Issue 124
January 2015
Gareth A Davies, MMA and Boxing Correspondent for The Daily Telegraph, London, UK, speaks to a German star with lofty ambitions.
It’s in vogue to hear fighters say they are upping their game by calling out the champion, or even certain opponents, once they have delivered by way of a fine victory.
The post-fight, in-arena interview can be so much more than thanking their training team, family, or God.
‘I’ll fight whoever they want me to fight’ is the classic statement. Vanilla. But a sharp remark and a funny follow-up aimed at a rival raises the temperature of a fight. We all know that. Carpe momentum. It pushes the news forward, creates a headline, generates debate.
Some fighters have ‘learnt’ to do this, even ones who don’t have the natural inclination to do so... and there are plenty of them from that mould. They’d rather just do their talking through their performance. That can be said for champions to challengers to journeymen. But can trash-talking – which moves the needle and also the fighter into the headlines – be ‘learnt’?
Nick Hein, the UFC lightweight and fighter/policeman/actor reckons he could give it a go. His theory is that, much like his acting on a German comedy-drama series, it can be developed with practice if you allow your personality to flourish.
“Trash talk works and it sells, and I enjoy watching and listening to trash talk like any other fan. I sit back and listen to Conor McGregor and Chael Sonnen. I laugh. They are good at it. But you know, I don’t think I would ever start the trash talk myself because I don’t really have it in me.
“But, if someone tried to provoke me or tried to attack me in a battle of trash talk, I would say ‘bring it on.’ If someone started trash talking me, I don’t think I could just sit down and say nothing.”
Trash-talking is like a dance. Good trash talkers can be highly entertaining. Ronda Rousey, Sonnen, McGregor and Michael Bisping spring to mind immediately in recent times. The best actors, of course, are the people that don’t act. They just have it inside them. You believe the role they are playing.
“Fight sports contain comedy also and we need to make people laugh and entertain them. It’s good. But it’s wrong when you try to pretend something. It’s going to show. People will know it’s not real and that you don’t really mean it. There’s an art to it. McGregor is an artist. His trash talking is nice to listen to,” Hein adds.
“Even if you don’t know the details or the facts of what he’s talking about, it’s so smooth how he’s bringing it to the table. You need to master it and he has.” Look where it has got him too. His skill-set as a fighter, of course, not withstanding.
Hein wants a crack at trash-talking himself, “I’d like to get involved with somebody like Bisping – someone in my weight category like him. Bisping is a good trash talker and that would be something that would challenge me. I want to be better at everything.”
Hein reckons he would even do a course or a seminar in the psychology of trash-talking, if it were possible. He’s convinced you could learn it. “It can bring out the best of you. It’s very cool. Those people who trash talk are just fascinating to me. Muhammad Ali was the greatest, of course.
“Under all that pressure – world title fights in front of you and millions of people watching you – you still have the ability to make boasts and make rhymes and poetry. They were awesome. It made his achievements even greater.”
Hein is an interesting case in all this, and I spoke deliberately to him about the subject because he comes from the world of judo. He was on the German national judo team, of course.
It was the world Ronda Rousey previously inhabited, virtually unknown to the outside world as an athletic talent. Why? Well, judo has never been ‘a show’ according to Hein. “That was the reason why I only ever fought in front of my parents and grandparents and nobody else was watching or was interested in it. They didn’t make people want to watch it. There was no show, no characters. If you create a story around the fight, it goes way deeper and way more interesting.”
Rousey, of course, flourished once she had the huge platform and projection the UFC has to offer. And Hein wants similar for his own career. “I want to know what it feels like to have my heart on my tongue, to say what I feel.”
So, for all you lightweights out there, who’s going to be the first to call out Nick Hein?
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