Issue 064
July 2010
Former UFC middleweight champion Rich Franklin may be one of the most underappreciated figures in the sport, but after a recent (and much-needed) break, ‘Ace’ is ready to make a title run in the UFC light heavyweight division and regain the fans’ support.
The launching pad for the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s current explosion in popularity is often linked to a single night: April 9, 2005. That was the night Forrest Griffin and Stephan Bonnar engaged in what UFC president Dana White has called “The greatest fight in UFC history.” Fighting for a six-figure contract at the conclusion of the debut season of The Ultimate Fighter, the pair slugged it out in the penultimate bout of the UFC’s first-ever live fight card on Spike TV.
And while White rewarded both Griffin and Bonnar with UFC contracts – and has since said that they’ll each have a job with the UFC for as long as they choose – another cornerstone in the company structure was highlighted that night as well: Rich Franklin.
Franklin defeated MMA legend Ken Shamrock in a light heavyweight contest in the headline bout of that event, and the Ohio native went on to win the UFC’s middleweight title just two months later with a fourth-round TKO of the late Evan Tanner.
Franklin immediately became one of the most recognizable figures in mixed martial arts, and his face – complete with what seemed a permanent black eye – became that of the UFC. But in 2006 (and following two successful title defenses) Franklin lost his belt to Brazilian striker-extraordinaire Anderson Silva at UFC 64. The disappointing result kicked off a 5-4 slide for Franklin that has many wondering what ‘Ace’ can still bring to the cage.
Plenty, says the 35-year-old Ohio native. “I don’t feel like I’m at a crossroads yet,” Franklin says. “I still feel like I’m at the top of my game and that I can put on some good fights.”
“My heart wasn’t with it.”
Franklin appeared to be anything but at the top of his game in his most recent bout, a September 2009 defeat to Vitor Belfort in the main event of UFC 103. While Franklin has never been the type of fighter to make excuses for his mistakes, in retrospect he realizes he probably shouldn’t have ever taken the fight.
But that’s what a company man does when the boss comes calling. “I wanted some time off last year before the Vitor fight,” Franklin said. “After the Wanderlei Silva fight, I talked with the UFC, and we had spoken about me taking some time off. They were good with that. Then after UFC 100, they kind of left themselves in a bind. They didn’t have anybody really to main event a card or anything like that. They needed somebody, and they called me for the September fight, and honestly I was just at a point where I hadn’t really had any time off since I’d been with the organization. I got to the point where I was in the gym just going through the motions and my heart wasn’t with it, and I knew I needed some downtime. But I’m a company man. I help out people when they’re stuck, and they needed me for a main event in September against Vitor, and, unfortunately, that obviously didn’t turn out as a victorious situation for me. But I was just really looking for some time to kind of mentally reset. I do so much other stuff on the side, and I keep myself so busy on top of my training, that I kind of felt like I was burning the candle at both ends.”
Franklin said he had actually hoped for a rematch of his January 2009 defeat at the hands of Dan Henderson. In fact, Franklin vs Henderson II was initially announced as the headliner for UFC 103, but the promotion elected to scrap the bout in favor of a fight against Belfort when ‘The Phenom’ became available following the collapse of Affliction Entertainment. “To be real honest, I was interested in fighting Dan Henderson in a rematch last December, and he wasn’t very interested in it. Now he’s in Strikeforce. For that fight, I was actually kind of somewhat excited – then, of course, that fight wasn’t signed and the Vitor fight was.
“For the Belfort fight in particular, he’s a tough opponent, and when you’re really hyped up to fight one opponent, and that’s taken away from you, it really does kind of take the wind out of your sails. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that I feel I have the right to sit on this side of the fence and say, ‘You know what? I don’t want to fight him, and I’m not doing it.’”
Franklin said he has no regrets about his decision to fight Belfort, but he did learn a valuable lesson in the first-round defeat. “I did what I did. I don’t regret any decisions that I made. It was unfortunate that I took that fight because, really, I knew going into that fight that I was mentally burned out, but there’s always this piece inside of you that says, ‘You know what? I can roll through this. I can deal with this. I can overcome.’
