Issue 074

April 2011

A string of pay-per-view gold performances has turned Clay ‘The Carpenter’ Guida into one of the UFC’s most bankable stars. Join him at his Chicago gym launch for hair-raising, face-slapping and, er, burping action…

It’s early afternoon in Cresthill, Illinois, about 30 miles south of Chicago. Thermometers in the area haven’t even sniffed double digits. Inside the ‘MMA Stop–Fitness’ gym, the smell of fresh paint wafts through the air; a thin film of dust seems to cover even spoken words. 

Our Fighters Only cover shoot proceeds swimmingly, as Clay Guida rampages around his new hometown gym. The space features a boxing ring and two mixed martial arts cages. Inside one, Guida knees a couple of Thai pads, throwing feints and combinations at the camera. The shutter clicks away until photographer Eric Williams peeks from behind his lens. “I’ve got 450 shots,” he laughs. “What else should we get?”

Instead of shrugging his shoulders in indifference, Guida starts pointing out other angles and positions. He’s willing to put in the time to get the shot. No stranger to hard work, Guida and the camera spar for another half hour. Though known for his gas tank, Guida used to be equally known as a popular fighter, an entertaining fighter, but one who couldn’t finish fights. And he admits, after his consecutive losses to Diego Sanchez and Kenny Florian, his back was against the wall. 

“People were saying, ‘No, they’d never cut a popular guy…he’s too valuable to the UFC because people love to watch him fight.’ Bullshit. I lost two straight fights. There’s no job security in this business.” But with a switch in camps – to the world-beating Jackson’s New Mexico – and renewed focus on training, Guida is riding a three-fight win streak, all by submission. The man has been a grinder. “Winning ugly”, in his own words, was his trademark. As he arrives at the pinnacle of his career thus far, including a pivotal match against former WEC lightweight champion Anthony Pettis for UFC number-one contender status, he’s polished the unseemly marks out of his game. Guida’s growth as a person, fighter and businessman since those losses has been a surprise to many. Except to himself, of course.

“I don’t dwell on stuff,” he says. “But reality is reality. Like I said, there’s no job security in this business. I had to do what I needed to do to improve. I like where I’m going. I expect to win.” After years of grinding through the circuit, he firmly believes his time has arrived. Right now, Clay Guida is Jeff Bridges’ character from the movie The Big Lebowski, who he idolizes and constantly references: The Dude.

Though Guida earned ‘Fight of the Night’ honors for his bloody war with Sanchez, his bonus was little consolation for being on the losing end. “Against Diego, in the first five minutes, I did everything [trainer] Alex Trujillo and [comparatively enormous brother] Jason told me not to do,” Guida recalls. “They said don’t back up, and to keep my back off the fence. Diego charged at me and what did I do? I put my back against the fence. I stood there taking shots, my mouth guard went flying… I don’t think people even remember I lost my mouthguard,” he adds. “[Referee] Josh Rosenthal told me a month later that he was going to stop for a second to give me my mouthpiece back, and I just put my finger up like saying, ‘Give me a second,’ still eating punches. He told me he knew then I was a madman.”

Once again, entertaining didn’t equate to a win. “I fought Diego Sanchez’s fight, not Clay Guida’s fight,” Guida says. Fiercely loyal to Trujillo and his camp at Midwest Training Center in Schaumburg, Illinois, Guida nevertheless wrestled with moving west to train with Greg Jackson in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Guida knew at Jackson’s camp there were champions and top contenders – training partners at world-class level who would push him on a daily basis. As any athlete would attest, the only way to get better is to face better competition. 

“To be the best, you have to train with the best,” Guida says. “At Greg’s camp, the room is stacked – Georges St-Pierre, Rashad Evans, Nate Marquardt, Joe Stevenson. They’re all there and they push you every single day. After the Florian fight, I started to see the transition, everything has been more fluid. Before, I’d just come out and play ‘Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots’, or I’d get a takedown. There were different things that were probably there before but just weren’t implemented properly. The way that Greg unfolds his game plans, and the way [Mike] Winkeljohn helps me use my striking to set up my wrestling – he’s not trying to make me a striker. I saw how he helped Rashad Evans do that, and he started knocking dudes out. And I’ll get my knockout soon enough.”

In Guida, Jackson saw a talented fighter who just needed to tighten up on all fronts. “We attacked his game from all sides,” Jackson tells Fighters Only. “There wasn’t anything that we were going to leave alone. But we had to improve his submission defense and striking, his footwork and head movement. He was by no means raw. He was a good fighter when he came to us. He’d been around for a while. But I saw incredible work ethic. It was one of those first in the dojo, last out of the dojo kind of deal. And he just had a great attitude towards everything. If you’ve got all of those things – talent, work ethic and attitude – you’ve got a pretty good formula for success. To see him now from where he was when he first came to us is impressive. That takes a lot of hard work.”

And from a strategy perspective, Guida’s largely one-dimensional ‘brawl ‘n’ floor’ attack had to broaden. Much of that has come from gleaning moves and techniques from his new training partners. “It’s the all for one, one for all mentality we have,” Jackson says. “You’re there to share your knowledge with others. Everyone helps make everyone better. Clay certainly has bought into that philosophy.” 

