Fighters Only

Issue 091

August 2012

Despite all the pressures of success, fame and fortune on his shoulders, Alexander Gustafsson may well be the happiest man in mixed martial arts.

Need to know

NAME: Alexander Gustafsson

AGE: 25

TEAM: Stockholm shoot/Alliance MMA

DIVISION: Light heavyweight

STYLE: Striker

RECORD: 14-1

As he bounced out into the Ericsson Globe Arena in Stockholm to face Thiago Silva on April 14th you’d be forgiven for thinking Alexander Gustafsson had lost his mind. Cool, calm, collected; the light heavyweight prodigy seemingly didn’t have a care in the world.

So what if he was headlining the fastest-selling European UFC event in history? Who cared if he was in his hometown and the 15,000 tickets had been snapped up in under three hours? And did it even matter he was facing one of the most intimidating men in the UFC’s 205lb division? Apparently not.

Gustafsson maintains he was unfazed and simply believes the experience was all part of his journey to the summit of Mount MMA. “The pressure I was under fighting on the first UFC card in Sweden, in my hometown and as the headliner, was greater than I will ever experience again. To be able to compete under that much pressure was huge for me, and now I know that I can handle anything else in my career,” Gustafsson recalls to Fighters Only. “He was a very tough opponent also, so to come through that was a really great learning experience.”

Headlining the first UFC event staged on Scandinavian soil certainly isn’t lost on the proud Swede. ‘The Mauler’ not only has the support of his homeland, but also that of MMA fans from neighbors Norway and Denmark – along with the rest of Europe.

Potentially, the six-foot-five Swede could become the continental poster boy the UFC has been hoping for. With Michael Bisping polarizing fans and Alistair Overeem’s Zuffa career on the canvas, he could emerge as the UFC’s premier European ambassador.

It’s all a world away from his humble upbringing, in a small town on the outskirts of Stockholm. Yet it’s one the now transatlantic fight star relishes. Switching from Sweden’s leading mixed martial artist to a genuine European UFC title contender has brought some challenges, but Gustafsson insists he’s loving every minute and he’s more focused than ever on his final prize.

“Yes, my life has changed a lot,” says the 14-1 striker. “It has been really a lot of changes, but I am really enjoying it. I enjoy my sport so much right now, I’m just having fun every day. It’s what I love to do so I’m just having fun all of the time. I just want to keep working, keep improving, and keep winning.

“I am ready to fight anybody in the division, and, of course, I would love to fight for the UFC title. I’ll fight Jon Jones whenever the UFC give me that fight. Whether that fight comes in three months, at the end of the year, or even next year, I’ll fight him whenever the UFC offer me that fight.”

Family values

The Ericsson Globe Arena is less than 100 miles from the small town where Gustafsson spent his childhood. Yet the scenes inside the Stockholm venue for the UFC on Fuel card where a million miles away from life in the sleepy 13th-century town of Arboga. In fact, with little over 10,000 inhabitants, there was actually around 5,000 more people watching him fight live.

“I lived there until I was like 16, and then I moved around. I’ve lived in Gothenburg, Stockholm, all over. Arboga is just a village really, it’s very small. But I had a really great childhood there. I grew up in a very nice area with some great friends. And I come from a really good family, with a lot of siblings.”

He maintains a close family bond is essential to him, and he’s also looking forward to getting married soon, after recently proposing to his fiancé. “I am engaged and settled now. We’ve been together for a little over a year and I’m happy at home as well as in the gym which is important,” he states.

“My family have always supported me 100%, especially my grandmother who has been there all of the time. My mother, my father, my brothers and my sisters all support me. We are a really tight family. I have four siblings, and they all do sports; mostly horse riding.

“As a family growing up we were always into sports. My father was a former soccer player, not really at a very high level or anything, but he played for a while. He also did a lot for motorsport, like motorcross for example. My mom also competed, and is at a pretty high level in horse riding also. I played a little bit of soccer and I rode horses and stuff growing up, but I trained everything: football, ice hockey, wrestling, boxing.

“I started boxing when I was living there, not actually in Arboga, but at a club in a town close by. I only really went at first because my friends went too, and it was only ever at local amateur level. I had a few amateur fights, but nothing at championship level at all… In fact, I couldn’t really box very well to be honest with you. I always had a lot of heart, but it was always a brawl when I fought. I just did it for fun.”

Wait. So what about the reports Gustafsson once defeated the Swedish national boxing champion, and that he was destined for great things as an amateur boxer? “I’m actually not sure where that stuff came from, but I wasn’t a good amateur boxer at all really.”

Gustafsson states, for the record, that head coach Andreas Michael, from Stockholm Shoot, is the man who shaped him into the lethal stand-up fighter he is today – years after he hung up his amateur boxing vest and gloves, when he finally took up mixed martial arts in 2006.

He says: “My head coach, Andreas Michael, he built me from scratch. He’s been with me through everything, he built my boxing, all of it. My striking is my bread and butter and myself and Andreas, that is something we work on every day. But this is mixed martial arts and so I have to develop in every discipline, and that’s what I do.

“I try to train everything, every day. I want to be a better Alex for every fight. I train boxing now more than ever before, I train wrestling more than ever before, jiu-jitsu, everything. I am always doing conditioning and working on my strength. It’s an ongoing process and it never ends.