“Obviously, you can’t with some of that stuff. Guys like Vitor, they’re just too good to try and pull that stuff off with.” Franklin’s willingness to take whatever the UFC gives him is undoubtedly a dream scenario for White and UFC matchmaker Joe Silva. The former middleweight champ said he feels it’s his duty to take the UFC’s offers as they come. Besides, he tried not to once, and that didn’t work out so well.
“In my entire career with the UFC, I’ve turned down one fight – one opponent that they offered me,” Franklin said. “That was the time I fought Matt Hamill (a friend and former training partner). Before they offered me Matt Hamill, they actually said something to me about fighting Reese Andy, and I told them that I didn’t want to fight Reese Andy only because Reese had actually helped me get ready for a couple of fights. So I said I’d kind of rather fight somebody else, and I kind of painted myself into a corner with that situation because it ended up being that they brought Matt Hamill to the table, and I said, ‘Can you guys not find somebody else?’ They basically said, ‘How many different people do we have to offer you before you say yes?’ I basically just said, ‘Take it to his camp, and if that’s something they want to do, then I’m game.’ That’s how we left it.”
“They ask me to do something, I do it”
The September loss to Belfort dropped Franklin’s record to just 3-3 in his past six fights. For a fighter that lost just twice in his first 25 trips to the cage, it was an unfamiliar feeling. “Losing is tough. It’s never easy to swallow a loss, but that’s what you have to do. You have to tell yourself, ‘I had a bad day or performance that day. I’m fighting top-level fighters all the time, and these are the kinds of things that happen.’ You just do what you can, and you move on.”
For Franklin, moving on means a run in the light heavyweight division. After a pair of catchweight contests at 195lb, he’s agreed with the UFC’s recommendation that he fight at 205lb. “Honestly, I believe that the 195lb spot is the best spot for me, but there is no 195lb weight class. I never requested either of those two 195lb fights. That was something that the UFC came to me about. They ask me to do something, I do it – that’s just how things go.
“If there was a 195lb weight class, that’s probably where I would be fighting. But it doesn’t exist, so rather than go back down to 185lb – which the UFC has expressed its disinterest in me fighting in that weight class at this point in time anyways – I’ll be fighting at 205lb.”
At middleweight, Franklin was among the biggest athletes in the division. That won’t be the case at light heavyweight, and Franklin said he’s working on tightening up his technical skills to make up for the lack of a size advantage. “Bulking up, you can focus on that and it can be completely separate from technique and all that, but when I go in the gym right now, I do a lot of drilling. I do some sparring and stuff like that, but I also just recently started rolling in a gi again. I hadn’t done gi jiu-jitsu for over ten years. A couple weeks ago I finally just put the gi on again. Jorge Gurgel had been on me and on me and on me about it. He kept giving me this lecture about how some of the best fighters in the world still practice with their gi on, so I decided to incorporate that one day a week. I’m just technically working on a lot of things like that and incorporating all that into my training. Rolling with the gi, for example, it’s just something that’s a little different. You almost find your passion in it again, like a desire to want to learn something new.”
A passionate Franklin could prove dangerous in the UFC’s highly competitive light heavyweight division, where he amassed a 2-1 record prior to the recent 195lb bouts. Franklin believes his mental focus will provide the key to his continued success. “I have to make sure that I fight smart and use my head. That’s one thing I’ve had going for me my entire career, and I have to make sure I don’t forget that. Otherwise, I just have to rely on my tenacity and my ability to fight. I just have to be smart and do my research ahead of time on each of these fights. I believe that I can make a run at the title at 205.”
If Franklin were to reach the top of the mountain in the UFC’s light heavyweight division, he would join MMA luminaries Randy Couture and BJ Penn as the UFC’s only champions to have held belts in multiple weight classes. It would prove an impressive accomplishment in what may already be a Hall of Fame career for Franklin, but he said he doesn’t let himself get caught up in his place in history. “Not to say that I don’t think about my legacy, because everybody at some point in their career at least thinks about it,” Franklin says. “It crosses my mind, but that’s not what drives me. I don’t spend my time thinking about how I’m going to be remembered as much as how I’m performing right now. If I take care of the now, how I’m remembered will take care of itself. But if I try to take care of how I’m remembered, the here and now are going to get all messed up because you’re focusing on all the wrong stuff.”
