Issue 032

December 2007

He is the model for young MMA fighters looking to succeed and is the poster boy for a new generation of fans. Smart, personable and good-looking, Roger ‘El Matador’ Huerta has captured the attention of audiences across the world thanks to his energetic fighting style. 

While some of his status can undeniably be attributed to his appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated, one of America’s biggest magazines, Huerta’s rise through the lightweight ranks is all his own doing. The 24-year-old fighter has overcome adversity, numerous challenges and a slew of tough competitors to become one of the UFC’s brightest stars. 

Even though he has only had five fights in the Octagon, the all-rounder has his eyes on the top prize. “There’s one goal, and that’s to become world champion by the time I’m 25,” he says. He hasn’t got long, considering his 25^th birthday will be in May next year. “Saying that, I’ll take my time and if I’m 25 and I keep winning and performing the way I perform, I’ll be asking for it then. For now I’ll roll with it and do what the UFC wants, whatever they put in front of me. I’m in no rush.” 

At 13-1-0 (his sole loss came by way of a dislocated jaw in the finals of a one day eight-man tournament back in 2004) Huerta cut his teeth in many underground and regional shows before exploding on to the international stage. “I fought in everything – Extreme Challenge, Superbrawl, FFC, IFC, XFO, and now the UFC. I’ve been blessed that I’m part of the UFC now.” 

Beginning his career in 2002, Huerta has seen the sport change drastically since he first started out, but for him the only real difference is the level of exposure the fighters enjoy, something he knows all too well. “I started in 2002. It wasn’t as big as it is now, but the level was there though. You’d fight talented guys, and that’s the same thing. The only thing was we didn’t have the exposure, and everyone on the outside had a misconception of what the sport was about. 

“What people didn’t realise was that was that the UFC is UFC, but what happens in UFC is MMA. You’d tell people you were a MMA fighter, they didn’t understand what that is. People think that what we do is UFC fighting, but it isn’t, its actually MMA. Either way, everyone is getting educated and learning more, and of course the sport is evolving, and we’re evolving with it.” 

With regards to the SI front cover, Huerta was understandably blown away to see his face on the front cover of the United States’ biggest weekly sports magazine. “Yeah that was pretty intense. I couldn’t believe it. I was shocked, really shocked. I rode my bike for 45 minutes and then ran, my adrenaline was going, I had to calm down.”

“My buddies who I wrestled with in college, they teased me like all buddies do, but at the same time they were like ‘man, congratulations’. They’ve always seen how hard I work and they’ve been there with me. Also my family, they were like ‘wow, that’s awesome’. It wasn’t the UFC, it was Sports Illustrated who chose the cover. I felt honoured and blessed.”   

A devout Christian, Huerta makes sure to keep his feet on the ground, and his religion helps him do just that, especially when he has the critics to contend with. “The critics love you or hate you in the sport, for me I just go with the flow and I talk to God every day,” he says. “If people underestimate me, then fine, keep doing that.” 

If you’re wondering whether without the cover ‘El Matador’ would be just another 155lb’er struggling to make a name for himself, Huerta disagrees. “Its just a cover, that’s all it is. I would have kept fighting the same way, I’m always hungry and I have a lot of goals. Being on the cover of Sports Illustrated has made no difference on the way I train and how much I want it.” 

It is safe to say that since Huerta made his first appearance in the Octagon against Jason Dent (a three round war in September 2006 that many considered fight of the night) he piqued the interest of those watching, especially the powers that be in the UFC. Given a series of increasingly difficult opponents, he has proved his abilities against champion wrestlers and word class jiu-jitsu specialists. 

His last five fights, three of which he finished inside the distance, have given an idea of what he is capable of, something he puts down to his intense training. “I have an amazing conditioning coach by the name of Justin Hagen, and my MMA trainer Dave Menne, those two have been there for me and they’re not only my trainers, they’re like my family. Justin sets up my whole schedule in the run up to a fight. We do a lot of metabolic training, a lot of weight lifting, we do a lot of core conditioning. I go to Dave’s to do my MMA training, which is boxing, wrestling or jiu-jitsu. Every day is different, it might be on the bike, or I might run up fourteen flights of stairs up and down, up and down with dumbbells. I put in about six to eight hours a day training.”   

Training six to eight hours a day is equivalent to working a full-time job, and I asked if he ever feels the way some of us do when faced with the prospect of a day’s hard graft. With typical enthusiasm, he replied; “I love it man, I love challenging myself and I love training, I love it. I love waking up in the morning and feeling healthy. I love getting all those bad toxins out of my body and I love sweating, I love working hard, and the thing is, we’re always having fun.

“My trainer always says to me, ‘nothing tastes better than a six-pack’ [Laughs]. We work hard and we have a lot of fun with it. I just love challenging my body, I love training. There’s only one thing I don’t like and that’s making weight. I love food and I love eating! The fighting to me is easy, once I get in the Octagon, that’s the enjoyable part.” 

Though he was born in LA, Huerta’s family moved to Dallas at an early age. Coming from a broken home and with a father who was heavily into drugs, Huerta was adopted at the late age of 19 by his high school English teacher. Moving to Austin, Texas, he considers the city home even though he now resides in Minneapolis. Having gone through many hardships in his earlier years, Huerta is keen to give something back. “I have big goals; I would love to start a foundation or community service for kids, something where people can donate money and help out, and somewhere where I can come in and help. I’d like to be some sort of role model – I don’t party, I don’t drink, I do hang out with my friends, I do go out, but that’s it, I have good intentions every time. My whole life I’ve grown up with a conscience, and to me if there is a way of giving something back, that would be the biggest thing for me.”

Goals are something Huerta places a lot of emphasis upon. Whether it is the lightweight title or his plans for a foundation, he won’t let anything get in the way of his plans, and unfortunately, that also means he has little time for relationships – all the more surprising considering the amount of attention he has been getting from the ladies! He laughs as he tells me, “It’s funny, I kind of gave up on any relationships and gave myself completely to the UFC, my whole time and everything. My number one girlfriend is the UFC, it’s my number one priority at the moment, it’s my job.”

“When I started doing this, I was in relationships that weren’t in with the kind of lifestyle that I had. It become stressful, I’d have to do my training and I didn’t have time to be able to give all of my love and affection to that person. It wasn’t that I had to make a choice, but I felt that being in these relationships was a lot of stress and was taking away time and energy that could be spent on my career. With that said, all my love and the extra time goes to my family, they get all that love and affection because they’re been there since the beginning. They’ve always stuck with me through thick and thing, no questions asked, and they’ve always supported me. With the ladies, it’ll come around some day.” 

At only 24 Huerta’s future seems bright, and who knows, if he does indeed get the title around his waist, it could become a lot brighter. Until that day, he intends to stay focussed. “More than anything, I want to become the world champion and I think about that a lot. I think about that day, and how nice it would feel to be the world champion. I tell that to myself – ‘what do we want?’” He smiles to himself as he answers his own question. “The world championship.”