Sometimes you can alter or play with the positioning of your feet as a feint, but it takes a master to succeed at this. Don’t forget, you must first master the rules before you start breaking any of them.
My foot positioning, if I compare my first fight to my time as champion, is probably the biggest change in my style. In the beginning, I never paid attention to my foot positioning and seldom made sure my front foot pointed at my opponent. I didn’t realize the importance of it.
Look at my legs, and the movement of my hands. Observe their position. When the fight begins, look at the way my foot points to my opponent, and my constant movement, and the way I move in and out of striking distance. See my hips and how fluid I try to keep them. And now look at my left hand, look at it dangling around by my hip, moving forward and back, swaying in time.
If it’s difficult for you to see it, cue the Koscheck fight again. Do you see what I’m doing? It’s the jab. It’s all about the jab. Koscheck moves in and here’s the jab, and I step back. Koscheck steps back in and jab after jab! And step back. Can you see it now? That’s the way I fight.
And so now imagine I’m holding a foil in that hand. There’s the handle and there’s a blade at the end of it that hovers menacingly near my opponent. That’s my stance, and it comes from fencing. I don’t fight, I fence. That’s not my fist, it’s my foil. It’s black, like my trunks, so you don’t see it coming. It comes at you from a shadow. I am fencing.
The fencing idea I got from Bruce Lee, and he was talking about this a long time before I was even born. Most of my movement inside the ring is based on the fencing system. When I cut distance, it’s the same movement as in fencing. I don’t even have to take my right hand out, which is another thing Bruce Lee talked about. If you take the right hand out too much, you’re off balance, which leaves you open to get hit. With the fencing approach you take fewer risks, you get hit less often, which is more important.
Look at Bernard Hopkins; he’s still boxing at almost fifty years old. Nobody talks about his knockout power. But he’s still in shape, he does what he likes, he’s making money, and in his sport people appreciate what he’s doing. They see the beauty and the grace in his approach. In MMA, there’s still a chorus of people who complain that some fighters are not taking enough risks, but these individuals don’t really know or appreciate the sport. They want contact, knockouts. But no sport, not even boxing, is solely about knockouts. In the ring, Hopkins beat Jean Pascal, the world champion at the time, and Hopkins was forty-six years old. Look at Andre Ward; he has consistently beaten people without ever knocking them out. Just try hitting him, just once. A knockout artist takes unnecessary risks, but, once he reaches a certain level, he’s going to eat it from a real pro.
Look at Anderson Silva. His secret is his counterattack. Even when he’s been close to defeat, it seems to me like he draws in his opponent and lets him think he’ll win by KO, and then he submits with a surprisingly lethal hold.
Floyd Mayweather, same thing. He waits for the other guy to try and knock him out and seizes the opportunity. He lures you into his trap and finds ways of using your strength against you. I’ve seen Mayweather knock out a guy who was known as a knockout king, but he just waited for him. He waited patiently for the other guy to leave a opening, and then he pounced—like a fencer.
MASTER: Georges began with karate, and he learned it in a very traditional sense. The great gift that karate gave him is the skill of movement. Movement and faking, the ability to interrupt his opponent’s rhythm through the use of fakes and misdirection. That is what Georges took from karate. As he matured, he began to learn Muay Thai and boxing, and from these he learned how to hit high, and how to hold a stance, et cetera. And then began the study of freestyle wrestling, and he developed a very good proficiency in all of those.
Now, most people learn a little boxing, they learn a little wrestling, they learn a little Muay Thai, and they haphazardly patch them together. Then they hope for the best when they get into a mixed martial arts competition. That’s the extent of most people’s development. But the possession of great credentials in any one of the martial art components guarantees nothing in your ability to shootbox, or your ability to punch your way into a takedown. You can be a great boxer, yet be afraid to throw a punch in a shootbox—because you’re afraid of being taken down. You can be a great wrestler, but you can’t score a single great takedown—because you’re afraid of being punched in the face. And so on. Therefore, people can have what would appear to be outstanding credentials to make them a great shootboxer, and yet fail.
My own attack system is built around a code, a visual code that my mind has grown accustomed to. It starts in the fencing stance, and it evolves depending on the direction of the fight and the style of my opponent.
I’ve trained my mind to pick up key movements that make up the code for a jab, or a right-hand lead, or a kick or a takedown.
My system is designed to read the other guy’s code; it’s designed to counter any attack coming my way, which complicates things for all my opponents. So first, what the heck is a fighting code?
Well, it doesn’t just exist in martial arts—it’s about the origins of all movements and how our minds respond to seeing them. In baseball, for example, you can tell someone’s going to swing the bat before the hands and arms even start moving to swing the bat—and that comes from looking at the hitter’s hips, or sometimes his eyes. Or in poker, a skill game based on your cards, and your opponent: if you are good enough, you can tell when another person is bluffing you, or trapping you. All it takes is for your eye to catch someone’s “tell,” his or her code.
In any fighting art, a punch, kick or lunge has a beginning, a middle and an end. A jab, for example, starts on one side of the hips. So the code for a jab is a twitch in the hip.