“I think about what’s next all the time”
Franklin turns 36 years old in October, and his current quest for a title may very well be his last. As a former UFC champion and established star in the UFC, Franklin has little left to prove in his fighting career. Ace has dabbled in a bit of acting (the movie Cyborg Soldier was released in 2008, while Hamill and The Genesis Code are currently in post-production), and he owns the clothing line American Fighter. While he’s not ready for the post-MMA chapter of his life, Franklin admits he’s beginning to plan for a life outside of
the cage.
“I think about what’s next all the time,” Franklin said. “That’s just natural for me. I’m one of those people that’s always planning and thinking about the future. I don’t really know what I want to do, but whatever it is that I do when I’m done fighting, I do believe that life is going to slow down tremendously for me.
“Last year, I flew 122,000 miles – I have medallion status with my airline and all that kind of stuff – but that’s one of those things. I’m constantly all over the place doing appearances and seminars and things for the military and the Disabled American Vets. I’m going to different hospitals, and I’m just constantly doing stuff. Nearly every time I take a trip, I’ll say to my manager, ‘Hey, we’re taking a trip here – let’s go to the V.A. hospital nearby or the base, something we can stop off at and poke our heads in and say hi to the military guys.’ I do so many different things that, like I said, I burn the candle at both ends of the stick.
“I guess one of my fears is that when I’m done fighting, I won’t know how to fill that. I guess that kind of concerns me a little bit. But I want to get to the point where I can get up and go have breakfast with my mom a couple of times a week and not have to worry about being in the gym every day and all that kind of stuff. That’s one thing that’s very appealing to me about film. I can get involved in a project, and then when that project is over I can take as much time off as I want until I get involved in another project.”
Fortunately, Franklin’s ultimate decision of when to walk away won’t be dictated by financial needs. The former public school teacher said he’s been frugal with his fight purses, and he’s already in a comfortable position. “I’m smart with the way that I spend my money. I don’t spend my money on a lot of frivolous things. I drive the same car that I bought when I graduated from college before I even started teaching. I still drive my same ’98 Wrangler. I don’t have a taste for $150,000 cars and stuff like that, which is fortunate for me because what I do have a taste for is doing things.
“I was going up to Seattle to train, and I called a couple of my friends and said, ‘Hey, are the ski lifts still running up there? What are the conditions like?’ I could look them up online, but you don’t really know unless you’re there. Everything was running, and I said, ‘I’ll bring my stuff up if you want to go.’ So I went snowboarding for a few days while I was up in Seattle for training because I wasn’t getting ready for a fight. When I’m done fighting, I want to be able to afford to do stuff like that.
“I want to be able to afford to go out to Salt Lake and do some snowboarding to keep myself busy. I went to the gym and did some rock climbing with a buddy of mine the other day – some indoor rock climbing. Those are the kind of things that I would like to have the money to do, to take those little adventure vacations when I retire. Because I don’t spend my money on a lot of expensive, stupid stuff, I’m hoping that will pan out for me.”
“I can’t think of anything else in this world I would rather do”
Franklin’s most recent bout was the main-event showdown with UFC Hall of Famer Chuck Liddell on in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. It’s a slot that was supposed to be occupied by Tito Ortiz, but when the ‘Huntington Beach Bad Boy’ was forced out of the contest and his coaching duties on The Ultimate Fighter 11, guess who the UFC brass asked to fill in? The quintessential company man, of course.
In terms of name recognition, the UFC could hardly have paired two bigger stars together, and the drawing power of the fighters undoubtedly contributed to the rapid sell-out (just 30 minutes, a UFC record) of the event, the promotion’s first-ever in British Columbia.
Liddell went into the matchup mired in a 1-4 slump and in desperate need of a positive result to stave off the retirement talk White has so frequently brought to the forefront. But as for Franklin, while a disappointing outing in September led some to believe Ace was on the tail end of his stellar career, he has yet to mentally reach the same conclusion. “I’m fighting. I’ve been fighting. I love to fight. I love to compete. This is what I love doing, and, quite honestly, if fighting was taken away from me today I can’t think of anything else in this world I would rather do. That’s kind of a scary thought for me because in two years or five years or ten years or however many years from now, I will retire and I can’t think of anything else I really would rather do than fight. I hope that by the time I retire, I hope that mentally I’m ready to hang up the gloves before I physically have to.”
