Issue 111

February 2014

Lions eat first

Growing up on the mean streets of South London eventually led to a stint at Her Majesty's pleasure for Jimi Manuwa but he's swapped the four walls of a prison cell for the opportunity to fight for a shot at the UFC light heavyweight title.

It was one o’clock in the morning when Jimi Manuwa, dressed for a night on the town, accelerated over Fox Hill Bridge, South London, and heard his phone ring. He looked down at the screen; it was his manager calling.

“He was over in America, so he probably didn’t realize the time,” Manuwa recalls to Fighters Only. “Either that or the news was so important he didn’t care.” As he would soon discover, it was a case of the latter. “He said, ‘I’ve just been on the phone to Joe Silva and (Antonio Rogerio) Nogueira is out of the fight with (Alexander) Gustafsson. I’ve put your name forward as a replacement.’”

Once over the bridge, a wide-eyed Manuwa, still processing this information, pulled his car over and hit the brake. Hard. He needed time to think, react and generate a response. Silence crept upon him. 

Then, aware of the short window of opportunity, the undefeated light heavyweight hung up on his manager and called his head coach, oblivious to the time of day. Act now, he thought, act now before it’s too late. 

So the phone rang, and it rang some more, and it rang so much that the inevitable happened: the call went to voicemail. Manuwa’s assumption was that his trainer must be sleeping. It was then the Londoner decided to take matters into his own hands. 

“I rang my manager back and said, ‘Yeah, let’s do it,’” recalls ‘The Poster Boy’. “We went through the pros and cons, and both of us agreed it was an opportunity too big to miss. After that, I didn’t enjoy my night out one bit. I was happy, of course, but it was on my mind a lot. I barely touched a drink.”

Although the fight was still months away – scheduled for March 8th at London’s O2 Arena – Manuwa’s preparations began in earnest. He monitored his alcohol intake, he broke down the fight in his head, and eventually cherished every hour of his night’s sleep. Soon he’d begin to run and make his way down to the gym. His gym: Lion’s Pride MMA. 

“I call us a pride, because it’s one big family to me,” he says. “We’ve got pros, semi-pros, kick-boxers and pro boxers down here, and we’re all family.” Manuwa, the leader of the pack, has so far accumulated 14 straight stoppage victories in his five-and-a-half year career, including UFC wins over Kyle Kingsbury, Cyrille Diabate and Ryan Jimmo. And as his concussive record shows, he punches and kicks with a malevolence that belies his soft-spoken manner.

“I’m an aggressive striker, and everything I throw is supposed to hurt,” he admits. “I say to people now, ‘This fight business, these main event fights, I’ve been doing this since school.’ And I really have. 

“Back then we used to have mini fight cards every week after school and I’d always be in the main event slot. I’d always be the kid people wanted to see fight. This was happening all the time, school versus school, or year group versus year group. To me, every fight is the same, it doesn’t matter whether there are a dozen school kids gathered around in the streets or 20,000 fans sat in an arena. You’ve still got to go out there and beat up the person in front of you.”

He calls himself a ‘natural’ and it’s hard to disagree; Manuwa has been battled-hardened and ready to throw-down since an early age. Indeed, by the time he reached his teenage years, he carried the snarl and stance of a boy accustomed to confrontation. 

“My upbringing allowed me to see a lot of stuff – some good, some bad – and I count it all as life experience,” he says. “I don’t remember much of California, my birthplace, as I was only three when we left, but Nigeria was lovely. I’ve got nothing but good things to say about my time there. I was a young, wild kid – always riding my bike – and I was living the life I wanted to live. That was the happiest time of my life. 

“Then, aged 10, I came to Croydon (South London) and found out the meaning of stress. I never settled down. My parents split up and it hit me hard.

“Also, I was mature beyond my years and had seen things a lot of other kids at my school hadn’t seen. I was a fairly bright kid and all the others seemed a bit thick, so it didn’t take me long to start feeling frustrated and held back a bit, and that spilled over. I had a lot of energy, and was good at sports, but I was easily bored and distracted.”

