Kevin “The Hard Hitting HillBilly” Croom (20-12) has been around the MMA game for a very long time now. The Glory MMA & Fitness fighter is on a two-fight win streak and will look to make it three in a row when he faces Anderson Hutchinson for the 145 pounds FAC Title on UFC Fight Pass, August 14th.
Croom is coming off a split decision victory over Adil Benjilany at Bellator 239 and although the fight was close, the aggressive style of Croom seemed to be the difference in securing the 20th win of his career. We caught up with Kevin and got his thoughts on how confident he was before the judges rendered their official decision.
“I did feel I did enough to win, obviously you never like that. I looked at my coach James (Krause) who just lost that one-day fight notice and the referee kind of screwed him. He fought Trevin Giles on the day notice and that just happened the week before so we were in the middle and I looked at him and said we won right? Then he said sh*t man I don’t even know how this stuff works anymore. So yeah that was a little nerve-racking but I did believe I did enough to win that one”.
Shortly after Croom notched the win for Bellator, the pandemic struck and forced the country to alter how we live. Croom explained how it affected his day to day life.
“To be honest it hasn’t affected me in the least. There were a couple of weeks when I wasn’t supposed to be at the gym and there weren’t supposed to be large numbers at the gym, so we did some training in my garage. I trained every day this year minus my Sunday rest day, it hasn’t really affected me at all other then this fight was supposed to be in May so they pushed that back. I am itching even more to fight and I’m really lucky I got a fight in before the pandemic happened. I have trained the whole time I’ve probably trained harder then before and I’m excited to see how these other folks have been training”.
Croom will now turn his full attention to Anderson Hutchinson and an important fight at this stage of his career. Kevin knows he needs to keep the train rolling and notch another win in order to get the proper contract from an elite organization that he knows he deserves. We asked Croom how he sees this fight playing out.
“I feel that I am the better fighter, I am the better all-around fighter. I have a lot better movement than him. He is really good at what he does. Anderson is a strong wrestler, he is stocky, I think I’m going to be able to out move him, jab him up, dab him up and take the fight where I want. I want a highlight reel finish so I plan on going out there and landing my jab and going from there”.
Make sure you have a UFC Fight Pass subscription to catch the August 14th Fighting Alliance Championship card in its entirety.
