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“Eight minutes is a long time. If you sit there and try to count to eight minutes, that’s a long time to be counting, and imagine if somebody is on your neck while that’s happening. Same thing with the masks and stuff like that. Right or wrong, if I step into a store and they want me to have my mask on, that’s what they’re asking of me to keep the public safe so I don’t get something from somebody and somebody doesn’t get something from me, is it right or wrong just to go ahead and put that mask on? And is it a big deal? I don’t know. A lot of people are making things more complicated than they need to be.”
Ultimately, though, Giles said he was still able to live as normally as normal gets right now. Occasionally, he’d see a post on social media from someone he considered a friend or acquaintance that rubbed him the wrong way and decided to cut ties with that person. Awkward, sure, but good in the hopes of cutting “negative energy” from his already-stressful life as he trained for his fight.
On the front of his mind at the moment is how to tackle the puzzle that is Holland, whose only UFC losses have been to Thiago Santos and Brendan Allen. Holland is a long, rangy puzzle with well-rounded skills, and Giles is intrigued by what the matchup might bring.
“He’s somewhat a mystery,” Giles said. “It’s going to be interesting standing in front of him and being able to feel him out and see those little things that you can’t really see on film, but you just have to feel.”
Heading into his fifth UFC bout, Giles said he is starting to get a sense of what the difference is when fighters gain experience, especially when he fought Krause and Gerald Meerschaert. He respects their efficiency and level-headed demeanor in the fight.
Giles is also interested in how he’ll respond to the crowd-less environment in the UFC Apex. He has enjoyed the fights over the last couple of months and noticed that everyone seems “a little bit more violent” without fans cheering on the competitors. He calls on his days as a football player in Texas at Taylor High School and suspects the bout might feel like a scrimmage, but he is mostly going to wait and see how he feels.
Regardless, Giles’ approach is a little different than what you’ll hear most fighters describe. There isn’t a change in mentality when he enters the Octagon, but instead, he tries to remain emotionally even keeled and think of the bout as something else other than just a brawl. It’s a headspace that probably helps in his everyday life, and one that might help him take home the win on August 1.
“I try not to flip a switch,” Giles said. “I always try to remain the same. Some guys kind of flip the switch by talking mess or something like that, and it kind of gets them – once you start talking mess back, now they got a reason, so it doesn’t feel as awkward. I just try to think of it as a sport. All the guys I fight, I don’t even really know them. I have not met one person that I’ve fought until I actually fight them. I don’t have anything against them. It’s a tense situation, but I try not to think of it as a fight. I try to think of it as a sport, and we’re both lucky to go in there and compete. If I do that, then fights are less sloppy because you’re competing, and you’re focusing on your performance.
“I feel like if you do that, you’ll get a lot of wins, so that’s kind of where I try to keep it.”