“I used to always want to be the fan favorite,” says McKinney’s Steven ‘Ocho’ Peterson about his mindset regarding the crowd early on in his mixed martial arts career.
Like any other fighter, he looked forward to hearing the cheers coming from the crowd every time he stepped into the cage. Unfortunately though, that hasn’t been the case for him lately.
He was roundly booed in past fights with guys like Doug Frey and Alex Russ, and the crowd was heavily for his opponent Matt Hobar in in his last fight at Legacy 13.
All those jeers got even worse after the fight ended with a freak injury to Hobar, a gruesome broken arm.
Peterson didn’t do himself any favors responding back to the Hobar fans with a crybaby expression in response to the boos.
Steven doesn’t really care whether they (the crowd) love him or is against him anymore.
“Most of my fights have been in my opponents’ hometowns so I became the bad guy by default,” he says about how it all got started. At first I hated it, all the boos and the trash talk online. Then I realized that the haters are my biggest fans. They are the ones that watch all my fights and help get my name out there. Whether they love me or hate me, they’re buying tickets and blow in my name up online. Either way I benefit as long as I keep on winning. Nothing else matters more than that.”
Now he has specific goals in mind, irrespective of anything else going on outside of the cage.
“The goal is to fight in the UFC and to get there I need to win fights and put on a show,” says Steven.
“My immediate goal is to destroy Cody Williams. Then I have a rematch with Matt Hobar. I need to impose my game plan and beat him again. That would put me at 9-2 and the UFC in 2013.”
He’ll put that plan into process in motion this coming Friday when he faces off against “The Wolverine” on the AXS TV broadcast of Legacy Fighting Championship 14 from Houston.
“Cody Williams is tough and he’s definitely dangerous, but skill wise he’s not on my level. I expect to finish time in the first or second round. I think I will finish him by second round TKO.”
“I’d like to thank my sponsors, Last Round Nutrition, 360 chiropractic, VIP mouthgaurds and justbreakit.com. And of course thank you to all my coaches at Gracie Plano, USA Martial arts and Crossfit 380.”
