Issue 017
September 2006
When former UFC heavyweight champion Josh Barnett was stripped of his title in acrimonious circumstances, many remarked his professional career was all but over, but Barnett followed his heart and reinvented himself in Japan as one of the most popular MMA fighters in the world. With entertaining his fans his priority, Barnett brings a little colour to the ring and with his personality and look he is a big hit with the Japanese audiences. In one of the most in-depth profile interviews Fighters Only has ever published, Jim Burman spoke with his old acquaintance and found him, as ever, in good spirits.
‘Call at about 8pm pacific time’ was the message. ‘Great’ I thought, ‘that’ll be about 4 am here then’. Am I going to be able to keep it together that early in the morning to get a decent interview? Within seconds of making the call I needn’t have worried. With his northwestern voice bouncing off numerous satellites Josh Barnett’s infectious enthusiasm for, well pretty much everything, had rubbed off on me and like a shot of espresso I was wide awake and we were underway.
It’d been four years since I spoke to him last. Josh’s career has become increasingly unusual over the years but speaking to him it began to make more sense. After noticing a boom in popularity when he was KO’d in his fight with Pedro Rizzo at UFC 30 he went on a three-fight winning streak eventually besting then heavyweight champion Randy Couture in a way that had never been seen before. Controversy followed however, when an NSAC drug test came back positive for anabolic steroids and a resulting suspension by the athletic commission, stripping of the UFC title and a spell in MMA wilderness followed. Looking back at that time he comments “It was unfortunate in my opinion that things had to go the way they did. I look back on it, I made some bad choices with what I let my manager do and say as far as my career was concerned. Even though they may be another person they’re speaking on your behalf, so if they’re upsetting people then it’s gonna come back on you as fighter. I was just a really young kid and very upset that I always felt that the UFC wasn’t interested in promoting me the same as they were promoting other fighters and I felt as if people didn’t understand why I was the number one contender for the belt because of that.”
“Secretly I always wanted to go to Japan anyway,” he admits before conceding “I just really wish things hadn’t got so terrible with the UFC, that things got so ugly. I would’ve liked to have done things differently but I don’t regret that it did happen because it took me to a place where I’m very, very happy”
Josh was stripped of his belt and there was widespread speculation as to what move he would make next. His love of all things Japanese was well known but a move into pro wrestling was something that very few could have predicted. When talking about whether taking his career to Japan was always a priority he comments “Well, it was always a priority partially ‘cos of my love of Japan and the fighting and the fighters over there that really helped inspire me to go with this career. I always dreamed of fighting over in Japan and traveling their circuits and have been a big fan of Japanese pro wrestling. Even the first time I started fighting out of AMC I always wanted to ply my wares in Japan and see how things would turn out for me and experience that.”
Even though he didn’t make his professional MMA debut in Japan until May 2003 (against Jimmy Ambriz) he’d visited the country long before “I went over in ’99 as a corner man for the last UFC Japan and I absolutely loved it there, and I really wanted to fight there even more. I just didn’t know how it was going to come about”. It would be a long three years later when the opportunity presented itself. “When I did win the (UFC) title one of my thoughts was that PRIDE would be able to pay more than the UFC and therefore I would go over there, but that was a really ill-conceived plan” he admits, laughing. “That certainly ended up creating a really bad scenario. It was a bad situation but there were doors open for a lot of opportunities in Japan which is where I had wanted to go anyways.”
When I question him on his move into Japanese pro wrestling it turns out it was far from being the calculated career move that it seemed, and in retrospect, he admits that it was more of an accident. “Actually I went over there as Bob (Sapp’s) trainer, and I helped get him ready for a bunch of fights and at the time I was trying to procure some fights for myself, but a lot of the big organizations I would have fought for – because they were trying to get their sanctioning in Nevada – they didn’t really wanna go against Nevada’s decision.” The can of worms that had been opened back in the USA had followed Josh all the way across the Pacific to Japan.
