“It was real difficult because it started making my timeline longer and dragging out, and on top of that, I felt like I was good to go, and that brought a lot of frustration,” said Yanez, who suffered the injury in question in the first quarter of the year. “Sitting back and watching my training partner fight two times and I hadn’t even fought once, it’s like, ‘What’s going on here?’
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“I was training, coaching a lot of fighters, watching them fight and it’s like, ‘I helped them get here. I’m the guy that was wrestling with them, I’m the guy that was sparring with them,” he added, shaking his head with a smile on his face. “I was still training, still doing jiu jitsu, sparring, everything. I felt fine. I don’t know why it took so long for me to get medically cleared.”
After stewing in that frustration, the proud father of two opted to shift his point of view on his situation and started working to make sure he was as prepared as possible for when he finally got cleared and booked his next fight. The early “doom and gloom” he navigated gave way to seeing an opportunity, and following a little more time training with a few different people, Yanez settled in to working with coach Sayif Saud and the team at Fortis MMA in Dallas.
For Yanez, it was the first time things felt like they did prior to the passing of his long-time coach Saul Soliz, who died suddenly in 2021. Having known each other since his days on the regional circuit and being just a 4-hour drive away, connecting with “The General” was easy and has given Yanez some of the consistency he’s been searching for these last couple years.