Issue 093
October 2012
He appeared on the first season of The Ultimate Fighter, challenged for three UFC belts and now spits commentary on Fuel and FX cards: Kenny Florian is a one-man-band of MMA talent
If you look in the dictionary for the term ‘company man,’ there’s a strong possibility you’ll find a picture of Kenny Florian, smiling and sporting his UFC-branded ‘been-there-done-that’ T-shirt. When it comes to covering the full spectrum of roles in mixed martial arts, and, more specifically, the UFC, ‘KenFlo’ has swept the boards. Yet, growing up, he never dreamed of becoming a celebrity sportsman.
LEADING MAN
KENNY FLORIAN
UFC star turned TV personality
Before he became a world-class fighter and TV personality, Florian had an obsession for Brazilian jiu-jitsu. When he begins talking about it during our interview, it’s clear it was his first and original love. However, a fascination with mixed martial arts would soon lead him away from the mats and into the cage, as he joined the first season of The Ultimate Fighter. He didn’t know it at the time, but Florian’s legacy would be born out of his stay inside the TUF house.
“It was a crazy experience, and one that I wasn’t completely sure that I wanted to do,” Florian recalls to FO. “Back then, I wasn’t even sure I wanted to be a fighter. I was doing it for the experience. I loved Brazilian jiu-jitsu. I didn’t love fighting. I didn’t want to be a fighter. I was a martial artist.”
On a season filled with drunken escapades and violent rampages, Florian stood out as one of the more mature fighters of the group. That focus and maturity would bring him to the original TUF Finale, where he faced off against his Team Liddell teammate Diego Sanchez. Whilst Sanchez reveled in the experience, Florian was consumed by it, resulting in what he describes as “the only fight I’ve ever choked in.”
Florian recalls: “I never showed up. The experience got the best of me because I was a nervous wreck. I lost that fight before I even got in the cage. I really think that was the difference. I became a victim of how big an opportunity it was and being in the finale of The Ultimate Fighter. I crumbled under the pressure.”
Whilst the experience of losing such an important fight and three subsequent title shots would crush many fighters, Florian bounced back every time and even managed to produce some of the finest highlight-reel moments in UFC history. With his brother, Keith, screaming and yelling instructions from the corner, Florian executed game plan after game plan almost effortlessly throughout his nearly seven years competing inside the UFC Octagon.
The likes of Joe Stevenson, Clay Guida and Joe Lauzon all fell victim to either his slick submission skills or his elbow strikes – lovingly hailed as ‘hellbows’. With so many accomplished displays, it’s difficult to single out one moment of perfection. For Florian, though, his fight against arguably the greatest Japanese lightweight of all time is the one that sticks out in his mind.
He says: “My performance against Takanori Gomi was pretty good. Very few people expected me to go out their and strike with him and I did that for 12–13 minutes. I even outstruck him. Then I took him down and submitted him on the ground. It was a good performance.”
Like every career, there have been good and bad times for Florian. After a devastating decision loss to UFC featherweight champion, José Aldo [at UFC 136], Florian suffered more heartbreak when in November 2011 he incurred an injury that would cut his career and his planned return to the lightweight division short.
“I got a herniated disc in November. I was doing some Olympic lifting. It was my last set. My last rep. I felt something tweak in my back and I just couldn’t move.
“There’s no guarantee through surgery that it’s going to get better. There are always going to be risks of doing surgery, and there are going to be even more risks when doing surgery on your spine. I’m not sure that’s something that I really want to deal with.” Florian explains.
With his fighting career over, he has stepped into a less comfortable, yet still familiar, role of commentary, sharing his insight and expertise with fans across the world. It’s a job he’s clearly enjoying, but his inability to climb back into the cage himself still clearly saddens him.
“It’s that feeling of being nervous and the craziness you felt before you walked out to the cage, it was unlike anything. It’s uncertainty, it’s confidence, it’s fear. It’s all these things combined that give you the feeling of being alive.
“I didn’t care about the crowd being there. I didn’t care about being on TV. I just didn’t care about any of those things. It was all about the test. That’s what it was always about. Right before a fight is unlike anything you’ll ever experience. You truly feel alive.”