“I almost fought in DEEP, against Takehashi, because I expressed to them that I would like to fight and he could be a good opponent. There were some things that had floated around and I was trying to fight but in the end, it came down to an email to Tsuyoshi ‘TK’ Kohsaka.” His close friend and sparring partner was working in New Japan Pro Wrestling, Japan’s premiere professional wrestling promotion. “I asked him if he could get me in touch with the people he was working with, and from that I got an email back from New Japan, they flew me down to Santa Monica to meet with some bigwigs and from there they hatched the whole idea of me making my debut fighting Yuji Nagata for the IWGP heavyweight belt [pro wrestling’s top prize] in the Tokyo Dome in front of 50,000 fans!”
True to form though, Josh’s jinx seemed to have stuck and things didn’t go exactly to plan: “It was amazing and it was great and I wasn’t exactly nervous because of the performing I’d done in the ring, but I’d caught chicken pox unbeknownst to me and I came down with it two days before my match. It was a trying time,” he says laughing. “But you know what they say, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It was a really crappy plane ride home!”
By the time Josh made his debut in PRIDE he was already a fan favorite. Japanese pro wresting doesn’t hold the same stigma that it’s American counterpart does and there is a crossover audience between ‘puroresu’ and MMA. When it came to building his career and persona with the Japanese fans, the effect of his time with NJPW is undeniable. There were other benefits though too. When asked about it he says “It really helped my career a ton, and this may seem strange to others but it helped my fighting a lot too because even though I was over there pro wrestling all the time I was training every day. We would go over to the arena three hours before and a bunch of guys who’d made the Japanese Olympic wrestling team, and have trained in jiu-jitsu on the side, they were training catch wrestling and we’d wrestle and work out. Guys like Minowa Suzuki from Pancrase, he was going on tours with us and it was awesome! We were having great workouts and I was taking fights at the end of tours too.”
Although it’s arguable that Josh could have carved out a permanent niche in pro wrestling he’s clear that his intention was always to return to MMA. “I never intended to solely pro wrestle. I made the decision that I’d fight and I’d pro wrestle at the same time, which is an incredibly hard thing to do but I felt that if I was going to make an example of what I think pro wrestling is then that’s what it came down to. The easiest way to go about things is not always the best way to get your point across.”
Reflecting on the time as a whole with NJPW he adds “It was a great experience, I got to see all of Japan going from one end of the island to another, and it was great experience and I met a lot of great guys. I’ve taken a lot of that, from what I learned over there about performance and working the crowd and just being in the ring, and brought it to my fighting game.”
Japanese crowds are known for their love of the performance (and performer) over the result, an idea that Josh has his own ideas on. “I think that when you talk about a true professional, if you’re a pro-MMA guy or a pro wrestler, people don’t need to know the entire reality of who you are and the trials and tribulations you go through in regular life. Everybody’s got their own difficulties to deal with; everybody’s got their rent to pay, their car, their insurance. They get in a car wreck or a loved one passes away. Hey, that life is there and it’s always gonna be there but when people come to watch us they want to see something that gonna take their stress away from all that crap that they’re gonna have to deal with outside the arena. They just wanna let themselves go and enjoy themselves and see superheroes in the ring and people that are larger than life. Being a real professional you need to create something that differentiates you and makes you an individual from all the other guys out there that are doing the exact same thing that you are. If they’re gonna remember you they’re gonna have to have a reason and you wanna give them something to entertain them. Be it for them to hate you, to have someone to vent their frustration out against, or for them to love you to put their dreams and hopes behind. It’s incredibly important to me; I think it's part of the whole package.”
Josh’s passion for pro wrestling is incredibly apparent and he has stated in the past that without it there would be no MMA “It all started way back with catch as catch can and they were putting on events doing shoots [Non-fixed matches- Ed] usually not with strikes but with pinfalls and submissions. This was the next level for a wrestler, where the top guys could go. They even had a guy like Danny Hodge who was a boxing champion and a wrestling champion and he himself even said ‘the wrestler beats the boxer every time’ and those guys were considered the toughest men in the world.” Pro wrestling changed though and gradually the matches moved more towards sports entertainment, with fewer and fewer shoots and more works (fixed matches).