Manuwa never finished school. Instead, he decided to fend for himself in the big, bad world, hustling for money wherever he could. “Once I was out,” he says, “I found out about money, and how to get it, and I didn’t want to work. All my energy went into raving and trying to make money. I had no direction at all. I’d get money, spend it on designer clothes and nightclubs, and just go bigger and bigger. 

“It was a case of living day-to-day, which was fun because you’re with your friends and doing your thing, but it was also really stressful. During my teenage years, I was only interested in running with the top boys and making money. But, honestly, I didn’t know anything else. I knew about right and wrong, but I didn’t feel like I had any other options in my life. I was never a working person or the type to answer to a boss. This was the only life for me.”

His other option, of course, was to make a go of it in sport. Strong, athletic and quick, Manuwa, a school standout, had never shown an aversion to ending squabbles with his fists. Boxing, it seemed, was a perfect fit. “I went to a couple of boxing classes when I was 15,” he says, “and I was sick during the second one because I had no cardio. I liked the fighting element, but couldn’t be bothered with the training.” 

And that was that. Manuwa sacrificed training for partying and continued on his path towards self-destruction, effectively punching himself in the face on a nightly basis until 2002, when he finally connected so hard he ended up in prison for conspiracy to burgle. 

He concedes: “I was careful not to get into trouble, but trouble usually found me. I was hanging around with people trying to make money and we used to steal computers and cars and stuff like that. I used to burgle from commercial properties.

“As for prison, it goes without saying, I didn’t enjoy being there. It did nothing for me. It’s a hard, lonely and frustrating place to be. You’re away from your family and friends and all you’ve got to turn to is the reflection in the mirror. You are the only friend you have in there. 

“The rest of the place is full of crazy people, drug addicts and killers. My time spent around these people woke me up to my problems and gave me a bit of focus.”

Upon release in 2003, Manuwa spent lots of his free time in the gym, building his body for vanity purposes. His close friend, meanwhile, had started to get involved in mixed martial arts and was training with a view to competing. This piqued Manuwa’s interest and he too began to take an interest in this burgeoning sport. 

Aged 26, he began watching kickboxing events online, and soon discovered the UFC, taking a particular shine to the striking exploits of Chuck Liddell. “Then,” he says, “I tore my chest muscle in the gym and decided to train MMA.” 

He cut his combat teeth at Keddles Gym (Kent, England) , under the guidance of Alan Keddle and Dino Miringou, and eventually made his professional MMA debut in July 2008. Four years later, in September 2012, he was fighting in the UFC. And now, just three bouts into his UFC tenure, Manuwa gears up to face the widely-acknowledged second best light heavyweight in the world, Alex Gustafsson. 

“I like Alex,” he says. “I’m not close to him, but I’ve got a lot of respect for him and I think he’s got respect for me. We’ve both trained at Alliance MMA, but never together at the same time. We always talk on Twitter and have a chat whenever we see each other at shows, though. He’s a good person and a good fighter. 

“Still, to me, it’s the same fight as Kingsbury, Diabate or Jimmo. It’s no different. I’m not going to train any harder than I did for those fights. Maybe my coaches will push me harder and get more out of me, but, in my head I’m not thinking, ‘Right, I’m fighting the second best light heavyweight in the world, I need to try a lot harder in the gym.’ I’m not going to put unnecessary pressure on myself just because Gustafsson is highly rated. This is just the fourth fight in my UFC career, nothing more, nothing less.”

Or, to use his own parlance, another scrap in the street after school. A different kind of main event, but this time he’ll be spared hearing the chants of children and having to discard his uniform before rolling around on the floor. 

“If I could go back and speak to my younger self I’d beg him to start MMA earlier,” says the 33-year-old, “and to not waste another day running with fools trying to make money. If I’d have started this thing back when I was getting in trouble, I would have been a UFC champion defending my belt right about now. I just wish I had got into it earlier. Then this division would really have a problem.”