Lance Palmer was one of the million dollar winners from the inaugural PFL season, and his motivation hasn’t wavered coming into the second year.
Uniondale, NY – When you reach the top of the mountain, it can be tough to want immediately start climbing again. That is the task at hand for Lance Palmer heading into PFL 2 2019 after winning the promotion’s featherweight tournament and one million dollars last season.
That prize was a great payoff for Lance Palmer, but dating back to his high school days, he knows how champions should act in the following season.
“It was great, but I also know that this is a new year. Like with my wrestling career back in high school, winning my state title as a freshman, going into sophomore year, I knew that the target was on my back and I had to keep elevating my game. I was lucky enough to have four state titles in high school because of that. You just have to have that click in your head that last year doesn’t matter. Same thing in pro football, basketball, whatever it is. Just because you were the champs the year before, doesn’t mean you’re going to be the champs this year. You have to put in that work, you have to know that people are going to be coming after you even harder just because you were the champ. People are going to be trying to knock you off. It was good to be the champ in 2018, but it’s a whole different focus this year. We have different guys at the weight class. We have some of the same, but different guys coming in. The eight-man post-season could be completely different this year, so you can’t look at it as the same as last year, a lot of it has changed.”
With a new season comes new challenges, and Palmer has added some equipment to his toolbox by working with one of the premier gyms in MMA.
“This season I started working with Frankie Edgar, Marlon Moraes, Eddie Alvarez, coach Mark Henry. That was one of the main things to add to my game and switch it up a bit. It’s been great and I’m glad they invited me to be a part of that team. That was the main thing I changed.”
As a defending champion, Palmer gave his thoughts on the new wave of challengers attempting to prevent him from going back-to-back.
“It’s great. Everybody’s tough. Last year, I felt that while there weren’t any weak points in it, some guys were just more well-known than other guys and some guys performed better than other guys. This year, we’ve brought back four of the top guys from last year, plus we have a lot of tough guys from other organizations who’ve come in. 45 and 55 are, in my opinion, always going to be the most competitive weight classes in MMA because of the size of the average human being and where athletes sit in those weight classes. I think it’s very competitive and that’s what’s fun about it. So when you’re the best in that division, you’re truly the best because you know everybody in there is looking to go out there and get it done.”
Check out the rest of the scrum in the video above and catch Lance Palmer in the main event of PFL 2 2019 tonight at 9:00 p.m. EST on ESPN+!
