In the gym

Mike Brown is training hard to defend the WEC featherweight title he took from Urijah Faber. Although the American Top Team (ATT) have yet to win a UFC title, there is no shortage of gold in their trophy cabinet and plenty more prospects coming through the ranks. Until Ben Saunders was injured, ATT had fighters in all seven UFC and fight night events scheduled at the time of writing.

Thiago Alves has been announced as Georges St-Pierre’s next opponent, but until then Brown leads the ATT charge on the rankings. One wonderful aspect about going to ATT is that you can simply allow your tape recorder to run and enjoy the 18°C Miami temperature, leaving the fighters and coaches to chat away.

Din Thomas: “American Top Team is, in my opinion, a unique blend of professional fighters and professional coaches that came together to take over the world of MMA. There is a lot of Brazilian jiu-jitsu influence, but we still have guys from wrestling, kickboxing backgrounds, and any facet of fighting you can think of. In the beginning it was a lot different because there wasn’t a lot of guys, maybe ten fighters. Back then, the training was really hard and rough because there wasn’t that many of us. It was a trial and error thing where we were trying to prove something at the time. As times changed we got a lot more guys and a lot more knowledge, and the training got a little more efficient because of the trainers. They cleaned things up and saw the errors we were making.”

Parrumpinha: “After leaving Brazilian Top Team, Liborio created American Top Team with Dan Lambert. He is the mentor of everything, the one that created everything, but he needed someone to help him out for the BJJ part. Liborio invited me to come in 2002 and I’ve been teaching BJJ for MMA, not just for self-defence. I’ve been training guys like Mike Brown, Pitbull [Alves], [Marcus] Aurelio, JZ, Luigi [Fiovaranti], Steve Bruno and Cole [Miller].”

Thomas: “It has taken some time to get some champions in bigger organisations, but now we have this team of monsters that train together and prepare for fights.”

Gesias ‘JZ’ Cavalcante: “When a fighter wins a belt everyone deserves a piece of that belt. We fight together; we cry together.”

Mike Brown: “Everybody has a scheduled class everyone is supposed to go to, usually at noon. You can’t say, ‘I’m good at wrestling so I’m not going to go.’ You don’t need that, but you are there to help people out. Even though Pitbull is great at kickboxing, if he doesn’t go to kickboxing he isn’t helping people out. If there is something you need to work on you usually do it at night.”

Thiago Alves: “Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays is sparring. Mondays and Wednesdays is the wrestling training in the morning. I do conditioning training on different days, striking training on different days, and jiu-jitsu training on different days.”

Brown: “Even if there were no coaches there is so much talent in that room you are going to get good. Now there are always guys getting ready for fights, almost every weekend. Sometimes when a bunch of guys fight, the couple weeks after there are only ten or 15 guys at practice as opposed to 40. At a regular gym it would still be a great day, with ten to 15 great guys there as opposed to 40 pro fighters. If you look at 155lb you have Aurelio, Yves, Masvidal, JZ and Rafael Diaz all in one room.”

Alves: “Every time somebody has a fight coming up it is important everybody gets together and tries to help that guy. There is no ‘me’ or ‘him’, just ‘us’. When you step in the Octagon you don’t step in against me, you step in against all my friends. Once you know you trained really hard and did everything you could, and you got a great camp behind you and all your friends have got your back, it makes it so much easier. It motivates you even more and you feel you don’t want to stop until you don’t have nothing left.”

Cole Miller: “I’m encouraged when those guys show up to training. It’s not like ‘I’m going to get tapped out or get my ass beat’, I’m thinking ‘let me go get my guard passed a couple times and get my ass beat’. If you train with blue belts every day the highest you might ever get is purple belt. If these guys pass their knowledge to me it raises my game up, and if my game gets raised then that brings their game up a notch. That is what makes ATT so special: we are a real family working towards the same goals as one unit. I felt like I fit in right away and was part of the family in a couple months.”

Jorge Santiago: “You see some guys in BJJ, like five-time world champions, when they take off the gi they don’t do as good. Because of Ricardo Liborio and Parrumpinha they make the right game for no gi. Today I don’t do the same positions I did in gi and we adjust the game for no gi. In the Pan-American games and world championships, two points or three points to pass guard, no big deal. We don’t fight to score points in MMA, so the main thing we have in mind is to stay on top, use technique to stay in good position and, if you have a chance, submit.”

