Five Questions With Jesse Gross

Jesse Gross is a Wallaceburg, Ontario MMA fighter. A past competitor in the Score Fighting Series and other professional events including the Extreme Cage Combat, Gross is an up and comer in the MMA world.

In October this year, Gross will be fighting as a part of the first ever Provincial Fighting Championships in London, Ontario.

Below are Jesse Gross’ answers to CKSN’s Five Questions:

1. What is your career sports highlight/top memory?

There’s a 2 way tie on this one, and neither includes fighting. First is when I got to go play football in Europe when I was 16 and the other was in my OAC year of football. We had basically been crushed for years including once already again that season by the McGregor Panthers, but we beat them in O.T. in the playoffs to advance to the championship game. What made it so awesome was the newspaper releasing a photo of their star player sitting with his head between his legs as the Tartans celebrated in the background.

2. Who is your favourite professional sports team and athlete?

I will watch a lot of sports and athletes but I’m not crazy committed to any one team, sport or organization.

3. If you could achieve one thing/goal in sports, what would it be?

Championships, rankings, and all that jazz are nice, but at the end of the day you still have to survive in society. Being able to fully concentrate on my sport/career and be able to live comfortably would be a huge achievement.

4. Who has been your biggest sports influence and why?

I think my drive for athletics was really shaped in high school at WDSS. Friends and teachers around me knew my home life wasn’t the greatest, because of that I had bit of a short temper at times, that got me in some trouble and also lead to a lot of private conversations with coaches to keep me on track. Teachers like Mr. Rountree, Mr. MacLachlan, Mr. Bossy, Mr. Martin, Mr. Ebere, Coach Vinny, they all played a huge role in keeping me on track when I fell off and for making smarter decisions in the future.

5. What do you love most about playing sports?

Forget all that garbage that it doesn’t matter if you win or lose. Winning is everything in sport. I’m not talking about the blowouts, the better, stronger teams or athletes can always do that to the weak, but the victories where you really have to dig deep into your mental toughness, use every trick and skill you have to pull it out, those are the moments that will test your character, and moments of competition you won’t forget. Seeing kids being brought up with the ‘everyone’s a winner’ mentality is just sickening, the real world just doesn’t work like that.

Five Questions is a new weekly feature on the Chatham-Kent Sports Network. We’ll ask athletes from across Chatham-Kent Five Questions, and post their answers every week. If you know an athlete or coach we should question, or you’re an athlete or coach who would like to participate in “Five Questions,” please email us at ian@cksn.ca.