Issue 125

February 2015

MMA’s age of the sprawl-and-brawler is over. The generation of the athletic performer is now upon us and things are never going to be the same again.

Somewhere on Planet MMA there’s a teenager who’s drilling his submissions, cracking pads and dominating on the grappling mats. He dreams about training every night and, though he doesn’t know it yet, his future as the first next-generation heavyweight champion of the world is already mapped out in front of him.

Mixed martial arts is taking another huge step forward in its double-decade evolution right now. Its current generation is the first that has been purely bred to dominate inside the Octagon. 

The days of MMA featuring a handful of floundering athletes against a backdrop of perennial tough guys has all but drawn to a close. Mixed martial arts is a sport in every sense of the word as we enter 2015, and you can see that by reviewing the line-ups of combatants adorning the world’s leading promotions.

MMA rosters globally have gradually been overhauled in the last few years. Fighters in the true sense of the word are now a dying breed in top-flight MMA. They’ve been replaced by astute, dedicated and meticulous athletic performers – and mixed martial arts as an art has grown so much richer for it.

The old guard of Vale-Tudo-inspired warriors and streetfighting bad asses have become almost extinct. These days the line-ups for every season of The Ultimate Fighter features athletes already armed with a lifetime of performance and sporting prowess in the tank. Compare that with the rough-ass motley crews from the early seasons of the reality show.

“MMA has changed a lot man,” says Wanderlei Silva, one of the sport’s original tough guys whose own gritty Chute Boxe past led him all the way to the Pride middleweight championship. “Today it is much more of a sport than it was. In the early days it was about being a warrior and putting it all on the line every time. It was about entertaining the fans. But now it is more about winning the fight.

“Most of the guys fighting now must win first and entertain later. It never used to be like this. MMA has become more technical now, less about who is the toughest and more about who has better wrestling or jiu-jitsu.”

Chris Leben, another massively popular former UFC middleweight who built his entire career on being tougher than his opponents, agrees. Now the head coach at Victory MMA in San Diego, the TUF season 1 alum says: “I don’t coach my fighters to fight they way I did because it’s not like it once was. The sport is much more technical now.

“I fought with my heart and my fists and not much else. But today you need much more than just heart to win, especially in places like the UFC. MMA used to be a sport for tough guys, but it’s not any more. The tough guys can’t hack it in fact. It’s athletes who are dedicated and well rounded in every area that make it in MMA today.”

The new generation

MMA changed forever when Georges St Pierre arrived. Not only did he revolutionize the welterweight division, he changed the future of all mixed martial arts when he emerged so triumphantly a decade ago. The former 170lb UFC champion had both the technical skill and athletic prowess that allowed him to step above the rest and dominate in an age when battle-hardened tough guys were once untouchable.

MMA’s 2013 ‘Trainer of the Year’ Mike Dolce says: “Georges St Pierre was the catalyst to the new era of mixed martial arts. He was not an elite crossover from a single sport like NCAA wrestling, nor a black belt in BJJ or a world champ in K-1 or boxing, yet he was able to dominate athletes with those designations. 

“GSP carried a level of athleticism and a cerebral approach to cross-training for MMA which was rare, if not completely non-existent when he started. The new era of athletes seem to have taken a page out of Georges’ playbook and implemented it into their own programming.” 

Guys like Randy Couture, Chuck Liddell, Sean Sherk and Matt Hughes encapsulated the last great era of the tough guy in the sport. But once Georges arrived a new frontier came with him. St Pierre inspired an entire generation of fledging mixed martial artists and it’s this new generation that is destined to move MMA forward again in 2015.

The light heavyweight division has blazed a trail in MMA recently. Led by UFC champion Jon Jones, the 205lb weight class is dominated by huge, muscular specimens like Alexander Gustafsson and Anthony Johnson, as well as a former Olympian in Daniel Cormier. They’re all ably supported by an array of combat coaches and cutting-edge sports science. And the same thing is happening across almost all the other weight classes.

Outside of the heavyweight division at least, the old ‘Shogun’ Rua or Fedor Emelianenko body type, for so long quite stereotypical in MMA, is finally dying out. Thoroughbreds like bantamweight champion TJ Dillashaw, featherweight standout Conor McGregor and middleweight monster Luke Rockhold have broken through and are pushing boundaries in their relative weight divisions. There’s simply no room for a spare tire in MMA any more.

And Dolce, one of the most sought-after coaches in the sport, believes things are just getting started. “In just over 20 years of our sport being truly promoted and participated in, the evolution of the modern mixed martial artist is still in its infancy,” he adds. 

“I believe the next 20 years will bring a much more scientific approach to the sport as well as a whole new breed of athletes that may finally see our sport as rewarding as the NFL, NBA or Olympics, and begin setting goals of being an MMA elite in their formative years, instead of as a sport to try after their main sport has run its scholastic (or professional) career. Truly, these are very exciting times for MMA fans.”

RIP, tough guy

The Liddells, Ruas and Nogueiras of the world have rapidly found themselves surplus to requirements in the very top tier of mixed martial arts. While there is a sprinkling of tough guys left in the sport at the highest level, all have hit limitation walls underlining their impending future prospects in modern MMA. 

