Issue 054
September 2009
I always knew that [MMA] would be the biggest thing in the world when I’m an old man. But it’s happened even quicker than I thought it would,” says WEC featherweight champion Mike Brown.
Brown is on top of his game right now. Ranked number one in the world at 145lb, the 5’6” powerhouse has looked unstoppable since 2005. He’s racked up 11 straight wins in the last four years, two of which were over Urijah Faber – once when he relieved Faber of the belt in November of 2008, and again in a rematch in June of this year.
Winning the WEC title was the culmination of seven years of hard work, sacrifice and self-belief. Brown began fighting in 2001, and the road to the title was a rocky one. “[I started training] seriously in 2000 or something like that. It took me a year to get ready for my first fight. There was no money to be made, especially for the little guys. If you weighed 135 or 145lb, the opportunities didn’t exist until a couple of years ago,” says Brown. One look at Brown’s record confirms what he says. His resume includes many established 155lb fighters, including Genki Sudo, Hermes Franca, Joe Lauzon and Yves Edwards. The reason he fought against men much bigger than he was came down to one thing: necessity. “There were way more opportunities, and a lot more money involved. Nobody really cared about the 145lb fighters until the WEC came around. The UFC’s smallest weight was 155lb and for a time even they were looking to drop the weight class. It was a really tough time for the little guys.”
Because of this, the American Top Team-trained boxer-wrestler counts his blessings daily. The hard work has paid off, and he now sits comfortably atop the featherweight tree. At 33 years old, he’s finally making a living out of the fight game, something he struggled to do only a few years ago. With the lack of opportunities for a natural 145lb fighter, it took his renowned focus and a love for the sport to keep him going through those tough years prior to the WEC.
He first came upon MMA back in “’93 or ‘94” as a high-school wrestler. “When I turned it on [for the first time] I was like, this is amazing! How can more people not love this?” Right from that initial encounter, Brown began training. With a background in fighting on the floor, he and his friends started “playing around a little bit” with jiu-jitsu. “I would go to a seminar and then go and play around with my friends, some guy saw some videos and he would show something – it wasn’t really formal training but we were starting something.”
With little interest in school, yet a bright mind and aptitude for the sciences, Brown continued to wrestle into college, but not to the extent that many MMA fighters have. Brown thinks he wrestled maybe 20 college matches during his time at the NCAA Division III level school Norwich University, in Northfield, Vermont. Though Brown loved the physical aspect of wrestling, he never thought it would continue past college so worked towards a degree in biology with the grim realization that the world of work lay ahead of him. “I’ve never actually worked in the field, so I don’t know if I’d be considered a biologist – I just liked science when I was in school, and I was pretty good at it. I was just kind of winging it, nothing interested me. I mean it was a little interesting, but what I really loved was fighting and wrestling. But I didn’t know or think you could make a career out of it, I just thought you worked a job you didn’t love, I just thought that’s the way the world worked. That’s how my parents were, I hated school and they were like, ‘It gets worse, I hate my job!’ I thought that’s how life was.”
Luckily for Brown, life has taken a completely different path since he left the halls of academia. “When I graduated college I thought, 'I’m gonna have one fight then I’ll get a career in my field.' One fight led to another, and another, and another. I’ve always had small jobs, making enough money to get by and pay the bills. I did it because I loved it – it isn’t really working if you love what you do. I was doing it for free because I love it. I just feel fortunate now that it actually pays the bills.”
Brown has gone from the days of fighting on small shows to headlining an event in front of 13,000 people. “It’s crazy,” he says. “I never thought it would get this big. It’s a dream, I never expected anything like this. It’s really a dream.”
The tremendous growth of the WEC over the last couple of years (prompted by Zuffa’s purchase of the promotion in December 2006) has seen the premier platform for fighters under 155lb taken to a whole new level. With regular TV time on Versus and growing rumors the promotion will soon hold their first pay-per-view event, things can only get better for Brown and co. “I think it’ll happen, they’ll go pay-per-view eventually. I think they’re getting more and more viewers, more people are becoming interested in the lighter weights; it’s an exciting show. All the WEC shows are great.”
With a raft of dynamic, motivated challengers rising through the ranks, Brown’s going to have to watch his back. The belt he wears around his waist means he is the number one target for every aspiring featherweight in the world, and he knows it. “There are a bunch of guys coming up through the WEC right now, you’ve got [Jose] Aldo, Wagnney Fabiano, Josh Grispi, there is a lot of talent right there, knocking on the door. I just have to stay sharp and worry about them one at a time,” he says. Brown anticipates making a defense of his title before the end of the year, although he’s not bothered by who it may be. “All I care about is having big fights that the fans are interested in. If they want me to fight new guys I’ll fight new guys, if they want me to fight Faber I’ll do it a third time. That’s what it boils down to, it’s entertainment, you know?”
There would be a number of 145lb’ers currently waiting in the wings who would be very upset if Faber was given a third opportunity to fight Brown though. The champ took Faber clean off his feet with a huge right hook in the first fight, ending the contest inside the first round, and fought a gritty five-round trench war in their second match-up, out-pointing Faber on all three judges’ scorecards. “I was the underdog in that first fight for sure. Not many people had seen me fight, I hadn’t had a lot of TV fights, but the guys at ATT knew what I was capable of. I’m sure he was a little surprised.”
With the belt around his waist and the support of his training partners at American Top Team, Brown looks set to dominate the featherweight division for a long time. Like he says, “I hit hard, I can submit guys, I can also grind out a decision if I have to. I’m not an easy guy to beat.” Nobody would disagree.
Fighting Like A Family
The Florida-based American Top Team gym is one of the most respected and powerful teams in MMA. Mike Brown gives us an insight into life inside ATT.
“It’s very high level, there are so many great guys who come there and train. We have great coaches, Ricardo Liborio, Howard Davis Jr, you can’t help but get good. All you have to do is show up and you’ll get good. We’re successful because it’s a tight team. Everyone’s always trying to help the other guys, everyone pulls together. It’s like a close family. That’s when you’re fighting as a team, and not just as individuals with training partners. I think this stems from the coaches, they’re so welcoming and friendly, it just trickles down through the guys. We just have a great chemistry going. I’ve been there since 2005. I think I’m 12-1 since I joined the team.
“[The WEC] are hesitant to bring teammates in where guys won’t fight each other, they don’t want to run into problems where you’ve got two guys who are the best and they need to fight but they won’t. It’s not so bad in the upper weight divisions, but at 135 or 145lb there aren’t that many world-class organiz ations to split yourself up into. Everyone wants the WEC, if you’re 155lb or higher there is the UFC, DREAM, Sengoku, Strikeforce, there are opportunities to spread guys out. But if you’re 135 or 145, pretty much everyone wants to go to the WEC.”