From the main event of the finale of the first season of The Ultimate Fighter to headlining the UFC’s first-ever trips to Germany, Ireland, Northern Ireland and now British Columbia, Franklin has always been ready to step up when and where his employers needed. Now after finally taking some time for himself, Franklin is ready to return with a vengeance.
“To be real honest, I’m just excited to fight. Here’s the God’s honest truth: I sit back and I say to myself, ‘I’m not even a title holder, and I still get to be the main event on pay-per-view,’ and I thank God for that opportunity. At night, I can sit back and say, ‘You know what? Thank you God for the opportunity I have in life to do what I do.’
“I don’t let myself fret over all the small details of other things – not to say
that I don’t get caught up in small details like everybody else does, but
when I sit back and look at the big picture, that’s the big picture. The big picture is that I get to main-event big cards, and I’m a pay-per-view draw and I have a good fan-base. I’m grateful for all that. I don’t take any of that stuff
for granted.”
Making the cut
While Franklin’s current stint at 205lb was essentially mandated by the UFC, the former middleweight champ said he’s not complaining about no longer having to cut all the way down to 185lb. “I mean, 185lb is a real stretch for me to get down there,” he says. “I’m a big 185lb fighter. But 205lb, I don’t have to cut a whole lot of weight there, though I end up fighting guys that are a lot bigger than me – but that’s something that doesn’t really concern me. I’ll deal with that when it comes.”
In fact, so difficult is the cut to 185lb that Franklin said he’s not even sure he could still make it to the middleweight limit if he had to. “Honestly, I was cutting weight for the last fight I had at 195lb, and I thought to myself the whole time I was cutting weight, ‘How did I ever make 185?’ So, to be real honest with you, I’m not real sure that I would want to fight 185 again.”
Of course even after what seems like a strong statement, Franklin quickly falls back on his ‘company man’ attitude. “I don't know – I’m one of those people that if they said, ‘Look, man, we need you here; we need you there,’ I’d do what I needed to do.”
Same old car, same old Franklin
Many MMA fans may find it surprising that Franklin still drives the same vehicle he bought fresh out of college, but the former middleweight champ said he’s still happy with his 12-year-old Wrangler. “My whole life, my dream car was a Jeep – I’ve always wanted one. So when I graduated from college in 1998, I bought myself a 1998 Jeep. It was a demo used by the dealer, and it had a couple of thousand miles on it – I got a killer deal on it. I’ve lifted it and put a wrench on it, some bigger tires and tube fenders and a bunch of different stuff. I screw around with it all the time and whatnot, but that is my main mode of transportation.
“The only other car that I’ve purchased – of course the UFC gave me the Hummer for being the coach of The Ultimate Fighter 2, which I’ve since sold – but the only car that I’ve purchased personally, and you may have seen it in the Countdown show, is that 1972 Chevy pickup that I have up in Seattle, and it’s because I spend so much time up there that I need transportation. So I bought the car and I thought, ‘If I buy a car like that it will maintain most of its value, and I’ll be able to sell it to somebody for almost what I paid and not lose much.’ So for me, it was more of an investment mathematically than anything else – that’s the only car I’ve ever purchased, and it’s just because I’m up there so much that I needed it.”
Staying in touch with the fans
In a sport renowned for the accessibility and graciousness of its athletes, Franklin may be one of the most fan-friendly fighters in the game. While fans can reach Franklin on his Twitter account, (@FollowACE) he also frequently answers questions on his official website, www.RichFranklin.com, through quick ‘Hit and Runs’, as well as with ‘The Rich Franklin Equation’.
“I do like one ‘Hit and Run’ a week or something like that. A fan will write in, and it will be anything from just like, ‘What’s your favorite movie?’ to ‘What do you think about eating carbohydrates or eating after 7pm?’ I’ll answer these things, and then some of them are a little more technical, like about weight-cutting, and some of them are a little more lifestyle-oriented about things like nutrition and training.”
Franklin also goes a bit deeper with his ‘The Rich Franklin Equation’. “The Franklin equations are more about like philosophy on life – the fans seem to really, really enjoy those.” Past entries of ‘The Franklin Equation’ have included lessons on patience, the value of anticipation versus surprise and the need for breaking out of controlling circles.
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