Interviewing new Cage Titans champion Eric Zane

I spent a nice amount of time dis­cussing the men­tal aspects of Mixed Mar­tial Arts with new Cage Titans Amat­uer Light­weight cham­pi­on Eric Zane. Eric told me about the start to his career, and all the men­tal bat­tles he has faced on the route to becom­ing a champion.

TRANSCRIPT :

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: My name is Niko­las Dziedz­ic and I’m here with Eric Zane. And Eric, how long have you been a pro­fes­sion­al fighter?

Eric Zane: I’ve, been fight­ing for about a year. Com­pet­ing in a year, two years. Training.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Real­ly? Only three years. •

Eric Zane: two train­ing, one fighting.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Wow. you did wrestling before this?

Eric Zane: Yep. Yeah, I wres­tled, since I was a lit­tle kid, up through col­lege. wres­tled four years over at Rhode Island College.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Oh, okay. what got you into wrestling?

Eric Zane: actu­al­ly, so I hat­ed it when I was a kid, and my par­ents made us do a sport every sea­son, and they would tell me that I would be allowed to do foot­ball if I wres­tled because you get your nec stronger, bet­ter at win, con­cus­sions, all that. So they just lied to me for like 10 years. Like, yeah, one more year of wrestling and you can play foot­ball. And they ran that shit all the way through high school. And. And then even­tu­al­ly I was like, okay, I guess I like wrestling a lit­tle bit. So wound up stick­ing with it, fell in love with it in high school and, con­tin­ued on at college.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: So you did­n’t want to do it, but would you say you were pret­ty good at it, like, while you were going through it?

Eric Zane: I was strong, but I don’t think I was that good of a wrestler. And I would get emo­tion­al every time I lost. I was cry­ing in the cor­ner. Ah. You know, hat­ed going to tour­na­ments. They would make me go to at least one tour­na­ment a year, and it was the worst day of the year. so I don’t think I was all that good. I won most of my match­es in, mid­dle and high school, but I don’t think I was, like a high lev­el wrestler.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: And what high school did you go to?

Eric Zane: Water­ford High

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Okay, so did you do, like, ECC tour­na­ments ever? Or did you ever do, like, a state tournament?

Eric Zane: Yeah, so I took sec­ond at states my senior year. sec­ond in ECC as well. I real­ly fell in love with wrestling from train­ing with the coach­es over at Water­ford High. Gam­ble and them. They’re great group of guys. And that’s where I start­ed to, like, you know, put out­side time into the sport. Like, I was­n’t being made to do it any­more. Train­ing, over at T.J. hep­burns and Ledyager. And, yeah, I think my junior year I lost a match in over­time and it both­ered me quite a lot. I remem­ber not being able to watch a video of the match with­out feel­ing sick to my stom­ach for, like, years.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: really?

Eric Zane: Yeah. So lit­er­al­ly from that match end­ed, I said, I’m gonna Wres­tle in col­lege, and I’m gonna wres­tle year round now. So I stopped doing lacross in the spring so I could train, wrestling year round, and dove into it more.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: So you did wrestling all through­out then and then through col­lege? what got you an mma or how did you find this gym?