The wake-up call

Gustafsson and Michael’s partnership hit the ground running as a 9-0 tear into professional MMA was topped off with the first-round destruction of Jared Hamman at UFC 105 in Manchester, England, in November 2009 on his UFC debut – just two years after his first pro fight… Little did Alexander know then, however, that his next opponent would not only end his victory charge, but would also change his life and career forever.

At UFC 112 in Abu Dhabi, Gustafsson was matched with another undefeated, fast-rising 205lb talent. Despite having three wins less than his Swedish rival, Phil Davis was America’s latest all-star college-wrestler-turned-outstanding UFC prospect. And while the main card in the Middle East featured two UFC championship bouts, all eyes were also on the light heavyweight prelim clash where someone’s ‘0’ was about to go.

Gustafsson recalls: “Going into that fight I knew I was lacking in wrestling, but I was undefeated. In my mind I was already a big shot (laughs). But Phil took me down when he wanted to and straight away I understood that just training because it was fun was never going to be enough. You have to train in hard situations to test yourself in order to get better. You have to develop to progress, and I very quickly understood that – actually during that fight.

“I learned a lot from my defeat to Phil. Up until that point, I was just doing MMA as a hobby. But I learned against Phil that I still had a lot to learn. You have to be dedicated and commit to it 100% and, even in the locker rooms later that night, I think I made the decision to do it as a full-time job. I made the decision to go all in for it.

“Afterwards I spoke to Phil, when we were still at the venue, and we talked about training together. Then, a few weeks later, me and Andreas went over to California and straight away we knew that this was where I had to be. And now I’ve been there during my last five camps and it’s really brought me on, it’s helped me a lot. We really have an awesome team at Alliance.”

Yet Gustafsson has no plans to leave Sweden behind; far from it. “I am still based in Stockholm full time,” he acknowledges. “I am still at Stockholm Shoot with my head coach, Andreas.

“I also used to train in Gothenburg, when I lived over there, but not any more. I live in Stockholm, so I train there. Then, when I am in fight camp, I go over to my other team, Alliance MMA, in California. But Andreas comes with me every time.

“I go to Alliance to train with the very best guys and work with coach Eric Del Fierro. It’s a system that is definitely working for me and I couldn’t be any more happy with how it is working out. It’s perfect. To be able to be based at home but still be able to go over to the West Coast and train with those guys, it’s like I have the best of both worlds.

“Sweden is only a small country compared to America and we just don’t have the same caliber of training partners to work with here than you get in the US. We have a great system in Sweden, don’t get me wrong, but it’s not at the same level. Going to California for sparring and to work on my wrestling and stuff is essential now. They have a great way to train there and an awesome gym so I’m super-happy with the system we have. I couldn’t be happier.”

And you know what they say about happy fighters being the most dangerous? Thiago Silva certainly does. He was waiting for Gustafsson under the bright lights of the Ericsson Globe Arena back in April. The Brazilian, once a product of the famous Chute Boxe Academy, returned to the Octagon after a 15-month layoff when Antonio Rogerio Nogueira pulled out of the fight. But was left chasing shadows, much to the delight of the knowledgeable Swedish support.

For Gustafsson, it was the pinnacle of his career so far, a genuine test he rightly maintains he came through with flying colors. His heavily one-sided beatdown of the American Top Team knockout artist was practically punch-perfect as he jabbed and moved his way to a unanimous points victory.

“Absolutely, that was the best night of my career,” the 25-year-old recalls with a smile. “It was a great win over (Vladimir) Matyushenko too, making my debut in Las Vegas and scoring a first-round knockout win. But beating Thiago was definitely the highlight of my career so far. It was another good learning experience. It was my first decision against a really top guy on a major show, but mostly it was a lesson in controlling my nerves, which is very important.”

As for his ingredients for success, Gustafsson adheres to a staple diet of hard work and commitment to the cause. He’s sacrificed a lot to get to where he is and believes that, without the drive to improve, MMA is a sport that can chew you up and spit you out. “Dedication is the key to success, not just in fighting, but in life. Do everything with a full heart, and never leave anything behind. That’s something that I hear from my coach day in and day out. If you give everything then one day you will be rewarded. If you give everything, you can’t fail,” he adds.

So what does a fighter who’s happy in life, happy in training, and has just won in style while headlining a sell-out card in his hometown aim for next? Easy, returning to sell out an even bigger venue next time – and with the UFC belt strapped around his waist. “Absolutely. That is my dream now, to win the UFC belt and defend it at home in Sweden… But we will have to build a brand new venue to fit everybody inside, maybe with 100,000 seats,” he laughs. “That would be awesome!”

Totally inked

Alexander Gustafsson is proud of his chosen career, so much so that he has a tattoo on his upper right arm tallying his progress inside the octagon.

Every time he fights he gets a new spade inked, and, so far, only one of them is hollow. The plan is to fill the entire sleeve, and hopefully one day highlight a reign as the UFC 205lb champion.

“I was actually sitting with my friend one day and he came up with the idea for the tattoo,” Gustafsson reveals. “I’d wanted a tattoo related to my sport and he mentioned it and I thought it was a great idea. The next thing it’s on my arm and it’s building up nicely. A new spade for every fight.

“When I am like 40, 45 years old I’ll probably have them all down my arm and onto my hand and fingers (laughs).

“And I also have something special planned for when I win the UFC title too, but that’s top secret.”