UFC lightweight Mitch Clarke has been training at The MMA Lab out of Phoenix, Arizona for several years now.
That’s no longer the case as he has packed up his stuff and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico to train at Jackson-Wink MMA.
“I have no problems with John Crouch and The MMA Lab; it’s a great team, great training partners, great coaches, great everything,” Clarke said on The MMA Circus. “But for me, I needed to change some things up. I bonded with a couple of coaches really well (at Jackson-Wink MMA). It stimulated my passion for the sport again. I needed to move forward in a different sense. I changed, and I like the change. It’s intimidating. It’s a bigger camp, and there’s so many great guys, so many stars. You forget that you’re at the upper echelon of fighting and they’re just people.”
Clarke admits as well that leaving The MMA Lab was an emotional move from him. MMA fans haven’t seen Clarke in the Octagon for a while due to a knee injury, and he was only cleared to train again this past January.
“It was a little bit of a longer recovery than I would have wanted it to be or expected it to be,” he said. “I knew something was wrong, because I couldn’t lift my leg. It was a little bit of a harder recovery, just because there was so much wrong with it, than I initially wanted it to be. It’s part of the sport, unfortunately. It could’ve been worse. I immediately thought it was going to be ACL related, and that’s a career-altering injury. It’s still a crappy situation.”
The Canadian fighter hasn’t competed since suffering a defeat to Joseph Duffy at UFC Fight Night 90.
