or Anthony Pettis there, and who could forget the time spent with Ben Askren, all under the watchful eye of the coach to the entire group – Duke Roufus.
But Cason, 23 years old and still less than two years into his career as a mixed martial artist, isn’t complaining.
“I surrounded myself with good people,” said the Iowa native, who makes his Strikeforce debut this Friday in Las Vegas against Ovince St. Preux. “Erik Koch is off a really good win right now. Anthony Pettis has a good vibe and Ben’s talking to me and letting me know how things will be before they even happen.They’re so talented, and I say I can be just like that. Obviously they’re gonna progress a lot faster because they’ve been doing it, but being around them, after they punch you right in the face, they tell you ‘hey, you’ve got to do this. It’s awesome, I like it a lot.”
For Cason, this is where fighters are made. Some would disagree, saying that his stellar 8-0 pro record is the real measuring stick of his progress. Yet in a bizarre twist coming from a modern and young pro athlete, Cason looks at eight consecutive first round finishes ranging from a low of 15 seconds to a “high” of 2:24, and he doesn’t particularly like what he sees.
“I’m not really doing that great,” he says with the utmost gravity. “My fights in Iowa were mediocre. They were against opponents that I should have done exactly what I did against them. And I think the guy that I’m fighting (St. Preux), he would have done the same thing, just as fast, if not faster. But I don’t dwell on it, win or lose, and I just try to keep it simple, keep it going, and just try to keep my eye on the prize.”
Do you think you would ever hear that kind of humility from any young knockout artist? He won’t admit it, but it’s safe to say that Cason is a budding perfectionist.
“No, not at all,” he insists. “It’s actually disappointing to me. I haven’t even been doing this for two years yet and I’ve kinda been rushing through it. I switched gyms to improve everything; to not only know your physical abilities and your technique, but your mental knowledge. I call it mind candy. I look at my past fights, and it was like I was a brawler and doing really bad things. And I can’t fight professional guys like that. So I took a step back, being cool, calm and collected, and just let things go and flowed with it.”
It wasn’t always that way for the Des Moines native, who wrestled in high school but whose athletic career seemed headed in the direction of the football gridiron. The talented linebacker ran a 4.49 40 and looked to be closing in on a full ride to Ole Miss, but then the roof caved in and things never quite clicked for him in the football world.
“I had a couple friends commit suicide,” he said. “I committed to Ole Miss and my classes (at Iowa Central Community College) didn’t transfer, so I had to go to the University of Northern Iowa. At that time, I was all messed up and didn’t do what I needed to do as a student-athlete on the field as well as in school, and it was a bump in the road.”
Out of school and wandering, he found his way to a local gym, where he met Russ O’Connell, who convinced him to try kickboxing. Cason had found his way back, even if he didn’t know it at first.
“I was taking classes two, three times a week, then I started doing a little bit of jitz,” he recalled. “But I thought, ‘this isn’t for me. I’m not really a big fighter, per se.’ But then it was like an addicting drug; you kept on going, kept on going. And my guardians made me come to Duke (Roufus) last winter, and it was just a different experience. I thought I want to do this. I live in the moment, and this is this the moment that I chose to take and something that was supposed to happen.”
Now he takes a big step up in St. Preux, a former defensive end and linebacker for the University of Tennessee, who bounced back from a rocky start to his pro career to win seven in row. So how does Cason think this clash of former defensive football players will end up?
“It’s gonna be a wreck, an explosion,” he laughs.
Would he have preferred a running back?
“At this moment, I’ll take anybody.”
But in all seriousness, Cason is highly respectful of his foe, but at the same time, he’s excited about his upcoming test.
“I see a very talented person,” said Cason of St. Preux. “The sky’s the limit for him and he has everything in front of him, which is everything I want. It’s an awesome opportunity to fight him. It’s a win-win for me. What I have is something to look forward to as a learning experience. He has a seven fight winning streak, four wins in Strikeforce, and he’s gonna be shooting for a title soon. It’s awesome that I get to fight someone like that and it really shows where I’m at. I signed a multi-fight contract for Strikeforce and I plan on fulfilling every single one of those. And if I have a bump in the road, which every athlete does, it’s just something that was supposed to happen.”
So is Cason ready, especially after taking only 74 seconds to stop UFC vet Sean Salmon in his most recent bout, on May 6th?
“Who’s really ready,” he asks. “This is something that’s real new to me. Win or lose, I’m gonna go back to the gym, refocus, and have a new strategy. I’ll dwell on it for one day. That’s exactly how I’ve been doing everything in my life. I have one night to dwell or celebrate, and then it’s back to the gym.”
It’s clear now where he has learned his humility and honesty. It comes from dealing with the hurt of losing his friends, from picking himself up after his own mistakes, and from going rounds with a new family of fighters that may punch you and kick you, but that will also teach you how to not get punched or kicked like that again. After all that, trivial things don’t really register anymore.
“I’ve had some pretty bad things, but everybody has bad things, and that’s a learning experience,” said Cason. “I think everything is a learning experience; you just gotta move from them. You can’t take a step back. If you hit a bump in the road, you climb over it. If you’re going through hell, keep on going.”
“If there’s no people around, no crowds, no interviews, no cameras, that’s when you see me,” he continues. “So the biggest thing is to get past the stage of glamour. I’m not doing this for fame or to put my name out there – I’m doing this because this is what I want to do. Thousands of people want to do what I’m doing, and if I don’t grasp it and live in the moment, then I’m not living at all.
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