Part Reptile: UFC, MMA and Me
Page 7
So in the autumn of 2004, Paul and I scraped together enough money to finance a month-long expedition to the US. Our destination was the American Top Team headquarters in Coconut Creek, Florida and the baptism of fire that awaited us. ATT was founded in 2001 by Ricardo Liborio when he left Brazilian Top Team and it has gone on to become one of the most influential MMA academies in the world. The likes of Amanda Nunes, Robbie Lawler, Brad Pickett and Dustin Poirier are all products of Liborio’s school and his focus on Brazilian jiu-jitsu and boxing. We arrived as young, unknown, English outsiders, and were clearly regarded as cannon fodder for the Tuesday and Thursday full-contact sparring sessions. It was hard graft but as I kept holding my own, they kept pushing. I learnt a lot, although in the immediate aftermath I felt more beaten up than educated. But I was determined to prove myself, come what may. So when I forgot my running shoes on cardio day, I decided to run laps of the building barefoot on scorching hot asphalt and destroyed the soles of my feet. The same hard-headedness ensured that when one of their fighters was forced to withdraw from a bout at the last minute and I was asked to take his place, I didn’t hesitate.
There are so many reasons why I should never have taken that fight with Pat Healy, but the most important revealed itself in a sparring session during my first week with ATT. I was in against Jorge Santiago while head coach Liborio looked on. Santiago and Liborio are both Brazilian and at one point, with Jorge several metres from me, Ricardo yelled something in Portuguese and, not hearing what had been said over the sound of forty fighters brutalising one another, I stupidly turned to see if he was instructing me or my opponent. It all happened in less than a second, but as I turned back to face Santiago, he had leapt towards me, detonated a right hand on my chin and knocked me out cold. It was a sucker punch, but at the same time I shouldn’t have allowed myself to be distracted. As The Master says to Lau in Enter the Dragon, ‘Never take your eyes off your opponent.’ By the time I came to, I wasn’t sure who or where I was. I stood up manfully, but then had to furtively ask Paul where the changing rooms were, for I couldn’t remember. In fact, I couldn’t remember anything beyond sitting in my parents’ house in Nottingham, discussing going to the airport. I had basically lost a week of my life. It was the worst concussion I have ever had and I had no business fighting just a couple of weeks after it.
The second major issue arose at a pre-fight medical on the day of the weigh in. The doctor checking me out claimed to detect something strange with my heartbeat and refused to sign me off unless I went for an electrocardiogram (ECG) test. For some reason, that proved to be more difficult to set up than you might think on a Saturday afternoon in Fort Lauderdale. I spent the entire day in the passenger seat of the local promoter’s car as he ostensibly tried to arrange the ECG, but in reality just drove around sorting out tickets, putting up posters, dropping off T-shirts and generally doing his promoting business. I had no food or water aside from a brief stop at a Wendy’s fast food restaurant where I ordered a baked potato that came out microwaved and soggy. Finally, I was hooked up to an ECG, passed to fight, and given about twenty minutes in my hotel room to get ready before boarding the fighters’ bus to the arena. I was in a terrible frame of mind, feeling I had done them a big favour and was not being looked after accordingly.
My mood hardly improved when Healy entered the ring. I hadn’t cut much weight, although possibly became the first professional fighter to actually lose weight between weigh-in and bout after my day in the promoter’s car, whereas Healy had clearly cut hard and had now rehydrated to a formidable size. I also discovered I had been lied to about his pedigree and rather than a losing-record journeyman making up the numbers on the local circuit as I was led to believe, Healy was an experienced contender who had already faced the likes of Chris Leben, Denis Kang and Dave Strasser, and would later make it to the UFC. When the referee instructed us to fight, I felt there was nothing for it but to go at him. We exchanged strikes in the opening minute and I caught him clean and broke his nose. But soon after he slammed me to the ground and was able to control me from there. At one stage he had my back and rained illegal blows down on the back of my head, causing the ref to penalise him a point. But not long after he secured a guillotine and forced me to submit.
