Three weeks prior to UFC 239, Diego Sanchez made a massive career change ahead of his fight against Michael Chiesa.

Sanchez decided it was time to leave Jackson Wink MMA after years of being one of the faces of the gym and linked up with Josh Fabia, the founder of the School of Self-Awareness.

Fabia will serve as the lone cornerman for Sanchez when “The Ultimate Fighter 1” winner makes his 30th walk to the octagon for the welterweight matchup with Chiesa at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. But who is Fabia?

According to him, he’s a person with a special skillset that allows him to offer something that doesn’t exist elsewhere in MMA.

“What I’ve done is I’ve revived ancient wisdom with modern technology,” Fabia told MMA Junkie. “It’s very unique; it’s very different. I have my own message. It is not like anything else out there. I’m addressing things that start at the time of earth and last to the day you die. So, yes, I have valuable martial and combative context to help Diego (with MMA), but on another level. I’m teaching him how to control himself and how to become aware of himself by becoming aware of everything around him.

“What I’m trying to show you is, you can invest the time and energy in yourself and create yourself into something special. You can enhance your senses. You can create an energy in you that is non-comparable by anybody else.”

Fabia first started working with Sanchez privately, before his last fight with Mickey Gall at UFC 235 in March. It proved to be one of Sanchez’s best performances in a more than 14-year UFC tenure. He produced a dominant second-round TKO finish, and he looked as ruthless as ever.

So, what brought Sanchez and Fabia together? Sanchez said he reached a point where he wasn’t getting the individual focus that he felt he needed from Jackson Wink at this stage in his career. “The universe” brought him to Fabia, a man with many hats, and the pair have since been working together to help Sanchez realize his full potential.

“He’s in a situation where something’s got to change, and if it’s not changing positively, the change will automatically feel negative,” Fabia said. “I think having some time with somebody with some different sets of skills, showing that the basics and the fundamentals of a lot of things have been skipped. A lot of people go to school 10 years, 15 years, you got all these degrees on the wall. How many of these people know how to breathe? So, you don’t know how to do the basic physiological functions of your body, but you want to run your mouth?”

Fabia, who owns the School of Self-Awareness, typically works with special forces and law enforcement, he said. He also works with thousands of people across the globe, traveling all around the world. He said he has helped people deal with emotional trauma and has helped Sanchez prepare for his upcoming fight in all areas, in ways that he believes nobody else can, including Jackson Wink namesakes Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn.

“Yeah, we do mitts. Yeah, I’m wrestling with him,” Fabia said. “I’m the one cooking the meals. I’m the one handling the body work. I’m the one doing nine jobs. So, yeah, it’s a little different than ‘Wink’ and Greg and any other trainer, coach in the world. There’s nobody else doing all that. There’s nobody else that can do all that because they’ve compartmentalized it, and they got their degrees in one area.”

Sanchez has absorbed 1,239 total head strikes in his UFC career, which is second most in company history behind B.J. Penn (1,358). That, in addition to his quirky personality, has birthed criticism about Sanchez in terms of alleged CTE symptoms and potential brain damage.

Fabia dismissed all of that and said he believes people tend to forget what Sanchez has done throughout his career and how he continues to write history.

“It’s shameful to hear all this stuff about this (UFC) Hall of Fame fight and the way the angle is there, yet half of these reporters don’t know about his (Issac Marquez) “Shermanator” fight,” Fabia said. “He’s been in four weight divisions. How many guys have done that? How many ‘Fight of the Nights’? How many ‘Performance of the Nights?'”

The training Fabia and Sanchez have put in is unorthodox, to put it mildly. They filmed more than 40 hours of preparations ahead of UFC 239 alone, and some of the methods included the use of blindfolds and sticks.

Fabia has his tactics for training camp, but fight night is something different, and he has never worked a corner for a UFC bout. Now he serves as the singular cornerman for one of the most important fights of Sanchez’s career. He has no fear, though.

Fabia believes Sanchez has been in enough battle to know what he needs technically, and if his mind is right, there’s no room for failure. That’s where Fabia comes in.

“I’m there to do my job. I don’t foresee needing to do the in-between-the-rounds thing,” Fabia said. “It’s during the fight. He’s going to need to hear me in that first round.”

Sanchez claimed that he called for a team meeting with his coaches, Jackson and Winkeljohn, to discuss his future, but they never responded. That was the breaking point for him, as he felt like they no longer believed in him, prompting the decision to leave the prestigious team in Albuquerque, N.M.

Fabia claims he has first-hand experience of the negligence that Jackson Wink allegedly showed him and Sanchez.

“This thing of everybody putting them up on a pedestal and me going into that gym and seeing no (expletive) training happening, I’m mind blown,” Fabia said. “Mind blown, the amount of respect they expect and demand from the fight community and world when you didn’t give me a ‘hello.’ You couldn’t shake my hand? You’re going to act like I don’t exist?”

With one fight left on his contract, Sanchez is looking to have his best showing yet at UFC 239. He wants to prove to doubters and to the UFC that he has what it takes to reach UFC gold, and that chapter starts on Saturday, with Fabia as the only man by his side.

For more on UFC 239, check out the UFC schedule.