However, adjustment doesn’t happen overnight. Still smarting from his loss to Sanchez, Guida hungered to get right back in the cage. “I took the Florian fight on emotion,” he explains. “I was in Lake of the Ozarks in Missouri having some fun and doing an appearance for some local fights. I watched that beating BJ Penn put on Kenny and I remember texting both Joe Silva and Dana White saying: ‘I want Kenny.’ I had a few cocktails in me, but I saw how Kenny couldn’t take BJ down, so I was thinking if he can’t take BJ down, he won’t take me down – I’m a wrestler – so I thought that was a fight tailor-made for me. An hour later, Joe texted me back, ‘We’ll see.’ I think a month later we had the fight signed.”

Against Florian, his first fight with Jackson in his corner, Guida blamed himself for eventually rolling into a rear naked choke. According to Guida, he did nothing right. Indeed, he looked stiff and uneasy, his striking more reactive than proactive. His trademark takedowns and ground ‘n’ pound assault was MIA. “I tried to be a striker with a striker who is rangy and long,” Guida says of Florian. “I didn’t implement the game plan; I just fought Kenny’s fight, not mine. But I thank Kenny for the shellacking. Sometimes that’s what it takes to learn in this sport.”

Four consecutive losses got popular fighter Keith Jardine and his nipple tweak cut from the UFC. One more loss, and Guida knew he could be looking for work somewhere else. Sitting at a friend’s house in Hermosa Beach, Calif., Guida was approached by the UFC about fighting former lightweight champ Sean Sherk. “At the time one of the jokes was: ‘Are they trying to get rid of me?’” Guida laughs. “I mean, Diego Sanchez, Kenny Florian then Sean Sherk? Those are all guys who fought for the belt – that’s no walk in the park. But it was going to be the co-main event on the live UFC debut on Versus. So we took the fight.” Sherk eventually pulled out due to injury and was replaced by Shannon Gugerty. Guida won submission of the night honors with a vise-like arm triangle. The run was on.

If he was a blade once dulled, Guida’s skills sharpened at Jackson’s camp. They worked on eliminating mistakes, mistakes made both in past wins and losses. “Look, my record in the UFC [8-5] sucks. But I could be 12-1. A lot of my losses had one thing that happened, one mistake I made that cost me,” Guida said. “We worked hard avoid those.” Against Rafael Dos Anjos, Guida pushed the pace and broke Dos Anjos’ jaw. Against Takanori Gomi, Guida stayed away from the haymakers Gomi was apt to throw. A wild gyrating head-bobbing technique emerged as the most effective method for frustrating and slowing down ‘The Fireball Kid.’

“Midway through the second round, I saw Gomi give something away,” Guida says. “He took this really deep breath and exhaled. I knew I had him then – I had seen him do the same against Florian. It was blood in the water. I knew I was frustrating him.” Guida continued to elude Gomi’s jabs with hair flying, looking more precise and fluid. It was in stark contrast to the Florian fight. From the start, his head movement and footwork – even his pre-fight face slapping from brother Jason – Guida looked renewed and confident. He kept Gomi guessing and chasing while landing head kicks and securing takedown after takedown, finally submitting Gomi in the second round with a guillotine choke he credited Stevenson for teaching him.

“People say, ‘You looked psyched for that fight.’ But I say I was pumped up,” Guida says. “Psyched almost sounds like you’re afraid, you’re thinking about it. I used to do that. But I was just pumped – pumped to be back in the ring. I know I’m the best in the world. I know I’m going to be champ. The reason guys like Randy Couture, Anderson Silva and Georges St-Pierre stay champions so long is because they expect to win. I expect to win.”

Back to the Dude thing. “It happens almost every day,” Jackson says. While he’s Guida’s coach and trainer, the two have become close friends, sharing demeanors outside of the cage. “Clay will quote The Big Lebowski all day. He’ll text me a quote and we’ll go back and forth texting each other quotes.” For cult classic neophytes, the 1998 Cohen Brothers film The Big Lebowski stars Jeff Bridges as a shaggy Zen-like slacker with a love for bowling who embarks on a series of escapades in Forrest Gump-like randomness. That a high-motor person like Guida would take to such a film seems at the very least ironic, but outside the ring Guida is laid back and loose. And in the deserts of New Mexico, sunning himself in 70-degree weather outside of his RV parked in an Indian reservation campground, Guida says many of the pressures and influences back home in Illinois are gone, so he can concentrate on fighting unmolested – physically and mentally.

“It’s just a different mindset out there,” Guida says. “Chicago will always be my home, but I was driving an hour and a half every day to get to the gym. In Albuquerque, I’m 10 minutes away. I’ve been able to turn all that driving time into training time. But more importantly, the structure the gym and training give me allows me to focus easier. I have set times for my mitts, my conditioning, my sparring… So the structure has allowed me to tune out a lot of distractions.”