I was naturally disappointed with the loss, but I didn’t, and still don’t, regret taking the fight. Aside from the macho aspect of never backing down from a challenge, it was great experience and exposure to be part of an American event and it all fed into the educational rationale of the trip. It was also a huge honour to have had Ricardo Liborio and the Olympic boxing gold medallist Howard Davis Jr. in my corner, even if just for one fight. What I picked up in ATT in terms of jiu-jitsu and striking techniques was great, but what I learnt outside of sparring sessions was perhaps even more valuable. It was a real eye-opener to see first-hand how professional fight preparation was in terms of nutrition, diet, strength and conditioning, warming up and cooling down, cutting weight, psychological training, visualisation techniques and much more. These were professional athletes in the truest sense of the word. It got me thinking about the ebb and flow of my own condition and fitness. I hadn’t really changed from my years of training and fighting continuously all year round in taekwondo, but now I was considering how I could manage my schedule to peak at precisely the right times. It was also very interesting to see how ATT planned a fighter’s camp to fit the different fighting disciplines together inside one week of training. So rather than stewing over the defeat to Healy, I flew back to the UK inspired and eager to share the new knowledge with the other Rough House guys. And, feeling like my game had taken a giant leap forward, I was also dying to get into a cage or ring, put my new skills to the test, and get back on the winning trail.
That opportunity presented itself in December with a slot on Cage Warriors’ seasonally named Xtreme Xmas. My opponent was Aaron Barrow, a short, squat, hairy, caveman-like fighter. He was known to be heavy-handed and was on a decent run of form, so I was warned not to take him lightly. The week before I had been in the gym with Owen, drilling a switch head-kick for hours on end. It is a pre-set move that I am particularly adept at given the happy coincidence that, although I fight from an orthodox stance, my left leg is actually my strongest. I sometimes wondered about the value of such sessions but the Barrow fight ended any doubt over their worth. Looking across the cage, I saw him poised and growling with a pair of boxing gloves tattooed on his neck while he repeatedly shook out his left arm. If he’s a poker player he must lose every night because I knew exactly what was coming. He charged across to my side of the cage and I switch-kicked him under the jaw with the full force of my shin rising skywards. His eyes were already vacant before he completed his descent and I immediately looked to the referee to stop it. But upon getting no signal from the official, I got down and battered Barrow for a few seconds more until I was finally dragged off him, just thirteen seconds into the bout. That hesitation from the ref cost me a £150 knockout bonus, but I wasn’t thinking about that as I sprinted a victory lap and then clambered up the cage wall like a deranged chimp to gesture triumphantly and aggressively towards the crowd. Though I didn’t quite know it at the time, for thirty seconds I was in full-reptile mode. Watching the footage again now, I don’t even recognise myself, but that is what a win means in the cage. It was the perfect end to my first year as a professional mixed martial artist, and an ideal platform from which to attack my second.
• • •
I fought nine pro MMA bouts in 2005, which proved to be my breakthrough year. It culminated with a world title challenge, but the opener was just as important to me: a chance for revenge over Lee Doski. The fight formed part of a card put together by a shortlived promotion named Fight Club UK and the purses on offer were as derisory as ever. But I had dreamt of getting even with Doski from the moment he submitted me in my debut and would have happily paid to get back in the cage with him. A couple of days before the fight, however, a phone
call put everything into perspective. It was about 3am and I was sitting downstairs with insomnia watching old fights at my parents’ house. When the phone rings at that time of night, you suspect bad news and instinctively know what it is likely to be. Grandad had been rushed to hospital and the doctors were not convinced he would live much longer. Complications had arisen from a metal heart valve he’d had inserted a few years before and the medics were struggling to regulate the thickness of his blood. We all immediately jumped in Dad’s car and sped to the Queen’s Medical Centre. It was hard to concentrate on the fight with Grandad lying there. I needed to weigh in and then assume my fighting psyche, but all I could think about was losing him. I still wasn’t where I needed to be mentally on the drive to Sheffield, but as soon as I saw the arena, I switched on. I’m usually pretty jovial in the dressing room during the build-up, but this time I was all business. I didn’t want to speak to anyone: just fight, win and get back to Grandad. Long before it was my time, I was pacing back and forth menacingly in front of the cage door so that Doski had to walk around me to enter. I had a dangerous rage inside me and it showed in a wild first round that wouldn’t have been out of place in a saloon full of drunken cowboys. But in the second I settled down and started utilising my kicking game. I backed him up against the cage and executed a body-kick that he blocked with his arm. I knew I had caught him hard, right on the bone, and seconds later he threw a limp jab, winced in pain, and then motioned to the referee. I looked over from the neutral corner and saw the abnormal dip in his forearm where the fractured ulna pressed against his flesh. I had my revenge but I cut the celebrations short as all I wanted was to get back to Grandad’s bedside.
