Is Josh Thomson too honest for his own good? Maybe, but so what?

For people who claim to be sick of the lies and the cliches and the hyperbole of pre-fight hype, a lot of MMA fans seem hung up on Josh Thomson’s recent fit of honesty.

With his fight against former UFC lightweight champ Benson Henderson rapidly approaching, Thomson made waves recently when he described his training camp for this main event bout at UFC on FOX 10 on Saturday night as “quite possibly my worst camp ever in my whole career.”

Why would he say that, many fight fans wondered. Is he playing head games with Henderson? Giving himself an out if he loses? Is he just being too honest for his own good?

Or, as Thomson explained when I talked to him recently, why wouldn’t he say that, especially if it happens to be true?

“The funny part is, most people will sit here and lie to you guys and say, ‘It was the best camp I ever had,’” Thomson told MMAjunkie. “But really, what’s the point?”

I had to admit it was a valid question. What is the point? What do you accomplish by talking about how great your training camp was, whether it’s true or not? What, is the other guy supposed to read your interviews and get scared? Is he pinning all his hopes on the outside chance that you’ll show up in poor condition, unprepared to do your job?

Maybe you could argue that too much training camp honesty might increase your opponent’s confidence, but as Thomson put it, “You’re a professional athlete. Every time you get in that cage you should be one of the most confident people on the face of the Earth. If you’re not confident you shouldn’t be fighting. So it doesn’t matter.”

There’s also a flip side to that coin. Say you had a legitimately great training camp. Say it really was the best one you’ve ever had, and you emerged in the best shape of your life, only for real this time.

That’s nice and all, and certainly it’s preferable to its opposite, but it doesn’t guarantee you success on one Saturday night a week later.

In that sense, the fight is always kind of a crap shoot. It’s one thing to feel great on your last day of training, but you still never know how you’ll be on the one day when it counts. That might be one of the cruelest aspects of pro fighting. The preparation time dwarfs the competition time, and the competitions are so few, so far apart, and so meaningful.

“There’s really not anything you can do about it,” Thomson said. “There’s days you just don’t feel like being in there. You could’ve done all the preparation for eight weeks or whatever, and then you end up sick. It happens. Little things like that, there’s nothing you can do.”

At the same time, hopelessness doesn’t seem like the answer. In order to keep dragging yourself to the gym every day, you have to have at least a little faith in some formula where hard work equals success. That’s the part Thomson thinks people might have misunderstood, he said.

He still put in the work. He’s in shape, ready for a five-round fight, intent on “fighting my ass off,” he said. He just didn’t particularly enjoy it this time around, in part because the holidays made it difficult to keep the gym well-stocked with training partners, and also because the long grind leading up to this fight eventually sapped his enthusiasm.

At a certain point, Thomson said, “This fight just lost its appeal.”

But then, so what? Feeling pumped about it two weeks out wouldn’t guarantee him a win, so why should the absence of that feeling spell doom? And as long as his job includes answering questions about what he’s been doing and how he’s been feeling, what does it hurt to tell the truth? If we’re tired of hearing the same tired lines in every fighter interview, shouldn’t Thomson’s honesty be refreshing instead of concerning?

Probably, yeah. But even if it isn’t, it’s not like that matters, either.

“It still depends how it all comes together that week and that night,” Thomson said. “I don’t need to be better than Benson on every day of my camp; I only need to be better than him on that one night. Just that one night out of my whole life.”

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