‘Conan’ Silveira: “You just have to be able to mix it. I don’t think the word is ‘adapting’ jiu-jitsu to MMA, I think it is ‘adjusting’. In general it is not about using one style, it is about mixing everything together and being able to reach for that tool when you need it inside the ring.”

Brown: “The best attribute ‘Libo’ has is he is really open-minded, not like the guys who think they know everything. There are guys who are blue belts that have a move they are pretty good at and Libo will be like ‘come here and show us’. He does it all the time. When it is time for striking he pulls in Coach Howard or Ouali. He knows Ouali knows more about kickboxing and he isn’t insecure about it.”

Yves Edwards: “Ricardo is really a master fighter. Everybody thinks Liborio is a black belt, and that is true, but he knows so much about everything else; he completely understands MMA. He puts together great game-plans.”

Howard Davis Jr: “When I first came down here I really had no idea what MMA was. It took me a little time to understand the ground game and how to manipulate the stand-up. I’m a good observer, like I taught myself how to box by watching Muhammad Ali. I just watched and learned and every now and then asked a question. There are a few things you have to adapt, because if they come from wrestling you have to change a few things and from Muay Thai you have to change a few things. Some guys will hold their right foot out too far to the right, so I have to have them keep it in. Wrestlers, even if they are orthodox, their stance is a southpaw stance and their stand-up is no good, so I have to switch them around from southpaw to orthodox, which is very difficult.”

Edwards: “I’ve been training with boxers for a long time and Howard Davis Jr has a slightly different take. He has some good stuff; he knows exactly what he is talking about. His style suits me very well and I like trying to move into it. I’m just trying to get closer to the way he coaches it. He looks for what you are good at and what will suit you and tries to get that to fit into you, but he doesn’t force anything on you. All the coaches are like that: they don’t make you develop into what they want you to be, they help you develop into what you are going to be.”

Brown: “‘Conan’ has been helpful too, especially with the team growing. You have these huge practices now with so many people sparring Liborio’s eyes can’t be everywhere. Now you have another good, strong coach there helping you out. He is great because he is stern, he doesn’t mess around. If you are slacking he’ll tell you to pick it up, and people listen.”

Silveira: “I think discipline is so important if one wants to achieve a goal. If you want to be here for fun you are in the wrong place. If you want to be a champion you are in the right place. Not only as a coach but as a fighter I think it is a major thing. If you don’t have discipline forget about it. It is not about me teaching you, it is about how are you going to use it. Yes, I am very strict when it comes to training, responsibility and discipline.”

Santiago: “After a while we got Mohammed Ouali, who is a five-time world Muay Thai champ, as coach.”

Brown: “It was a big jump in everybody’s kickboxing level. Some guys were going to Holland for a while doing an exchange thing, like JZ did it and Jorge Santiago did it. He does an hour straight working with you, holding pads and even shooting at you. It isn’t traditional Muay Thai where you are standing all the way on the back foot for four kicks in a row; it is really geared for MMA.”

Alves: “Darrell Gholar helped me out a lot. He is a great wrestling coach. He is always pushing us to the limit and is part of the family.”

Chris Manuel: “He has been here about five or six months and already had a pretty big effect. We were all known for our jiu-jitsu and our striking has improved, but wrestling we needed the most, the last piece of the puzzle. He has fought MMA before so he knows the different settings and what to expect.”

Darrell Gholar: “I was at Brazilian Top Team from 2000 until 2007. I got back and these guys needed a wrestling coach who had experience in MMA. They had a couple of Florida All-American wrestlers, but a lot of wrestling doesn’t transfer to MMA. In a cage the boundaries are more than imaginary, and you have to work there either to defend or for offence. They’d say ‘I like this move’ but it didn’t work in these parameters. You do shots in different attacks, can get kneed or get knocked out. There are certain wrestling moves, some tricks, that would allow me take down opponents who were better boxers or jiu-jitsu guys. I threw out what was not going to benefit me. One thing I learned is that it is more mental than physical, and I bring those aspects to the game.”

Alves: “We are number one not because of one guy, but because we are a group. If you look at it, we are a pretty young team. We started six years ago and look what we accomplished. We have no UFC belts yet but it is going to come. We are just going to keep working hard, pushing hard, and we are going to get there.”

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