Issue 077

July 2011

Veteran star Trigg as happy at home as he is taking MMA to the masses.

UFC, Pride and Strikeforce veteran Frank Trigg might be the last person you’d expect to play Mr Mom. Yet these days, the brash, dual-division contender (welter and middleweight) finds himself doing more than his fair of share of domestic engineering. “I watch the kids during the week, and maybe every other weekend or so. Then I travel to some destination to watch a fight,” Trigg told Fighters Only. “That’s all I really do. 

“It’s alright though. I like being home. I’m a stay-at-home dad when I’m home. I’m involved in all the stuff at school. I go on the field trips and go to the doctor appointments and I make sure I handle all the stuff at the house as far as what’s for dinner and that lunches are packed.”

Yes, the 39-year-old married father of four is adjusting to life after fighting in the sport’s biggest shows. After more than 13 years grinding away in the US and Japan, Trigg is just fine where he’s landed. Of course, for a man who has always been on the go – consider that during the height of his popularity ‘Twinkle Toes’ created his own signature clothing line, hosted two different pioneering MMA-themed radio shows and once commentated at a Pride event in which he also fought – Trigg’s definition of “just sitting around” is a little different than most.

On most nights in Las Vegas, you can find Trigg at his long-time training base, Xtreme Couture. Following his February 2010 loss to Matt Serra, as well as his subsequent release from the world’s top promotion and a brief semi-retirement, Trigg is no longer the featured attraction in practice. But that doesn’t mean he’s not working just as hard. “I still train pretty regularly,” he says. “I’ve got a couple of private training sessions that I do each week and I still work out. I lift in the morning three days a week and have a couple of cardio sessions. I usually hit pro practice a couple of times a week depending on who needs me. “We’ve got some other guys at Couture’s that are getting ready for fights. Michael Chandler and Jay Hieron have been fighting for Bellator. Gray Maynard is about to start camp again. Vitor Belfort just got done. Randy Couture is in camp. We’ve got other guys getting ready to fight, so I go pretty regularly. Obviously I don’t have the same body type as Lyoto Machida or the same body type as Frank Edgar, but I’m left-handed, so that helps out quite a bit. I can’t mimic Anderson Silva’s body type, but these guys still need left-handed guys in their camp, so I come in there and do what I can.”

Prior to his most recent run in the UFC – Trigg’s second stint in the promotion – the former University of Oklahoma wrestling standout said he had no desire to fight outside of the sport’s biggest spotlight. But that changed when he was offered a unique opportunity to fight Roy Neeman at this past November’s ‘Israel FC: Genesis’ event in Tel Aviv, Israel. “I fought Serra in February, and then I sat around and screwed off or whatever,” Trigg admits. “I was commentating for HDNet and I got a phone call. Somebody hit me up and I said, ‘If you want me to fight for you, contact Sam Spira, my manager over at Xtreme Couture Management.’ I honestly didn’t think it was ever going to come together, but it did. 

“It was a great experience to go over there and fight in Israel. I don’t know how many other Americans have ever even been to Israel, much less fought over there. It was good. One thing leads to the next, and now we’ve had maybe a half-dozen to ten offers since then.” 

It’s another unique opportunity for Trigg to fight abroad and one he must balance with his primary line of work right now, as part of HDNet’s lead commentary team. Trigg serves as color commentator alongside frantic play-by-play man Michael ‘The Voice’ Schiavello, and the team is quickly becoming among the most respected in the business.

“Working with Michael is really neat,” reveals Trigg of his colleague. “He’s a funny guy. The way you see him on camera is the same way he is when he’s just eating dinner. He’s that really funny, pulling pranks kind of a guy. He’s also that energetic. Even when he’s got jet lag and he’s half-asleep, he’s still energetic. It’s someone else who is just as hyperactive as I am. He’s a workaholic too.”

Trigg and Schiavello have each worked with numerous partners in recent years, but HDNet has elected to pair them together on a regular basis, and Trigg said the strategy is working. “It’s like any other team,” Trigg adds. “The reason [UFC broadcasters] Mike Goldberg and Joe Rogan are considered the premier broadcast team is because they’ve been together for so long without change. I like that I finally get to work with one partner. I know how he works. I know his pitches and how he’s going to pitch me the softball. It’s not only his ability to pitch me the softball so that I can talk about it and hit it out of the ballpark, it’s also how he’s going to throw it to me so I know how to answer it. We’re starting to get that all together.”

Even in the latter stages of his MMA career, Trigg remains both entertainer and entrepreneur, fighter and family man, hustler and homemaker. He says he wouldn’t even mind reprising a 2008 role as a professional wrestling personality. But when Trigg does finally call it quits he can boast titles from the World Fighting Alliance and IconSport, and he twice competed for the UFC welterweight strap. Until then, Trigg said he’s not placing any limits on what lies ahead.

“There’s probably like seven or eight goals in my career that I’ll never reach,” Trigg admitted. “That’s the biggest problem. I set a finite amount of goals when I was young, and honestly, none of those are ever going to come to fruition. But you never know what opportunities are going to come before you. You sit around and you do things every day that you hope are going to create opportunities for you, and that when those opportunities arise, they work out great. If they don’t work out then you just keep going. I don’t think 15 years ago the Fertittas and Dana White thought they would be where they’re at, but they took an opportunity with the UFC and invested into it and now look at where they are. You take an opportunity and, whether it’s part of your goals or not, you run with it.” 

TRASH TALKER

“For a guy like me, who is not as good as St Pierre, not as good as Anderson Silva, not as good as BJ Penn, because I’m talking, I get just as much notoriety as those guys. I like trash talk. It makes it fun. Plus it makes the fights more interesting.”  Frank Trigg