When I watch my opponent, my mind automatically checks for all these signals, these codes, so that I can predict what’s coming. Each one of his tactics is connected to a code. This is why preparation and practice are so crucial in the lead-up to a fight: you practice being able to tell what the other guy is planning on doing, because one thing is for sure: your mind is faster than any part of your body, and it controls your reflex time.
This is crucial to my style of fighting, because everything I do is built on speed: recognition and reaction. Many of my takedowns, for example, actually come when most other fighters would be moving backward to avoid contact. But when my mind catches a signal that your right-hand lead is coming, I have trained myself to be ready to pounce forward and avoid contact. I dip my head to avoid the punch, I move my hand upward to ensure there’s no contact or damage, I dip my shoulder into your mid-waist area, and I try to take you down as fast as possible to gain an advantage and position.
In recent years, I’ve worked on new kinds of strikes to fool everybody’s fighting code. I was in the gym one day and this guy who comes to Tristar was being laughed at because of the way he was throwing his jab. Instead of just extending his arm forward in a straight line, the way a jab is usually thrown, he was extending his forearm upward across his face so that it would fall on the other guy’s face or forehead. It looked like he was trying to hit the top of the other guy’s head.
It seems weird and awkward, but I decided to try anyway and see for myself. It’s a good thing I did, because I learned something: the mind isn’t used to seeing a punch come from that direction, which means that very few fighters’ codes are prepared for what I now call the Looping Jab. It’s not a knockout punch by any means, but I’ve landed it many, many times, and that’s important in a professional fight, if just for the element of surprise.
It all begins with training at very slow speeds. If you ever get a chance to visit Tristar Gym when I’m training, you can see me in the ring, boxing almost in slow motion without gloves on. My practice partner and I are taking turns throwing different punching and kicking combinations so we can recognize the code—we need to give our powerful brains the time to
get used to the code. As we get warmer and better, and as our brains start developing better reaction times, we gradually speed up into full sparring mode.
Every single person has a code, a way to throw a punch or a kick, and every single human being should be able to develop a code, a warning system based on experience. It’s why people brace themselves when they’re about to get hit with a water balloon, for example, or why they hesitate to jump into a lake: their brains are telling them they’re about to get wet, and it could be really cold. The brain, and therefore the body, prepares them for what’s coming. The same is true in fighting at all levels—it’s just that professionals have more advanced systems. It’s only natural, because that’s what we do for a living. More importantly, it doesn’t just work on defense.
I’m not naive enough to think that I’m the only fighter in mixed martial arts who’s practiced at catching codes—we all are training this way. At this level, it becomes a game of skill by the best in the world.
MASTER: I’d seen Georges fight on tape, but the first time I saw him fight live was when he asked me to corner him for his first fight against B.J. Penn. At that time, Penn was correctly regarded as the number one pound-for-pound fighter in the world. He had gone up a weight division and defeated Matt Hughes. He was a world champion in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, just an extraordinary talent.
I’d asked for John’s advice on fighting B.J. Penn, and he offered to help me: the next day at six o’clock.
“Six p.m.?” I hesitated.
“No. Six a.m. My place.”
Despite the hour, I went. It was the opportunity I’d been looking for, so I jumped.
MASTER: When Georges was named as [Penn’s] opponent, most people assumed that if the fight went to the ground, Georges was essentially done for. Georges at that time was fairly average on the ground, and Penn had some excellent Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu in some areas (but quite limited skills in others).
I got to John’s place, on time, despite another late night, and followed him inside. I sat down, and he immediately began speaking, delivering a blow-by-blow, full analysis of my opponent. He went straight to my weakness, and then presented a step-by-step guide based on the things he’d seen from B.J. Penn, covering every angle possible, from start to finish.
MASTER: Now, everyone knew that B.J. Penn was extremely dangerous with his Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu when he was on top of his opponent. But I believed that he was not a dangerous fighter from underneath, and my reasons were simple: Penn had never submitted anyone from underneath. His strength was the ability to control people on top, pass their legs (their guard) and get into mount-and-pound position. That’s where he’s most dangerous, and if he had gotten into that position against Georges, he probably would have won. I, however, did not see him distinguished at all from the bottom position. I was confident that if Georges was able to get a fix on Penn’s limitations, he could win decisively.
Against everyone’s advice, I advocated a strategy that Georges push Penn back to the fence, put him down on his back, and ultimately win by the accumulations of rounds through ground and pound. After all, one of Georges’s greatest strengths is his ability to put people down and control them on the ground, as well as to avoid submission holds and enact a ferocious ground-and-pound attack. I saw that as a happy marriage between Georges’s best skills and B.J.’s weaknesses.
Now, I was the new guy in his corner and he had an established crew from Montreal. They thought I was out of my fucking mind, and they told me so. I understand why they thought that way because, on the surface, why would you take a champion known for his ground game to the ground? I just saw things differently. The real question, to me, was “Where is he good on the ground?” Don’t give me generalities. Be specific! Specifically, Penn’s very good on top. Extremely dangerous if he gets on your back. But he’s not dangerous coming from underneath. Never was. Never has been.