“In the 70’s Karl Gotch came to Japan and started training them [the pro wrestlers] in his style of Lancashire catch wresting. He trained those guys to be fighters first and that is the root of guys like Funaki [founder of Pancrase], Suzuki, Takada and Sakuraba. Through that Sayama went on to create Shooto, and some of these other guys went on to create other fight leagues long before the UFC came around. It’s about entertaining a crowd but it’s also about having the toughest guys out there.”
When Josh made his showing at Pancrase’s 10th-anniversary show and took the King of Pancrase title from Yuki Kondo, he was determined to prove pro wrestling’s prowess and managed to perform a rolling German suplex on Kondo on the way to victory. “It was huge,” he says enthusiastically. “It’s a giant highlight that everybody loves to watch and that match in itself was incredible for the fans. I had such a great time, they really loved it and I was just so happy to bring them that sort of entertainment. I’m trying to win but at the same time, I’m trying to show the most exciting fight that I can show. I wanted to suplex Alexander [Emelianenko] in this last fight, he just happened to really put his weight in a direction that would keep me from getting around his back to his hip but it didn’t stop me from taking him down.”
Two years of hard work building up his career finally found Josh making his big return to MMA in Pride 28 against Mirko Cro Cop. Just 46 seconds into the bout Josh had to submit to a shoulder injury that required surgery and would keep him away from the PRIDE ring for almost a full year. “When I caught his high kick I had a hold of it in my left arm, and when I pushed him over his leg and my arm was tangled up. It pulled it down to my side and it laid the wrist out like a top wrist lock and popped [the shoulder] right out of its socket before I even hit the mat. It was really unfortunate, a bit of a fluke accident.”
This was more than just another fight though, as Cro Cop at the time was known as the ‘Puroresu Hunter’ (pro wrestler hunter) amongst Japanese fans due to his wins over recent opponents. “I hated it, I was in great shape and I was ready to go and I knew that night that he wasn’t going to beat me. It just killed me, I really wanted to beat him especially because of that name. I felt like shit and it was a huge setback. I lost to Pedro Rizzo and that sucked, but that sucked even more”
His next fight was a rematch with Cro Cop with Josh appearing to run out of steam but still go the distance. In the post-fight interview Josh appeared disgusted with his performance and it seemed to be a make-or-break time in his career. “I had to make a decision, I was at a crossroads of ‘Am I gonna do what it takes to take care of my career or am I going to stay in the same ever-rotating shit situation I was in up in Seattle.’ I wasn’t getting any training, I was taking care of myself and there wasn’t an environment there to help me succeed anymore. I was already depressed from being out for so long with a tore up shoulder. I tried to get ready for that fight because I wanted to get back into the ring but my body wasn’t ready to push it to that level, hurting both my ankles and hurting my back pretty bad (prior to the fight). I was in the worse shape of my life and I went into that fight thinking that I was probably going to lose, thinking I was I was at the worse I’ve ever been in my career but I’m fighting one of the best fighters in the world.”
What seemed to hurt even more though was that he’d hadn’t ‘performed’. “I gave such a terrible performance out there, I really let myself down and in turn I felt that I let everyone who supported me down too and that just killed me.”
“I expect a lot of myself in the ring and I know what I’m capable of and that night I wasn’t doing anything close to my full capabilities and you know what? When it comes to fights I don’t look to rematches, but when I get a chance to get that fight I want to get it done, get the win, and be done with it.”
This low point in his career did motivate Josh to change his training though. “I’m training with Erik Paulson now in Anaheim hills. I’ve got a great strength and conditioning coach Lucia Smith, and a great team of people around me like Rampage Jackson and John Marsh. I’m up in Big Bear now helping Rampage and putting the finishing touches on my training for my next fight.”