Dan Henderson, Diego Sanchez, Roy Nelson and Nick Diaz are all fighters most would consider as having heart and desire as their strongest attributes. Yet, all have failed against this generation of championship-level fighters inside the Octagon. Unfortunately, the same warrior spirit that made them all household names now offers the biggest threat to them in terms of their futures.

Sanchez was the middleweight tournament winner of TUF 1 but now fights down at lightweight. He says he’s got no intentions to walk away any time soon, despite regularly shipping haymakers when he steps into combat. Asked to describe what makes him and others like him fight the way they do, he says: “It’s a never-back-down mentality. Come forward and never back down. In that moment I’m going for the kill. I’m in it for the thrill and going for the kill. Using all my heart and my soul and at that moment, winning is all that matters.”

Asked about his long-term future, he adds: “I don’t feel like I’ve taken that many big shots in my career. Up at welterweight those guys hit hard, but these lightweights don’t hurt. It’s the shots to the body that really hurt afterwards. The head shots never really hurt.

“I love to fight and I plan on continuing to fight. I’ve never been knocked out or submitted and I don’t feel like I’m getting my ass kicked. So I definitely plan on continuing to fight for a long time. When I do get my ass kicked maybe I’ll hang them up. But right now I’m enjoying my fight camps and loving being a fighter and competing.

“The sport has evolved so much, I appreciate that. You would never have thought 10 years ago that guys would be knocking people out with spinning back kicks to the head and with all these amazing submissions you see today. But I feel like I’m still a part of the sport and have something to offer.”

Leben disagrees. “At some point in time every fighter has to look at what they’ve done, what they’ve achieved, and walk away,” he says. “Diego Sanchez has beaten almost every obstacle in front of him. But he must know he can’t get past that top 20% so why does he keep fighting? 

“Don’t get me wrong, he’s always in great shape every time he fights, but what’s he got left to prove? It’s hard to watch him still continuing.”

Size matters

Sanchez is right in one regard. MMA’s beloved warriors can evolve. Frankie Edgar is perhaps the most natural fighter who has successfully transitioned from the role of tough-guy scrapper to accomplished all-round mixed martial artist in recent years. But then he had the size factor in his favor. Frankie was able to drop divisions, and perhaps still is.

There’s an old boxing proverb that still rings true to a certain extent. “It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog.” But all the fight and desire in the world won’t help a Chihuahua tackle a Great Dane and it’s remarkable how much MMA athletes have grown in stature in recent years too.

Jones, Rockhold, Rory MacDonald, McGregor – these guys are some of the biggest their weight divisions have ever seen, and they come armed with arsenals like never before. It begs the question, could the UFC’s own champions of a decade ago have even been able to hang with the new breed?

“The size of the guys in the UFC now is amazing,” says Kings MMA supremo and former World MMA Awards ‘Coach of the Year’ Rafael Cordeiro. “We have middleweights almost seven foot, and light heavyweights bigger than the heavyweights already. I have guys walking into the gym today who are incredibly fit already – and they haven’t yet started training.

“Bravery and desire to fight used to be the biggest and most important factor for a fighter. But today, with MMA being so popular, this is not a problem. I have a dozen guys in the gym willing to put their lives on the line to win. So now it is also about being the most technical and bigger and stronger. These are big factors today too.”

Indeed, athletic ability, size and skill are the hallmarks of MMA’s leading champions in 2015 – at least in every weight class outside of the heavyweight division. The 265lb weight class remains a separate entity entirely, as it always has, and remains the one division left perhaps to be mastered by a true natural athlete. 

Sure, Cain Velasquez and co. look special now, but what’s going to happen when that near seven-foot teenager leaves college with an Olympic medal off the mats swinging around his neck? How’s MMA’s biggest weight class going to handle a Brock Lesnar-sized behemoth with the striking skills of Pettis, the technical prowess of GSP and the relentless stamina of Velasquez – because he’s coming, that’s for damn sure.

MMA’S five most memorable tough guys

Wanderlei Silva

‘The Axe Murder’ was MMA for a spell during his Pride championship reign. Pure pride, passion and a killer instinct singled Silva out as a bad boy of the sport long before it even was a sport.

Chris Leben

Fans worldwide would clamor to find a broadcast whenever ‘The Crippler’ would feature inside the Octagon. With a complete disregard for his own chin, or that of his opponents, Leben would kill or be killed – and we loved him for it.

Diego Sanchez

Still doing his thing inside the Octagon today, ‘Nightmare’ has flirted with the spiritual side of the sport on occasions throughout his 13-year career. But at his core he’s a brawler with a blood lust, nothing more nothing less.

Chuck Liddell

With more UFC knockouts than anybody else, ‘The Iceman’ was beloved not only for his finishing prowess but for the fact he’d happily take one to land one, knowing his one usually meant knockout.

Don Frye

The UFC’s original tough guy, ‘The Predator’ went to a decision just three times in his acclaimed 33-fight career, one of which included the night when Ken Shamrock ripped the ligaments in his knee to shreds.