Sometimes you need someone from the outside to take a good look at you and tell you the truth. Tell you what’s really happening. Sometimes you don’t realize what kind of person you are; you need that external feedback. It’s not enough to just look in the mirror; you need someone to tell you ‘You’re doing this” or “You’re doing that.” People think the adversary is the tough part.
A friend of mine who loves jazz recommended a documentary he saw on John Coltrane, the legendary saxophone player. Coltrane was a machine, apparently. He would play a club date and then go to his hotel room and keep rehearsing, sometimes all night, alone. He just kept going, seeking perfection. While I’m more of a hip-hop guy, I learned something very important from Coltrane and how he handled his entourage.
One day, Coltrane was in the studio, recording some tracks, and some friends were hanging around, listening. Coltrane was improvising a solo and struggling to find the emotion, the effect he was aiming for. After playing the same song for the third time, one of the friends listening spoke up and said the version he had just played was really good, that she loved it.
Coltrane responded, “What was different about it that you liked?” But she couldn’t answer. She just said she liked it, but couldn’t define a specific or particular reason. She was probably tired of hearing the same tune three times in a row and was covering for it. So Coltrane asked that the next time she have a reason for liking or disliking something, because if she doesn’t have anything to back it up, the feedback was useless.
He was doing for her what he expected from her: honesty. Honesty so that it leads to improvement. I don’t know much about jazz, but Coltrane made sense to me that day.
MASTER: “No, that’s crazy—we’re going to win on the feet,” the others said in response to my strategy. But Penn is an extraordinarily gifted boxer, and his style of counterpunching was very badly matched versus Georges who, at that stage of his career, had a rather naive, straight-punching left-right combo. I really wasn’t confident that Georges could win in a boxing exchange against Penn. Of course, I was the new guy and didn’t want to appear disrespectful, so I responded: “How about we use your strategy for the first round, and if it works, we’ll keep going with it? If it doesn’t work, we’ll switch to my strategy.” They agreed. Now, as history recalls, Georges took a terrible shellacking in that first round. He got poked very severely in the eye early in the fight, and his straight style of punching was easily countered with Penn’s jabs and counterpunching.
When Georges came back into the corner at the end of that first round, he looked like a completely beaten man. He sat down for a short time of rest. Somewhere in that minute he found his strength and I looked at him. I said, “Georges, you know what you have to do.” He turned his head up and looked straight at me. I remember he wiped the blood off his face and he nodded. He didn’t say a word. He rose, and he immediately drove B.J. Penn to the fence, right there in front of me. We called out the precise elements we had drilled in New York City—based on risk control and dropping to a leg—and famously Georges took B.J. down on several occasions. Of course, he easily survived on the ground and Penn never got close to a submission. Georges dominated the next two rounds and won a narrow decision.
If we had used my strategy from the start, it would have been an easy victory, 3–0. But I learned a lot about Georges in that fight, something that went far beyond the technical level and into his heart. Even with that terrible start, he still came through, two rounds to one. He showed impressive courage, and I got to see his shootbox skills firsthand against, at that time, one of the greatest martial artists in the world.
It was surprising to the naive, but to those who understand strategy and B.J. Penn, there was nothing surprising about it. It was simply the observation of what should have been obvious facts. But most people overlook obvious facts.
World champions need “truth-sayers” around them, and John Danaher is a truth-sayer. A truth-sayer is a person who doesn’t bullshit you about everything. A truth-sayer is someone who has enough respect for you to tell you the truth and help you differentiate th
e real from the mirage. That’s one of the reasons I’m also so close to Firas, who became my full-time coach after my loss to Serra. One of the things we immediately agreed on is that the truth rules and takes priority over everything else. It’s one of the reasons that Firas has become one of the world’s greatest mixed martial arts coaches and that his gym, Tristar, is ranked with the best ever. In fact, we’ve never lost a fight together. But the most important reason Firas is my head coach is that he only knows to speak the truth, and I need that.
There’s an entire collection of mirages waiting for you when you become a world champion for the first time. Obviously, you wake up the day after winning and you have only friends left in the world. Everybody likes you (except maybe the guy you beat last night) and wants to help. Everybody wants to be there and play a role and give you tips, et cetera. And if you believe all of them (including the voice inside your head that reminds you how great you are), you start believing that you don’t need to train as hard anymore, that you’ve earned the right to party and be cool, that you can get away with taking it easy and not preparing as much for the next fight.
As champion, I had everyone around me—in the gym, on the street, in interviews, wherever—telling me I was the best, I was so great, I was this, I was that. The impact was not good because it only catered to my ego, which created an imaginary place. I put myself inside this beautiful, imaginary place where I was separated from all the other fighters by a line—a line that nobody else could cross. It was my place alone. But all of this just created a big illusion. Illusions are temporary. You’re the same person after you become world champion as you were before you were world champion. Even the belt, other than looking good on the wall, has no uses. It doesn’t even hold up your pants.
The Way of the Fight Page 11
