Issue 064

July 2010

People often tell me I have the best job in the world. While it is cool as hell, I don’t want to rub their faces in the fact I get to live and breathe MMA and get paid for it (something most people would dream of), so I’ll often downplay it by saying “Ah well, you know – it’s still just a job like any other.” But the one thing I never hesitate to tell people that I love about my job is the people I get to meet. 

Fighters are a strange and intriguing bunch, and they’re a damn sight more interesting than athletes from most other sports. Show me how many track and field stars have checkered pasts. Point out to me the racing drivers who literally fought their way out of poverty and into the public consciousness. To me, fighters are the most intriguing subjects because you never know what to expect. Sometimes they’ll be eloquent, articulate and engaging; occasionally, they’ll be monosyllabic, difficult and even confrontational. 

In the world of sports journalism, interviewees are most often athletes first and people second. In MMA, all bets are off as to what you’ll find. Some of them behave like professional athletes, full of carefully considered sound bites and meticulously crafted answers designed to convey information while protecting and disguising their true personality. 

On the other hand, some are as up front in conversation as they are in the cage. Take Dana White, for example, he’s not a fighter but he doesn’t mince his words. There are no tricks there, no politician’s ducking and diving of the questions posed – you ask a question, you get an answer (unless he doesn’t want to tell you, in which case he’ll let you know). 

The other great thing about fighters is that you rarely have to navigate layers of management, agents or publicists to get a quote or two – they’re quite often a phone call or text message away. One journalist was left speechless upon meeting Tito Ortiz and asking him for an interview at a later time. When the writer asked Tito for his manager’s details, Tito laughed and simply gave him his direct line. 

Some fighters are a pleasure to interview – funny and always full of quote-worthy material – whereas some are a chore, spewing barely coherent answers. But with a little skill, a good interviewer can bring the best out of even the toughest of talkers. 

There are many styles of interviewing, and they depend almost entirely on the journalist in question. A laid-back guy in real life is unlikely to fire hard-hitting questions at their subject, while a go-get ‘em reporter would find a deep, character-driven feature interview a struggle. I interview a lot of fighters as part of my job, but I also read and watch many, many more. I enjoy it because a good interviewer can bring out different sides to a fighter’s character, ones that you may not have seen before. 

Two interviewers stand out for me for their skill, adaptability and ability to deliver the goods. First up is our own Gareth A Davies, a veteran reporter with many years of experience in talking to everyone from prize fighters to Olympic medalists. Gareth’s friendly, intuitive and probing style allows him to really delve into a fighter’s psyche, as we’ve seen thanks to the excellent feature articles he writes for this very magazine. His flowing, fluid style of interviewing means he reaches layers many writers miss out on. 

Another interviewer I love to watch is Ariel Helwani, the face of AOL’s MMAFighting.com. An excellent reporter with a bloodhound nose for a good story, Ariel’s video interviews are a pleasure to watch. His repartee with the subjects means he can get the best out of them even though they’re often at their most defensive (get someone to stick a camera and a light in your face, see how comfortable you feel). 

There really is an art to interviewing, and these two are both experts. They understand that getting a good interview isn’t as simple as sticking a microphone or camera in someone’s face and expecting them to give you great answers. To get a successful interview, you must train, prepare thoroughly, and enter with a game plan (yep, much like a fight). That’s because conversation can sometimes turn into verbal sparring – I ask a question, my ‘opponent’ counters with an answer that may force me to readjust and attack with another. 

As I said, interviewing fighters is the part of my job I enjoy the most. I’ve had some truly excellent and memorable interviews. Forrest Griffin remains my favorite, although he maintains I only got him to say the things I did by taking advantage of him when he was dehydrated from weight cutting and not in a fit state of mind. My second most memorable was having Wallid Ismail talk at (not with) me in broken English in a hotel room full of beefy Brazilians at one o’clock in the morning. 

I’ve had my share of horror stories too, though. I seriously thought Amar Suloev was going to kill me, and the first time I spoke to Chuck Liddell he barely looked up from his BlackBerry – something I didn’t let him get away with the next time we met, when he told me some unrepeatable things that I still laugh about to this day. What was it? I can’t say – ‘off the record’ means off the record!