Jordan Williams: Jitters Gone Ahead of Debut

Jordan Williams: Jitters Gone Ahead of Debut

If there was a candidate to avoid UFC jitters in a debut, it’s Jordan Williams.

Oct 1, 2020 by Daniel Vreeland
Jordan Williams: Jitters Gone Ahead of Debut

If there was a candidate to avoid UFC jitters in a debut, it’s Jordan Williams. 

After picking up a win on the Contender Series, he didn’t get a contract - instead he got invited back again. The next trip to the Apex ended in a decision loss that most pundits disagreed with.So then came the third trip, which Williams admits he felt like would be his last. In that bout, he picked up a KO win and the long awaited contract. 

Given that amount of high level experience and intensity, he feels like there is no way that his trip to Fight Island includes any UFC debut jitters. 

“My UFC jitters are gone, if I even had those,” Williams said, adding that he may have never had those anyways. “My first time in the UFC via the Contender Series, I knocked the dude out in the first round on five days notice.”

So now, comfortable with his own mentality going into the cage, he questions if his opponent will be able to do the same. Although Nassourdine Imavov had a fight scheduled for the Contender Series, it never happened. As a result, Williams wonders where his head will be at.

“We all know what I can do inside the octagon, now what can you do? What can you do when you have those UFC jitters?” Williams questioned.

He also pushed aside the notion that an empty arena would help any jitters his opponent might have. Having fought in an empty area three times himself, he knows that isn’t the case. 

“Those are the loudest voices and emotions - [the ones] going on inside your head. And at that moment when your nerves and emotions are the loudest voice in the room - you don’t have the crowd to hide behind,” he said. “And you don’t have the crowd to silence them. People think the crowd is the reason for the jitters. Nah, you’re going to have them regardless because it's the UFC, there’s cameras, Dana White, and everything.”

This gives Williams all the confidence in the world stepping in for his first chance to impress the boss under his actual UFC contract. And although he hopes to do so with a spectacular knockout, he hopes the jitters don’t get to Imavov too much, that way he can make a bit more cash off “The Russian Sniper”. 

“I would like it to last to a third round,” he said. “I get a Performance of the Night with a knockout and then we both get 50 Gs on top of that for Fight of the Night.”

Williams’ fight with Nassourdine Imavov takes place on the preliminary portion of this weekend’s UFC Fight Island 4: Holm vs Aldana card.