Issue 116

July 2014

Whenever UFC middleweight Gegard Mousasi enters the Octagon he’s prepared for war. And why not? He was brought into this world in the midst of one.

A fighting man. His is a face marked with scars, many of them small, and healed, very much like the pitted landscape of Gegard Mousasi’s life. His story is one of exodus, upheaval and the long struggle to prove himself.

Mousasi remains one of the quiet men of mixed martial arts, in spite of a history that resonates with turmoil once the lines open up and you read between them.

Born in Iran into an Armenian community, at the height of the Iran-Iraq war – in which 500,000 Iraqi and Iranian soldiers, with estimates of a similar number of civilians, are believed to have died – Gegard’s formative years were inextricably linked to conflict.

The eight-year conflict between the fierce rivals has been compared to World War I with large-scale trench warfare. It was attritional, with manned machine-gun posts, bayonet charges, and waves of attacks across a no-man’s land, and extensive use of chemical weapons.

This was the backdrop to the early years of the life of Geghard Movsesian (Gegard’s birth name), the youngest child of three, born to Gakik and Lucik Movsesian.

Mousasi’s family – parents, brother Gewik and sister Angineh – tripped over the border a few years after the Iran-Iraq war ended in 1988 and headed to Holland. Gegard was eight years old. And impressionable. But it was not a straightforward journey, as the family of five endured 18 months in a Dutch refugee camp.

Speaking about his upbringing in detail for the very first time, sitting in the O2 World in Berlin, prior to his fight against Mark Munoz in May, Mousasi recalls his early years, revealing how he was unaware of the troubles around him. A teary child of eight saw his blissful life, at least in his eyes, of “playing outside on dusty streets all day in Tehran” was over.

Instead, a new world, with many other refugees, all seeking solace in the orange light and new hope of The Netherlands.

The early experiences, whether he knew it or not, created a tough young man who had an inner steel and fearlessness. And a need to prove himself.

“My mum and dad were born in Iran. There’s a small community of Armenians there, but slowly everyone is leaving. I think there were 200,000 of us there at one time, and it’s fallen to around 50,000 now,” explains Mousasi softly, accentuating each syllable clearly, his hands clasped together, as we overlook the silent arena below us from a corporate box.

He reflects: “These days, there are a lot of people who have difficulties getting out of the country so you have to go illegal, but it’s not the same as it used to be.”

Prior to a bloody revolution in 1979, Iran was once known as Persia, an opulent, glamorous kingdom. Armenia is on Iran’s northern border. “It was once a glamorous place. If you’d seen the king and queen, you’d have thought it was France. It was such an elegant place,” says Gegard.“My parents had a good life there. They used to live in a village and later they came to Tehran. My dad was a mechanic and my mother was a housewife, who looked after the children.  

“Iranian people are very hospitable, very family-oriented and besides that they have a very beautiful country. They have mountains, desert and sea (it borders both the Caspian Sea and Indian Ocean) so you have everything. There are four seasons in Iran, so you can go winter skiing, you can go in summer to the beach. It’s not a real tourism place, but it’s a nice country if you have family and friends to visit there.”

Mousasi has been back a few times – but only, he explains, to visit family.

His recollections of Tehran were “a lot of playing in the streets, being at school, football. Back then, you would play a lot outside…”

It was a life-changer in Holland. He began by dreaming of being a boxing world champion, watching Oscar De La Hoya, and the heavyweight careers of Mike Tyson and then Lennox Lewis.

He tested himself in an array of combat sports, and found solace. Judo was his first sport.Then he took up boxing. By the age of 16, he was a national amateur champion in his adopted country. Indeed, in 2011, he reveals that he had contemplated trying to qualify for the London Olympics as a Dutch representative. It never came about.

As a teenager, he was also drawn to kickboxing, and then, he walked into an MMA gym. Bingo.

Twelve years later, his résumé includes victories over Hector Lombard in a Pride welterweight grand prix, success in Dream at middleweight with wins against Denis Kang, Melvin Manhoef and ‘Jacare’ Souza. Then, a move to light heavyweight, and eventually heavyweight. In Dream’s open weight grand prix, Mousasi submitted Mark Hunt in the opening round.

He has even sparred with former Pride heavyweight champion Fedor Emelianenko in an exhibition match – though he was defeated by an armbar. In recent times, he beat ‘Babalu’ Sobral via KO in the first minute of the first round to become the Strikeforce light heavyweight champion.

It is some record. But talk to anyone who has worked with Mouasi and they will tell you he is a technician, he makes very few mistakes and he favors the stand-up – although he’s comfortable anywhere.

