Issue 092

September 2012

How UFC veteran Matt ‘The Law’ Lindland turned lessons learned from Olympic silver into MMA legend

MATT LINDLAND

Greco-Roman Wrestling

Silver 2000

Matt Lindland says it’s simple. “Men were created to be fighters.” That’s why he took up wrestling at 15. In a world where mixed martial arts didn’t yet exist, grappling was the first combat sport he’d ever seen – and he loved it. Now 42 (and 22-9 in MMA), the Oregon-raised farm boy turned that interest into various collegiate and national wrestling titles and accomplishments between folkstyle, freestyle and Greco-Roman. In 2000, it even put him on the Olympic podium.

A 30-year-old Matt wrestled to a 76kg Greco-Roman silver in Sydney, losing out in the gold medal match to Russian Murat Kardanov. And while Matt remembers the opportunity to wrestle for his country as rewarding, it was always about going and competing. “I didn’t really experience the fun times and good times at the Olympics,” he recalls, with some small sense of regret. 

Some competitors are at peace with a silver or bronze if it was earned through their best performance, but, for Matt, it was disappointing. Probably even more than most considering his more treacherous route: having to involve courts to even get to the Games. At the Olympic trials for 2000, Lindland competed against Keith Sieracki, a man he’d beaten 11 times prior without a loss. “At some point the judges completely misjudged the match,” says Lindland. “I asked for a review of the film and they denied me my due process.” Committees and arbitrators followed and the ruling was to re-wrestle. “I beat him 9-0. Which, in Greo-Roman wrestling, most of the matches are one and two-point matches and if you beat a guy by 10 it’s basically like throwing in the towel.” After a re-arbitration a federal judge upheld the result and Lindland finally had his slot on the US Olympic team. He also earned one more thing: his moniker, ‘The Law.’

Just months after the 2000 Games, Lindland made his UFC debut at middleweight, a first-round TKO over Yoji Anjo at UFC 29 in Japan. His mixed martial arts debut, however, had come long before. Although it doesn’t appear on his official record, Lindland won $500 in a 32-fighter toughman contest in the mid ‘90s. Then, as his record states, he won three bouts in 1997. The last of which was a 22-minute marathon with MMA warhorse Travis Fulton, now 247-49-10 (1 NC). Matt recalls: “I didn’t have enough skills or technique to finish Travis. I just had to wear him out; it was kind of like a fight of attrition. I didn’t have too many finishing holds at the time. There was nobody training in this sport in ’97. There weren’t coaches; the sport didn’t exist until ’93 so in ’97 when I jumped into it, it was like, ‘Who do I learn from, who do I train with?’”

But for his post-2000 venture into the Octagon he had the support of Team Quest – fellow Olympian turned fighter Dan Henderson and Olympic wrestling alternate Randy Couture. Despite producing present-day names like UFC middleweight Chael Sonnen and Strikeforce lightweight Pat Healy (men who Lindland recognizes as his best students) the now-celebrated gym franchise formed after the 2000 Olympics had unceremonious beginnings. 

“Randy needed a place to move some mats and I had some space in the back of a car lot,” remembers Matt. “So I told him he could bring the mats over and we could train there. Which was convenient for me because I was working at my car lot and I would be able to train for a couple of hours then go back to do whatever I had to do.”

After his successful night in Tokyo, Matt would move to 7-0, taking victories from Ricardo Almeida, Phil Baroni and Pat Miletich, then challenge for Murilo Bustamante’s UFC middleweight strap in 2002. And though both his UFC 37 battle with Bustamante and his Sydney 2000 Greco-Roman match with Kardanov were for gold, Lindland says the two were “completely different.” The fight isn’t best known for Bustamante’s third-round guillotine win, but for the famed ‘double tap’ incident. 

The contest was halted in the first round after it appeared Lindland had tapped to Bustamante’s armbar. Lindland protested that he hadn’t and the match was restarted. “I wasn’t screaming in agony and I wasn’t tapping my hand on him or anything,” he says, “I was just trying to roll out of an armlock. Maybe my free hand touched him or something, but I don’t know where the tap came from. I’ve watched the film. I tried to buck by hips over a couple of times then the hold got stopped. He ended up finishing the fight anyway so I don’t see the controversy.”

Amongst scattered independent appearances, Lindland would compete for the UFC seven more times before being cut by the organization for wearing an unapproved T-shirt at the weigh-ins for his UFC 54 bout with Joe Doerksen in 2005. Lindland would miss the UFC’s post-TUF boom, although he says he has “no regrets in that sense.” And between scraps with Fedor Emelianenko, Vitor Belfort and a pre-UFC ‘Rampage’ Jackson, he certainly hasn’t been short of big-name bouts.

The Law remembers the old days fondly (“It was such a new sport that I think we kind of helped pioneer it instead of participated in it”) and, although he’s not officially retired, today Matt’s focus primarily rests with coaching. That is when the man who ran for the Oregon House of Representatives in ’08 and cofounded local promotion SportFight isn’t working on his Dirty Boxer apparel brand or competing in white water rafting on the third-in-the-nation Oregon Rafting Team. 

It seems whatever he’s turned his hand to Lindland has found success. “I just try to apply the same principles I used in wrestling: put the time in, put the effort in, build relationships, put a good team around you.” Competition then remains key to his life. “If I’m going to do something I want to be the best,” he adds.