Eric Zane: Aw, dude, it’s actu­al­ly hilar­i­ous. So, I. One of my friends does jiuit­su at, ah, Whal­ing City. And he asked me to come in for an open mat with him. And I had­n’t nev­er done jujitssu before, but I just fig­ured I’d go in for fun. And I had a pret­ty good time. I think I did all right. so I went in again the next week and, I see this dude who I thought was a kick­box­er train­ing in the cor­ner, like just spar­ring on thean mat day. And I start­ed grap­pling. And then like a cou­ple min­utes lat­er, he calls me out, and says, likeo, we’re scrap­ping, wrestling, wrestling or jiuit­su, you pick. And I was like, what? I guess wrestling? Cause I guess’s my thing. and I was like, he’s just some kick­box­er. Like, this is gonna be fine, I guess. And he just beats the breaks off me for like 20 min­utes, man, like, throw­ing me around. I was talk­ing, he was like, you had hype behind you. And I was so con­fused as to why this was hap­pen­ing and also why a kick­box­er was absolute­ly scrap­ing me and wrestling. but then he invites me to train, with, him and a cou­ple MMA fight­ers, like, wrestling on the week­ends. And, it was Bren­nan Ward, which explains. I did­n’t real­ize it was­n’him until he put his con­tact in. And I looked at the name thing, I was like, oh, that’s why I’m get­ting the shit kicked out of me right now. but I got to come in and train. they were doing. It was Bil­ly, Jake Caskey and Bren­nan Ward. And they would just wres­tle live, lit­er­al­ly an hour straight. You rotate part­ners on the minute, you just keep going. And, it was just such a cool envi­ron­ment. Those guys are all so tough. their men­tal­i­ty, the way they train. It was some­thing I was miss­ing. I was­n’t, aggres­sive or phys­i­cal enough in my match­es, and it real­ly helped just off­set that. And it made a big dif­fer­ence from my last year of col­lege wrestling. So after­ward I was like, I got­ta come train with them more.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Did you ever fig­ure out why Bren­nan called you out?

Eric Zane: I don’t know. I think I did okay at the Jiu Jit­su night before. So they were prob­a­bly like, oh, it’s like a, you know, a new guy with no jiu jit­su comes in the gym or some­thing. I don’t even know.

Eric Zane: Maybe he just want­ed to.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: He just felt like it. Yeah, I mean, I met him. I’ve met him like twice. And I also cov­ered him when he was at bare knuck­le and he’s like, he’s intense. He’s intense. And it’s so weird because he goes in there and he does his thing and he does not care about media at all. Like, I was obvi­ous­ly doing pho­tog­ra­phy and like, he did­n’t care about any of the pho­tos. But a. One of my pho­tos got print­ed for him by just some­one he knows. And they told me that, like, he broke down in tears when he got it. Like, he was so hap­py. I have this pho­to of him where right after the fight, like they had his hand raised and he’s like look­ing at the crowd or some­thing, like, so they like print­ed it for him and he loved it. but yeah, he’s an intense dude and he’s no non­sense. He went­ed that bare knuck­le fight in one like a minute and a. I.

Eric Zane: I saw dude! Me and Mark streamed it

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: so you came down here, you met Bil­ly and Jake and then what did you just. You just start doing your wrestling with them and then youot start­ed to slow­ly rotate into strik­ing and stuff with them?

Eric Zane: Yeah, so I was just wrestling with them and then, they invit­ed me to do a cou­ple of the class­es. But like, right after I start­ed doing the strik­ing, I sep­a­rat­ed my ac joint wrestling with them. This is like right at the end of the sum­mer. So I had like maybe two weeks of train­ing with him or some­thing and then, had to go back to school. But just I got to work with Dex­ter. Then, and I, saw how good of a coach he was and how cool of an envi­ron­ment this was, and I was like, okay, I think they can make me a world cham­pi­on and I’ll come here after.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: What year did you meet, him? Was it 20 22 or 2023

Eric Zane: Yeah. Yeah, it would have been the sum­mer of 22.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Yeah, that’s. I think that’s like the same time that I came here for the first time, honestly.

Eric Zane: Really?

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Yeah. because I did. I just kind of wob­bled in here one time. I, saw Bil­ly at Rene­gade work­ing out one time, and this is like when I kind of want to get into train­ing. And I did­n’t even ask him where he went. I Just like, went on Google and this was like the first thing that popped up. And I called Dex­ter and he told me to come in, but. So you felt, you felt like, you felt like they can make you a world cham­pi­on, right?

Eric Zane: Yeah.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: And obvi­ous­ly Sat­ur­day you won your first belt. First of many,

Eric Zane: slight, slight­ly scaled down.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: How do you feel about that?

Eric Zane: It was a lot of fun, man. all the camps, all the fights. I mean, it’s cool to get a lit­tle shiny tro­phy from it too, but, just anoth­er scrap, you know?

