Being the Altered fight fanatic that he was, Gary knew quite a lot about Altered. After the change, an Altered would first have to get used to their new body, as well as the capabilities it held. One of the most important skills was changing their body from a human to the Altered form.
According to some documentaries, that wasn’t an easy thing to do, at all. The first time was apparently the hardest of them all. Some could only fully transform into their beast selves, others would often times mistakenly transform the wrong parts of their body, changing their feet when they wanted to change their hands, for example.
As such, it was essential for an Altered fighter to master this skill. In their case, they competed in regard to the time it would take them to transform. This was crucial, since both fighters were required to start out in their human forms.