Perhaps he learnt not to make mistakes, unconsciously, in his surroundings as a child. It helped in Holland, which, he recalls, was very hard on him, at first. “Yeah, because I was missing my home, my friends,” he explains. “I think it took me six months to a year until I was settled, and then, of course, we came to Holland where all the refugees go. You had camps for that.

“We’d had a normal life in Iran, then you move there and suddenly you were five people in a room, sharing with another family. There were refugees from so many countries. Eventually we got a house and it wasn’t so bad. We were lucky. It took a year and a half. A lot of people stayed in refugee status for five years. You can’t get your life started when you are in that situation.

“It takes the time off your life. I know some people who took eight years to get the right to stay in Holland. So for eight years they weren’t allowed to do anything, not even go for a job. That’s one thing that’s bad about immigration.

“Once you got there, the children would always go to Dutch school, medical care was good, but it’s the change you have from having everything in your own country and then you start from zero, and you have to wait.”

He adds: “We didn’t get the visa for staying for five years so it took a long time before you could go to work. Then there was the language barrier. It’s very difficult. I have one friend whose dad was a surgeon, another who was a high-level engineer. But once they come to Holland they were nothing. People want to work but from being respected in your job in your country, you have to start out with nothing. It’s not impossible, of course, but it can be very difficult.”

But looking back, Mousasi now feels lucky. “My dad would take me to judo a few times a week,” he explains. “I got all these things that I was able to do once we were set up in Holland. Everything was taken care of. I think Holland is a country that takes care of their people – one of the best countries in the world.”

So what drove him? “I think it had more to do with poverty than a difficult lifestyle. We were not rich. I didn’t have money – at least compared to my friends, I didn’t. It was a combination of not wanting to struggle for money, but also that I wanted to be a tough guy, to be respected, too.”

The young Gegard had athletic prowess, so he decided to exploit it. “I had talent in judo, I believe. Every time the teacher would show something in class, I would be his favorite student to show it.”

He learnt quickly. “I think with fighting you have to have a desire to achieve something. You never see a rich kid get to the top of any combat sport because they don’t have the drive. All the great boxers come from the ghetto. They all had nothing. They have the desire, the hunger but the rich kid is not going to get punched in the face. Why would they?

“I wanted to be a boxer but I lost a fight. I was heartbroken. I thought Mike Tyson didn’t lose, so I shouldn’t lose either. It was my first loss. But then I started kickboxing, and soon afterwards saw MMA. So two or three weeks later I took a fight without really knowing the ground game. I was 17 or 18 then. I just took every fight I could at the time whether it was kickboxing or MMA. It just clicked.”

By now, Gegard had made up his mind that he would become a professional fighter. But it didn’t go down too well at home. “My mother didn’t like watching the fights but I would always do well so it wasn’t that bad. At that time I wasn’t at a high level, it wasn’t on TV, so they didn’t see anything.”

As the years have passed, and success has arrived, his parents have changed their opinions of his career choice, although that may have been helped by the wise investments he’s made along the way.

“I have some properties,” he explains. “I have got my home and I have also bought houses I rent out so I have some income out of that. But it’s not just properties I own, there are also some businesses I’ve invested in.

“My dad is proud but my mother still, she doesn’t like to watch the fight. The fight week is hard for her. That week she has a lot of stress. I always call them after my fights, but normally after the fight my friend has already called my mother to tell the result.”

Mousasi’s aspirations are like every other fighter on the UFC roster: title ownership. And the only time Mousasi really changes mood in our time together is when assessing his points decision loss to Lyoto Machida in February of this year – a technical, five-round, kickboxing match.

Clearly, Mousasi showed how few mistakes he makes, his granite chin, and how he ‘belongs’ in this championship class. Twenty-five minutes in an Octagon with Machida is testament to that.

But has Mousasi taken something from that contest? Well, it would seem so, as he says: “Another strategy would have made a big difference. I should have kicked more – a lot more. Shogun did it and I think I should have chased him a lot. I think my coaches weren’t doing the right things between rounds because once you fight a certain way, you just have tunnel vision. You just fight like that.

“I think the coaching between rounds is important to snap you out of that, to say, ‘Listen, you’re behind, go and do this or that.’

“I think the coaching wasn’t that good in my last fight, and I think the one-year lay-off I’d had didn’t help either. But no excuses, I think that was the best I could get out of that fight.”

Whatever the future now holds for this fighting man from Iran, originally, you can guarantee he’ll meet every challange he faces as though his life depended on it. He has to. It’s in his blood. Because as Gegard Mousasi has known from the start of his life, every day above ground is a fight for survival.