{"id":213377,"date":"2015-10-29T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2015-10-28T20:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/?p=213377"},"modified":"2015-10-29T06:00:31","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T20:00:31","slug":"lightweight-title-to-put-the-crank-closer-to-ufc-goal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/lightweight-title-to-put-the-crank-closer-to-ufc-goal\/","title":{"rendered":"Lightweight title to put \u2018The Crank\u2019 closer to UFC goal"},"content":{"rendered":"

Winning the Pacific Xtreme Combat lightweight championship belt would move Frank \u201cThe Crank\u201d Camacho closer to his goal of earning a chance to fight in an Ultimate Fighting Championship event.<\/p>\n

\"Frank<\/a>
Frank \u201cThe Crank\u201d Camacho, right, waits for the formal announcement of referee Alverick Alvarez, center, after beating Yasuaki Miura in Rites of Passage 18: Warpath last July 3 at the Royal Taga Hall of Saipan World Resort. (Jon Perez)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Camacho (17-3 with 14 knockouts) will be facing Guam Muay Thai\u2019s Tyrone \u201cBones\u201d Jones (5-4) in PXC set on Dec. 4 at the University of Guam Fieldhouse with the vacant PXC 155-lb title on the line.<\/p>\n

The Guam-born, but Saipan-raised fighter said he is training harder for his upcoming five-round battle against Jones.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m preparing to the best of my ability for this fight because having a belt around my waist puts me under a better light for the UFC, which is my career goal. I just need to stay focused and never forget the goal,\u201d Camacho said in an email to the Saipan Tribune.<\/p>\n

\u201c[Just] continue to push forward and represent the Marianas at the highest level of fighting. Even as small as we are as an island, we have the fighting spirit. I have it and I want to show it to the entire world where we come from,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

This will be Camacho\u2019s fifth mixed martial arts fight in the last 12 months and second after his technical knockout win over Yasuaki Miura in Rites of Passage 18: Warpath last July 3.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t been this active fighting in years. I\u2019m getting better at fine-tuning the way I train. I always train hard, but for the longevity of my career and well being I am understanding smart training,\u201d Camacho said.<\/p>\n

PXC bantamweight champion Kyle Aguon, Ricky Camp, Roque Martinez, Jeff Mesa, Robert Alvarez, and Seay Camacho are serving as his sparring partners at Spike 22 and Purebred BJJ and they have been helping him get in shape since training camp started in the middle of September.<\/p>\n

Camacho said having back-to-back fights early this year kept him in shape in preparation for five, five-minute rounds against Jones.<\/p>\n

\u201cTraining camp is going really well. I\u2019ve been staying in decent shape with back-to-back fights, so that won\u2019t be an issue at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Camacho\u2019s training camp this time is different from his previous fights.<\/p>\n

\u201cPreparation is a little different with this training camp\u2014more conditioning, more rounds, and a little more of everything really. The sword has been forged. Now, the next few weeks I need to sharpen the blade,\u201d Camacho ended.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Winning the Pacific Xtreme Combat lightweight championship belt would move Frank \u201cThe Crank\u201d Camacho closer…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":213380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7849,1289,7850,7851],"class_list":["post-213377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports","tag-kyle-aguon","tag-pxc","tag-ricky-camp","tag-tyrone-bones-jones"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/213380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}