Fighter puts roots down with new gym
Injuries have been one of the few constants in the fighting career of Kajan Johnson.
Beginning his career while still a teenager, the Burns Lake, B.C. product worked through early peaks and valleys to establish himself as one of the top young fighters on the Canadian regional scene, but every time he got close to taking the next step, the injury bug would bite, halting his momentum.
It has been the same since Johnson reached the UFC, as a broken jaw suffered in his The Ultimate Fighter: Nations semifinal fight against fellow Canadian Chad Laprise delayed his official Octagon debut and, most recently, a torn labrum.
That has forced the now 32-yearold lightweight to the sidelines while in the midst of a two-fight winning streak, rendering him ineligible to compete in his home province when the UFC rolls into Vancouver’s Rogers Arena again on Aug. 27.
But Johnson has other things occupying his time as he recovers and works his way back to full health, as he, fellow fighter Dejan Kajic and longtime friend Rochelle Okoye, who stars on the FOX-TV hit Wayward Pines, have teamed up to open Tristar Vancouver, an all-in-one training facility bringing the curriculum and reputation of Canada’s top gym to the Lower Mainland.
“I’ve been talking to Firas (Zahabi, of Tristar’s Montreal operation) about this for a long time,” Johnson said when discussing the origins of the new gym, which opened its doors a couple of weeks ago in Burnaby.
“It was my plan to finish my fight career before I ever moved back or tried to start a family or open a gym or anything like that; I wanted to just be selfish and completely focused on me.
“My two other partners live here and they were planning on starting a gym before I even planned to move back,” added the charismatic fighter, who spent the last several years living in the dorms at Zahabi’s flagship gym. When I decided to come back, it was like, ‘Well, you’re in Vancouver; you guys want to open a gym?’”
One of the key motivations for Johnson in travelling down this road was to open a facility where athletes can get all the elements they need to be at their best under one roof.
In a lot of cases, fighters are forced to travel between various locations in order to get the best training possible, with UFC middleweight Elias Theodorou saying last month in Ottawa that a big part of why he shifted his training camp to Tristar in Montreal was because he spent nearly 20 hours a week driving from stop-to-stop across Toronto.
“We can have a high-level, worldclass team right here in the city where everybody lives and nobody wants to move away from, because it’s the most beautiful place in the world.”
Johnson is confident that Tristar Vancouver will become that allencompassing facility that fighters throughout the Lower Mainland flock to and the man synonymous with the gym’s name is confident that Johnson and his partners are the right people to carry programs established in Montreal to the West Coast.
“I’m looking forward to spreading the Tristar curriculum around the world,” said Zahabi, the longtime MMA head coach associated with Georges St-Pierre, and one of the chief architects behind the Tristar Gym brand.