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: And obvi­ous­ly this isn’t like the high­est lev­el world cham­pi­onship. You’re gonna keep mov­ing up, so it’s not like the job’s fin­ished, but do you feel like a goal is accom­plished or. Not real­ly. Not yet.

Eric Zane: N. No. Once the fight was announced, and it was a pos­si­bil­i­ty there, then I was like, oh, I would like that. That would be cool. But, lead­ing up to it, I want toa be a world champion.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Absolute­ly. so train­ing in the camp, let’s talk a lit­tle bit more about the camp. Know­ing that you’re about to step onto a big­ger stage than you’ve been before with a shiny tro­phy on the line in camp, did you feel any dif­fer­ent type of way, like, men­tal­ly at all?

Eric Zane: Yeah, I was a lit­tle wor­ried. So I had tons of issues deal­ing with pres­sure and chok­ing in match­es, through­out my entire wrestling career until my senior year, like, of col­lege, like every oth­er year, it was plagu­ing. Like, I had a word for we call the con­stric­tor. Like it was any­time a, big match was on the line, it felt like I could­n’t make my feet move. Like I was just frozen, and very frus­trat­ing and that. And it would, you know, gas me out in 10 sec­onds. I’d have one move and I’d be exhaust­ed just from all the ten­sion and putting pres­sure on myself. So even though that has­n’t been an issue recent­ly, it was, I was a lit­tle bit wor­ried that it would be. I was like, man, how do I know that I’m not just going to fall back to that? and that all stems from, you know, a poor self per­cep­tion, not believ­ing in your­self, and, being too wor­ried about try­ing to con­trol an out­come that’s not controllable.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Would you say that you have built more self con­fi­dence since then, espe­cial­ly con­sid­er­ing the peo­ple that you train with and how well you can per­form in the practices?

Eric Zane: Yeah, absolute­ly. I mean, I get beat up by every­one here, so there’s like a no. but I think it s just more con­fi­dence m in my Prepa­ra­tion and also, I felt like I can be proud of myself before the out­come even occurs so that I put less pres­sure on myself. It was almost like I was so scared of not being enough and los­ing that I would­n’t allow myself to give every­thing. So it’s like at the end of the match it’s like, oh, I lost, but like, I did­n’t even, like I’m try­ing to try, but I did­n’t even try. You know what I mean?

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: You did­n’t even give it what you could because yeah, you already assume that you’re gonna lose and you’re ready for it.

Eric Zane: Yeah. So being able to just let that go and be like, you know, I love myself either way.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: I think that is the hard­est, like men­tal block when it comes to any sort of com­bat sport is just like when you’re in a com­pe­ti­tion that’s one ver­sus one and you don’t have that much knowl­edge of the per­son against you. It’s real­ly easy to think to your­self, you know, there’s two SS of the spec­trum. There’s a lot of peo­ple that do it that have like full con­fi­dence in their head, like, this guy’s ter­ri­ble, I’m the best in the world. But then there’s the oth­er side of the spec­trum where it’s like, am I enough to beat him? And it is hard to get past. But you’ve had I think three fights that I’ve seen since I met you. The first one was CES when you got put down pret­ty fast. But then the sec­ond fight you got dropped round one and then pro­ceed­ed to take the guy down. Beat em up. Next round stars, take him down again, Beat em up. So what would you say changed between the two fights? Do you think you got more con­fi­dent between the two?