But he was a tough old guy, my grandad, and he survived that scare and lived to fight another day. I got back to the gym and back to work and waited for my next fight. It soon arrived in predictably haphazard fashion when I took a call at the leisure centre at 8.30pm on a Friday evening. I was just about to knock off an hour early and make use of the facilities when the voice at the other end of the line told me an opponent was needed for the main event of a Cage Warriors show in Sheffield the following night. I was keen, of course, but when the caller told me it was against a guy named Andy Walker I turned it down. Firstly, a win over Andy was of no use to me. He was just a local jiu-jitsu player who enjoyed competing but had no big aspirations in MMA. He wasn’t in my path, wasn’t a rival, and there was little benefit to be had from defeating him. But more importantly, I trained with Andy and we always got on really well.
‘Well, he says he wants to fight you,’ came the reply from the Cage Warriors’ matchmaker.
That changed everything. That was me hearing that Walker believes he is better than me, that he thinks he can beat me. Why would he agree to the fight if not? So now I’m angry. How dare he even dream of beating me? I took the fight and the next night in the cage I needed no extra motivation. But just in case, Walker provided it when he drove a clumsy knee into my groin and left me gasping for air with that horrible nauseous feeling in the pit of the stomach. The ref warned him, gave me a minute to recover, and then I decided to make it a short night. He took me down and attempted an armlock, but I easily resisted then manoeuvred him onto his back and began dropping bombs. I saw his eyes go vacant after one thumping left hand and, a series of hammer fists later, the ref was hauling me off him and calling the paramedics in to make sure he was okay. He was, and minutes later we both embraced with big smiles on our faces. I later asked him about how the match-up came about and he had had an almost identical conversation with the Cage Warriors matchmaker in which he expressed little interest in the bout until told I was eager to beat him up. The matchmaker had played us off against one another, but no great harm was done in the end.
A month later I was back competing under the Cage Warriors banner, this time in a UK versus France tournament. I spent my training camp preparing for Makhtar Gueye, a tough but reckless striker with similar experience to myself, but at the last minute I was told I was facing an unbeaten judo specialist by the name of David Baron. Baron, who would spend every second hunting a submission, was a totally different proposition to what I had been training for. He was also a huge step up in class, a guy good enough to go on and fight in both PRIDE Bushido in Japan and the UFC, and it turned out to be a hugely frustrating experience for me in which I spent the duration just trying to make a fight happen. He was like a spider monkey, all over me on the ground as the last thing he wanted to do was engage on our feet. He was hitting me with these tippy-tappy punches that were far more irritating than damaging. He was never going to hurt me with strikes and if I could have just kept the fight in the range I wanted it, I wouldn’t have had a problem. But I couldn’t. Even as the fight was progressing, I was making mental notes of the skills I still lacked and what I needed to work on. He totally nullified me and towards the end of the second he managed to get a secure triangle choke in place and I could feel my consciousness slipping away. It was my third loss in my first eight fights, but I was more philosophical about this one. I accepted it as part of the process, as an indication of the weaknesses in my game and exactly what I needed to improve.