To be sure, Guida’s celebrity in Illinois attracts other distractions that have caused his attention to wander – the classic ‘big fish in a small pond’ dynamic. At Jackson’s camp however, he is only one of more than a dozen champions and could-be champions, so the focus and structure Guida craves is there on a daily basis. “When you’re training with some of the best fighters in the world every day, you’re on your best game every day. You have to be,” Guida says. “I don’t have time for that stuff anymore. Back home I was being pulled in so many directions. In Albuquerque, I am focused on that championship belt and that’s it. Look, I go out just enough to stay sane. I don’t stay on the Indian reservation all the time. But really, I have to stay focused.”

Growing up in rural Johnsburg, Illinois, the Guidas grew up loving the outdoors, fishing for bass and northern pike in the many lakes that line the border of Illinois and Wisconsin. The youngest of Chuck and Debbie Guida’s three kids, Clay routinely took the beatings older brother Jason doled out. “It was race every day for me to get to the phone,” he laughs. “Jason was wrestling in junior high school and would test out all his new moves on me. I’d run to the phone to call my mom… Unless Jason got to the phone first. Even today Jason’s got about 60lb on me.”

Jason himself recalls how Clay would always somehow find a way to make things interesting. “We were fishing one time and I told him to stay out of the reeds,” Jason says. “So what does he go and do? He casts right into the reeds… and hooks a huge fish, almost bigger than him. I had to go in and wrestle it and bring it in. Only Clay.” Though always a good athlete, Clay found himself drawn to wrestling where size differential was minimized. The Guida boys routinely gave their dad, a carpet installer, new work. “The two of them would wear out the carpet in a couple of months just from wrestling,” mom Debbie says. “It’s a good thing Chuck had the job he had.” But the family is tight and Clay’s move to New Mexico hit home, literally. “My mom and dad just want to see me be happy do what I love,” Clay said. “But I value it more, being away. I’m trying to bring them out more and more.” 

In December, a week before the Gomi fight, Clay received a Christmas present. “Me and a couple guys from the gym are eating at this Mongolian barbecue place in Albuquerque three days before Christmas and I look out the window and I see one of my coaches walking up. And right next to him was my dad. I couldn’t believe it. My face was just like what the f**k’ My old man said, ‘You don’t look too thrilled to see me!’ I thought I was seeing things,” Clay laughs. “So we hung out through Christmas. He seemed kind of unsure whether I wanted him out there, but it was awesome. He said, ‘Mom just bought me a ticket so I got on the plane.’ It was very special.”

At 29, Guida knows he’s approaching his physical peak and the window for championship lather can close in an instant. His focus is paying off. “I know I am my biggest distraction,” Guida said. “It took me a little while to realize it, and not that my family or friends and teammates are a distraction, but I had to start putting most of my time toward the gym – technique, repetition.” 

And behind the Dudeness, there’s Guida’s new business venture. Due to open in mid-March, MMA Stop–FITNESS will offer instructional classes in kickboxing, jiu-jitsu and a number of other martial arts disciplines. According to John Fosco, Guida’s manager, the gym will be family-friendly and aimed at helping non-MMA people embrace an MMA fitness regimen suited for all ages and skill levels. “Our aim is not to develop a fight team,” Fosco says. “It is to offer a family-friendly training facility.” When completed, the gym will feature a state-of-the-art weight room, athletic training and a sports medicine clinic. “I just know I like how I feel, being healthy and staying in shape,” Guida says. “So I want to share that with people–families,

kids, housewives–they can all learn how to stay in shape like an MMA fighter does.”

Guida knows he is one of the most popular fighters in the world, but popularity means little without a belt. That doesn’t mean, however, Guida and his management do not know how to take advantage of that popularity. The UFC stresses to its fighters to self-promote; it helps their careers and it’s good exposure for the UFC. Guida has come a long way since his first MMA fight. He was watching a low-level card on which his brother Jason was making his debut. A fighter got hurt, so promoters asked for a volunteer from the audience. Clay immediately raised his hand. Soon Guida will co-headline a card, one that could put him mere steps away from a championship belt. Guida’s upcoming June 4 bout against Pettis – who trains just 90 miles north of him in Milwaukee – pits two diametrically opposed styles against one another. Guida’s ground-‘n’-pound assault is the antithesis of ‘Showtime’ Pettis’ flash and kickboxing. Guida’s will rely on his UFC experience. “Pettis is an exciting fighter, but the WEC isn’t the UFC,” Guida said. “There’s a big difference. But I am looking forward to showing Pettis what that difference is.” 

Guida has become a franchise or brand in his own right, and with his recent run of success, people are buying in. Watch Guida at the fight prep point before he enters the Octagon. He typically wears three layers of clothing, one for each sponsor. He’s following in the footsteps of other successful MMA fighters who have opened up their own gyms. “I want to be able to show families and fighters that they can come to our gym and get one-stop shopping for MMA training,” Guida says. “A lot of fighters are opening their own gyms. Look at Ryan Bader in Arizona. That place is huge. It’s our time to do the same.” Opportunity might only rear its head once in a career. Fighters have to seize that chance when it presents itself. For Clay Guida, that time is now.