Eric Zane: You know, con­fi­dence is inter­est­ing. It was more so, bet­ter at man­ag­ing fear. So my prepa­ra­tion and lead up to my sec­ond fight, I mean we had like three oppo­nents at the last two weeks, like to shift, like we would change oppo­nents. But that whole camp I was ter­ri­fied and I was not man­ag­ing my fear at all. I was mak­ing self destruc­tive choic­es. So I can’t say every­thing on here but it was not a good thing and it was com­ing from a bad place. and then even in the fight I was mak­ing self destruc­tive choic­es that day that, you know, ye had a big impact and when I I almost like dis­as­so­ci­at­ed when I went out because it was like just no faith in myself and no faith in my prepa­ra­tion which there should­n’t have been because I allowed fear to con­trol how I moved that entire camp. so it was more so about let­ting go, accept­ing that it’s okay, I’m gonna feel scared. This is just a feel­ing I have to learn to deal with. and then that allowed me to stay com­posed enough to make the right deci­sions, where now I’m not. Instead of, you know, try­ing to brawl and throw an over­hand when I’m buzzed every­where, I’LIKE all right, I’m gonna shoot a dou­ble, Mick. That’s prob­a­bly the bet­ter move here.

Eric Zane: But, yeah, just try­ing to be present in the moment. If you’re present in the moment, espe­cial­ly this last fight, every­thing feels slow, and it’s a lot eas­i­er to manage.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: And I was gonna say the. I did­n’t see the third fight, but it sounds some­what sim­i­lar to the sec­ond. The last one at Real­i­ty, where you kind of got stunned, and instead of swing­ing your arms and try­ing to stun him back, you were able to kind of stay in your head and stay present and say, I got­ta take this guy down. And that worked, since you won rounds three, four, and five.

Eric Zane: Some. Yeah, actu­al­ly, I did­n’t. So I made it. I shot right off to give myself a sec­ond. but he had real­ly good jiu jit­su. He fin­ished the last two guys with chokes in, like, 20 sec­onds. So I did not want to be on the ground with this. So I got buzzed, grabbed the leg, and then I kind of just bailed it and went back to work. But I did­n’t pan­ic as much. So I think it was a bet­ter. I think that was prob­a­bly the most com­posed I in.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: And then how does it feel after a fight? Win or win and lose? Like, let’s start with los­ing at ces. Like, what does it feel like after you get that result? Because, you know, they put you on the chair, every­one’s look­ing at you, like, how does that affect you and also affect­ing your con­fi­dence in, you know, the weeks com­ing afterwards?

Eric Zane: Yeah, so it’s a pret­ty hor­ri­ble feel­ing, los­ing. I mean, there’s. It’s embar­rass­ing and frus­trat­ing. You’re like, how did I let that hap­pen? and it does mess with your con­fi­dence a lit­tle bit. I think a big part of between that and my. The next fight, which is also what Cage Titans, was just say­ing, all right, I’m not even gonna wor­ry about the out­come if I go out there and get knocked out again. So what? Because I did­n’t trust in my chann or any­thing after that.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Yep.

Eric Zane: win­ning is real­ly fun, but it’s also like, man, I want to do that again, like, right away. There’s not like a feel­ing of sat­is­fac­tion. You’just like.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: It’s like once you do it once, it’s like, well, I got­ta do it again.

Eric Zane: That’s the next one.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Nev­er gonna be satisfied.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: And then I guess if you had some sort of advice to give to just any­one that want­ed to do this, espe­cial­ly since you start­ed mixed mar­tial arts train­ing, so not so late, but, like, fair­ly late. Like, a lot of peo­ple start real­ly young. If you had any advice to some­one that want­ed to just get start­ed, just what would it be?

Eric Zane: I, think sur­round­ing your­self with the right peo­ple. If you’re in a sup­port­ive envi­ron­ment and peo­ple who can. There’s so much you have to do train­ing wise, prepa­ra­tion wise. And even when you do every­thing per­fect, it’s ter­ri­fy­ing. So hav­ing peo­ple around you who you trust and, know the game, give you sup­port no mat­ter you win or you lose, tell you, you know, not to try to focus on the out­come too much. I think that’s all important.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: Yeah. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Eric Zane: No problem.

Niko­las Dziedz­ic: I just want to thank Eric Zane again for tak­ing the time to do this inter­view. And I hope that every­body lis­ten­ing was able to gain some­thing out of this under­stand­ing more about the men­tal­i­ty behind, com­bat sports and kind of the progress that peo­ple take to get to where they have to be.

Social Media Post: