Fighters Only

Issue 051

June 2009

Kenny Florian may be the number one UFC lightweight contender today but it’s not been an easy journey.

“If you’re not evolving and if you don’t continue to evolve you’ll lose eventually, it’s just a fact. That’s life. You have to evolve as a person. You have to evolve as a fighter. The species in general, if you don’t evolve you’ll die out.”

As fans of MMA we’re all familiar with evolution of both the sport and the fighters. Over the last few years, it’s been proven that you have to keep developing to stay in the top tier. Kenny Florian knows this and he’s devoted the past few years of his career into a perfect case study.

Since entering the first season of the Ultimate Fighter two weight categories above his fighting weight (and being known primarily as a ‘BJJ guy’) Florian has become one of the most well-rounded fighters in the lightweight division. He remembers his time in the now-famous house fondly.

“I have to be very, very grateful and thankful for that opportunity. It’s not something that I asked for; I was just at the right place at the right time and did it thinking ‘let’s try it out’ – on a whim. It’s done a ton of things for me. Going into the UFC with a following. You have the opportunity of people seeing you every week, and you get to the finals and, with that momentum, more people want to see what happens, and for me it’s been the evolution, you know?

“People constantly say to me, ‘I can’t believe how much better you’ve got as a fighter!’ I’m like, ‘When I was on the Ultimate Fighter I didn’t have any skills, I hope I got better!’ When you’re at zero you can only get better. People have seen me as an example of someone who has evolved – much like it’s done for Rashad Evans and Forrest Griffin. The first season was brutal; we were there for two months. Now they’re only there for 37 days. Seven days a week, two times a day we would train with no break. It was a brutal schedule and we had those cheesy challenges we had to do. It was an interesting process. It helped mold me into who I am today as a fighter and as a person.”

Unaware as we all were that the show would cause an MMA revolution, Florian’s views at the time are likely to be different to those who are entering the competition now.

“Back then I never saw it as a challenge. I thought it was the most fun. Even when I was in the house I thought it was fun. I didn’t have much experience, I was a huge underdog and I just saw it as a great opportunity to train with great people and to train with great coaches.”

Despite it being such a positive experience for him, just as MMA has evolved so has The Ultimate Fighter and not all the changes meet with Florian’s approval.

“We [Kenny and his brother Keith] watch it sometimes, but it’s more the ends we watch for the fight. There’s some aspects of the show that are still interesting but it’s gone down the drain a little with some of the antics of some of the fighters. It makes for good television I guess but it’s tough when we’re trying to get serious sponsors and network deals and here’s guys urinating on other people’s food – it’s like, ‘C’mon we want to sponsor these guys? Seriously?’”

Kenny Florian’s path to personal evolution has not been easy. Giving up his job as a senior project manager for a translation services company to pursue his dream was a risky step to take, especially taking into account the size of the MMA industry at the time, but the calling was too great for him to ignore.

“That’s why I appreciate it so much. I am lucky that I get a chance to do what I love. Not everybody has that luxury you know, and that’s just a fact of life. It was well worth the risk of leaving a job that was consistent to do something that I enjoy. Money that was coming in every month and that was paying the bills… MMA at the time – no one knew what it was. I was doing Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and I was losing money every time I did a tournament. I didn’t do it for the money, I did it for the love of it. I put many, many hours and a lot of money into my training. My intent wasn’t even to be an MMA fighter, it was to be a martial artist. To this day I’m not a fighter; I’m a martial artist.”

Hold on a second, not a fighter?

“I really consider myself a martial artist more than anything else. Fighters just want to go out there and they fight, and I don’t think there’s a lot of strategy with those kinds of people who think that. With martial arts, it’s about constant adapting and learning and loving what you do, and respect and honor, and I think a lot of that is lost.”

Investing in his own personal development is obviously paying dividends for Florian, who is the number one contender to the UFC lightweight title. He expands on why he thinks his approach is more rewarding than that of some of his peers.

“People want to believe that they’re unbeatable. People want to believe that they’re indestructible. And I know that I’m beatable and I know that I may not be the best fighter at 155. Except on fight night. What I do is I train myself to be unbeatable on fight night. You may be able to beat me one of these days, but not on fight night. On fight night I’m the best in the world and that’s what I train for.”

A cerebral fighter, he’s quick to point out his belief in a strong mind being key to his success and why this may be the undoing of other fighters. “I think that the mental part of the game is huge. I think a lot of people lack the emotional maturity to become successful in this sport either because they believe in their own hype or they’re so confident in themselves and they know everything, where I know I have so much more to learn. But going into that fight I know that I did everything possible to win, everything that I needed to do and I feel unbeatable, I feel great, I feel healthy, I feel confident. Everything gels into a perfect crescendo for me to go out there and put on a great performance.”

Mental focus and ‘cage maturity’ isn’t something that came overnight for the Bostonian. As with many of life’s most important lessons, it was a loss that highlighted the need for his improvement.

“It’s not something I’m not going to pretend that I knew it all along. It’s something that I’ve learned through trial and error. I learned the very hard way when I lost against Diego Sanchez. The mental preparation was something that I completely lacked and I remember warming up before that fight, hitting pads for 30 seconds and feeling completely gassed. Having a camera in my face, all these interview requests, having to do the drug test right before and all these things – it literally felt like everything was at a million miles an hour. I remember everyone saying, ‘Are you nervous?’ and I said, ‘No, not at all. I feel great.’ The day of the fight everything was on fast forward. All of a sudden I was in the cage and we were circling and it felt like we were circling for an hour. ‘Okay Kenny, let’s win the fight; let’s go Kenny, do something!’ and Diego, you could tell he was nervous ‘cos he was kinda circling me a bit and then he charged at me. By the time I knew I was in the fight he was punching me in the face. I was like, ‘Alright Kenny, let’s do something here,’ and I was exhausted and it was too late and that’s when I realized, ‘You know what? You need to be calm, you need to push yourself to your limits.’ That was kind of the initial development that started things towards where I am now.”

A strong mind however needs a strong body to back it up and it was another loss that taught him this. Florian’s only loss at lightweight came against Sean Sherk, a relentless and phenomenally conditioned athlete who outworked him over five rounds. Now that he’s working with acclaimed conditioning expert Kevin Kearns, Florian feels that he has this base covered too.

“I can be confident in the strength and conditioning aspect, and that’s the key. You can be a Ferrari but if there’s no gas in the tank the car doesn’t go anywhere. Post Sean Sherk that’s what I’ve been working on every single day I workout, whether I have a fight immediately coming up or not. Kevin Kearns does my strength and conditioning, and that’s been a huge advantage for me physically and also confidence-wise, knowing in my mind that I can push as hard as anybody out there and not gas.

“[The Sherk fight] pushed me to say, ‘You know what? You better start training like a professional athlete.’ I wasn’t at the time. I’d only be training when I had a fight. I wasn’t training all the time, I wasn’t training scientifically, I wasn’t eating well – I wasn’t doing a lot of things.”

So for someone who comes across as incredibly self-aware, how did he allow this to slip by?

“Some of it was partly ignorance, to be honest. Not knowing better. Not knowing what it takes and not having the resources. I didn’t have the money to look into it but after that fight, I thought, ‘You know what, I’m not making enough money but I have to invest anything that I have into the future if I want to become a good fighter.’ Get a conditioning coach, get a nutritionist and do everything possible just to get that advantage. Think about the Olympics where some guy wins by 0.001, just some minuscule amount that gets you the win.”

Taking his career seriously he acknowledges that using it to generate revenue for him is important, although not the most important reason for choosing the work that he does.

“Not every fighter’s like that but I think that you need to be, to basically get as many revenue streams as possible, especially early on... Everything I do I do it because I enjoy it. I have a school with my brother. I do it ‘cos we love it and that’s what we wanted to do for many, many years. I get to do seminars, I get to do a show for ESPN.com doing MMA live and, of course, fighting is my first priority. As soon as that peaks, when that and anything else is no longer fun, I’ll move onto something else. I feel real lucky and real blessed to get up every morning and get to train and to do something that I enjoy doing. As soon as that gets old, as soon it’s no longer fun then it’ll no longer be a part of my life.”

With the evolution of mind, body, skills and career well underway is Florian happy with his current state?

“I think so, there’s still a lot more for me to learn and improve on, and I know that for sure. There’s the smart people who learn from their mistakes and smarter people who learn from others’ mistakes. I’ve been trying to do a little bit of both you know? It’s a learning process.”

Rematches

With the only losses on his record in the Octagon being against Diego Sanchez, who has now moved down to lightweight, and Sean Sherk, would he welcome a rematch with either?

“Fighting a guy like Diego or fighting a guy like Sherk. I don’t feel it’s so much like revenge or anything like that. It’s more like I want to show them and everyone else how far I’ve come since those losses, and I love hearing when Sean Sherk or Diego Sanchez refer to those last fights – ‘I already beat Kenny Florian.’ Well that was then, this is now.”