And I was always keen to highlight and focus on my flaws. In fact, I viewed such introspection as a vital and necessary evil of being a mixed martial artist. Plenty of fighters shy away from such an approach and are content to keep working on their own speciality or what they know they are good at, but my logic was that if I improved on my weaknesses I would remove doubt or worry from my mind and be able to focus on my strengths during a fight. The Baron defeat reaffirmed what I already knew. Striking and kicking was no problem. I had Daley and Andre Winner to spar with at Rough House. With my Muay Thai experience, and the additional flamboyance of my taekwondo pedigree, I moved into range throwing head-kicks and launching knees whereas many others came in jabbing due to their boxing backgrounds. I was long, quick and enthusiastic, but at close quarters I soon developed a strong clinch, allowing powerful knees and elbows. Basically, I was confident I could hold my own on my feet in any MMA gym I entered and what I really needed to work on was an enhanced takedown defence and ground game. Or, in other words, I needed top-level Brazilian jiu-jitsu and wrestling coaching from someone with an understanding of how to apply it to professional MMA. With all the best trainers in the world based in the US, that meant more trips across the Atlantic, which in turn meant more shifts in the leisure centre and shoe shop to pay for flights and expenses out there. But that was fine for I always knew I was investing in myself. In those early years I was living to train and fight, rather than the other way around.
• • •
I flew out to American Top Team again, this time on my own, and the two weeks were a bit of a nightmare. I had sourced the cheapest possible accommodation within a ten-mile radius of the ATT academy, but the dive turned out to be a good three-mile walk from the nearest bus stop. Doing that every day in 100 per cent humidity, under an unforgiving Floridian sun, with all my gear slung over my shoulder, left me sweating and knackered before I even arrived at the gym. They knew me now inside, but the outsider treatment barely let up. On the first sparring day I was put in with a lightweight, a welterweight, a middleweight and then a light-heavyweight, and given little time to catch my breath in-between shifts. But it was another valuable two weeks in the bank, particularly being able to focus on Brazilian jiu-jitsu under the expert eye of Ricardo Liborio.
Another man that I met briefly that fortnight, but who had a big impact on me, was the MMA pioneer Marcus ‘Conan’ Silveira. Although his official record only has ten fights on it, he was active before anyone was keeping track and the true number is thought to be in the multiple hundreds. I remember watching grainy footage of him competing in rough, underground events, dominating guys with a strong Brazilian jiu-jitsu game and vicious striking. He has contributed to the development of many great fighters and when you watch him interacting with his athletes you can see why he is
so successful. His commanding presence is juxtaposed with a calm, fatherly energy, and you can feel his genuine love for every fighter under his care. It is clear how seriously he takes the responsibility of guiding them through the trials and tribulations of a career in professional combat and I’ll always admire the way he cultivates a close family-like bond within his team.
From there I took a five-and-a-half hour flight across the country to Portland, Oregon and the Team Quest headquarters. This time I had no problems with the daily commute as I stayed in a low-budget EconoLodge across the road from the gym. But the accommodation was less than salubrious and I spent the fortnight washing my clothes in the bath and surviving on peanut butter, the occasional tin of tuna, a loaf of bread and a bag of apples. Once a week, as a major treat, I ordered either waffles or pancakes in the diner next door. But it was all worth it to spend time with one of the world’s premier MMA team in which the vast majority of fighters came from a wrestling background. Quest was known for being a wrestling powerhouse, with some of the greatest fighters in the sport preparing there. Guys like Randy Couture, Matt Lindland and Dan Henderson would all be on the mat at the same time during team sessions, but as I spent most of the day there I got to know some of the younger members of the team a little better. Ed Herman, Chris Wilson, Ryan Schultz and Matt Horwich were all great training partners during that four-week stay. Pretty much everyone involved with TQ was doing well on one circuit or another while I was there, and they all built their success off a solid base of either freestyle or Greco-Roman wrestling. The former is more about attacking the legs and ankles for takedowns, while the latter, forbidding holds below the waist, relies more on throws and upper body control. It was all gold to me and I absorbed the knowledge like a sponge before filtering out what would be best for me to introduce into my own repertoire.