Issue 075
May 2011
Shamrock’s Lion’s Den protégé blasted his way through Pancrase, Pride and the early UFC. Now Guy Mezger is president of HDNet Fights
Few embody the Wild West flavor of the halcyon days of MMA better than Guy ‘The Sandman’ Mezger. The Texan-born warrior can boast a seasoned fight career spanning over 100 fights dating way back to the formative era of the UFC, and he’s carved out an MMA record of 30-14-2. He has engaged in a string of epic and bloody battles to become the seventh King of Pancrase, a Pride FC champion and a UFC champion.
‘Have cajones will travel’ was seemingly Mezger’s mantra, a place in the annals of mixed martial arts history is his reward. Originally born in Houston, the now 43-year-old spent most of school days in Dallas. Like many top MMA athletes, his induction into MMA came via wrestling. Although he was an all-district linebacker by his freshman year in football, Mezger weighed a mere 135lb, minute in comparison to his colossal 205lb frame when fighting in the UFC. As colleges didn’t recruit 135lb linebackers but they did take on state champion wrestlers, Mezger was driven to learn the art of grappling. Wrestling then led to kickboxing: Mezger excelled and MMA seemed a natural progression.
“My first professional MMA match was at UFC 4 against Jason Fairn,” Mezger tells Fighters Only, “and the idea of having my head smashed in on national TV was more daunting than worrying about other fighters’ styles. I didn’t sleep until the fight was over.” With limited rules and both fighters sporting well developed ‘mullet’ hairstyles, Mezger would make a gentleman’s agreement with Fairn not to pull each other’s hair. “I said to him we could have a ‘girl fight’ and pull hair, or be gentlemen and not pull any bullsh*t,” he says. “The funny thing is, months later, a bunch of jackasses made a big deal about it and said that they would have pulled my hair. I told them that they obviously didn’t see my UFC 5 fight where the guy pulled my hair and I head-butted him from the stand position and not only dropped him, but broke his nose, then proceeded to drop elbows on his head.”
Mezger blasted through Fairn, forcing his corner to stop the fight in the first round. Only two weeks prior to the bout, Mezger began training at Ken Shamrock’s infamously unrelenting gym, The Lion’s Den. His grit, tenacity and brutality embodied everything that the training camp stood for. “My tryout consisted of 500 squats, sit-ups and leg lifts, followed by 200 push-ups and then a ten-minute break,” Mezger recalls. “Then I did a 1.5 mile run followed by another ten minute break. I was supposed to fight MMA for 20 minutes but I was getting the best of the guy I was fighting so Ken made the fight 40 minutes straight. This was done all in one session. I was so sore the next three days... It was crazy.”
Mezger’s first foray into Japanese MMA came after Shamrock introduced him to Pancrase. In a three-year stretch, Mezger notched-up 17 wins in the Japanese promotion and in 1998, he became the King of Pancrase in its open-weight tournament. He would return to the UFC in 1999 where he would engage in a showreel of epic battles with the titans of the light heavyweight division: Masakatsu Funaki, Kazushi Sakuraba, Chuck Liddell, Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and Wanderlei Silva. Yet perhaps his most infamous rivalry was with ‘The Huntington Beach Bad Boy’, Tito Ortiz.
In their first meeting at UFC 13 in 1997, Mezger would defeat Ortiz via a guillotine choke to become light heavyweight tournament champion. When the pair clashed horns for the second time in 1999, Tito beat Mezger by a controversial referee stoppage at 9:55 of the fight. To many it seemed premature. To add insult to injury Ortiz flipped a double bird to Shamrock and the Lion’s Den corner while donning a somewhat classless T-shirt with ‘Gay Mezger is my bitch’ emblazoned across it. “Love or hate him, you have to give him his props,” laughs Mezger. “Tito is a master self marketeer. There was some real heat at the beginning, but it later became more of a gimmick. It’s not like I go over to his house on Sundays for a barbeque or anything, but I think that there is mutual respect that has grown over the years.”
In the summer of ’99, Mezger made the transition into the Japanese promotion Pride. While losing to MMA superstars such as Antonio Rogerio Nogueira and Chuck Liddell, he gained fan adoration for his ‘all-out’ approach; putting on exciting displays of bravado and brutality. At Pride 10, Mezger faced the heavy-hitting Brazilian brawler, Wanderlei Silva. While coming out strong, outpointing Silva with several crisp punching combinations, he was ultimately knocked out at the 3:45 mark. Shortly before the knockout, Silva deliberately threw an illegal headbutt to Mezger. Silva was not disqualified and went on to win the bout. “It is the fight game and that stuff happens legal or illegal,” says Mezger. “The head butt knocked me into la la land. I never got a chance to recover from that. The real lesson when fighting in Japan is never let it go to a decision. They tend to get creative with them.”
In 2004, Mezger was lined up to fight a much anticipated rubber match against Tito Ortiz in the UFC. Instead, Mezger suffered a minor stroke “caused by an anti-inflammatory that’s no longer on the market” and had to pull out of the fight. It would be his swan song to an illustrious MMA career. “I was very lucky in the fact that I did not have any adverse long term effects,” says Mezger. “The stroke was God’s little way of telling me to do something else. I would have liked to fight Tito again along with all my other losses, but it was a good time to say goodbye.” Mezger retired at 37 with a record of over 100 professional full-contact fights. He is now president of HDNet Fights, one of America’s leading MMA TV resources showing Dream from Japan, K-1 programming and Canada’s MFC promotion to name but a few. He also runs Guy Mezger Combat Sports, a 7,000 square-foot training facility in Dallas, Texas. Mezger now relishes the role as an instructor with 350-plus regular students, all keen to soak up the wisdom and the vast wealth of experience of one of MMA’s early stalwarts.