The fight in question is with ex-K-1 champion Mark Hunt, a tough New Zealander who is still relatively inexperienced in MMA but always a threat. When asked on his opinion of his opponent Josh is complimentary. “He’s a funny guy, always got a smile on his face and I love to take the piss out of him every time I get a chance to. He’s tough and he’s a brawler and he’s got a chin like granite and he’s not going to give up easily at all. However, I do think that his game is full of holes at this point. He’s still a relative newcomer to the sport of MMA. I really think that I should be able to beat him fairly quickly. Clearly, I could try and knock him out but on his feet is the only place where he has any strength so I’ve gotta take him off his feet, put him on his back, soften him up a bit and probably look for the submission.”
When I ask him who his biggest threat in the tournament is, he is noticeably less confident with his answer. “Every fighter brings his own strength to the ring. Cro Cop is a really tough guy to fight cos he’s got the ability to knock you out with one strike. [Minotauro] Nogueira’s got a great submission game, Nogueira is a very tough fighter but Mirko’s a more dangerous fighter so I suppose you’d say Mirko.”
Barnett is well known for being a strategic fighter, a strength that he shares with current heavyweight champ Fedor. I struggle to see a way to beat him but surely a seasoned pro like Josh would have something? “I don’t really want to give it away because I’m fairly sure someone will tell him and he’ll start working on it,” he jokes. Not willing to be drawn when I ask him, he does concede that Fedor is beatable. “Of course, we all do things where we leave openings all the time. I think the most important thing would be to show up to that ring in excellent physical shape, cos he’s always in great shape to fight. Come prepared for the worst and every scenario you can think of. His submissions are pretty good, he looks like he’s a strong, athletic guy, heavy-handed puncher but he’s a man and he puts his pants on like everybody else and he can certainly lose.”
Josh’s relationship with his Japanese fans has earned him a couple of nicknames including ‘Otaku’. “First off an Otaku is kind of a dork, people that are involved in Manga, anime, modelling and role-playing games, that kind of stuff. I’m probably as big an Otaku as you are gonna find. I think it’s great, I love it, I embrace it and I like to show that I’m a dork but I’m not exactly dorky. I’m not unwashed and unkempt, I try to keep a good appearance,” he laughs. “I love sci-fi, anime, role-playing games and all that stuff. Otaku culture is on the rise in Japan – it’s kind of cool to be dorky now.”
His Otaku status is undeniable when he starts to talk about his love of Anime. Describing the moment he met Tetsuo Hara, the creator of Fist of the North Star (one of Japan’s most famous Manga), he says “I was more nervous or excited for that than I have been for a fight or anything for a long time.” Josh’s catchphrase in the ring ‘Omae wa mou shindeiru’, translated as ‘You’re already dead’, comes from the Anime and he’s even known by some fans as ‘The Blue Eyed Kenshiro’ (the lead character in the series). He’s even had his life story turned into a short manga film such is his ingratiation with the culture. He also adds “I just wrote an article for a magazine called comic pro in Japan called ‘The Heroes of Ink and Paper’, linking Manga and comic books with the fight world and how they intertwine and how things like ‘Fist of The North Star’ inspired me as a fighter and as a person.”
As a fighter who’s gone from very vocal crowds in the USA to the almost silent crowds in Japan, I wanted to know if the transition affected him. “I prefer it because even when they’re quiet you can feel their intensity, feel how eager they are to watch the fight and how into it they are. I’ve been to at least the last three UFCs and I have to be honest, I didn’t like it. The energy in the arena was negative, kind of a downer. Listening to people one minute cheering for Randy Couture and then the next minute calling him a bum and a loser. It’s like ‘he’s just lost a fight, what does that have to do with him as a fighter in general? All of the times he was in there and won or gave you such a memorable match, why would you treat him with such disdain?’ and it really leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”
So why do almost all fighters gravitate towards Japan at some point in their career? Is it the martial arts history, the prestige, or the money? “All of those things, and it’s also the deep-rooted love and respect that the fans show you over there. It’s not about if you have a loss, it’s about the type of performance you give in the ring and once fans identify with you they’ll be a fan forever. They seem to come from a place of sincerity, it’s really endearing and uplifting to be around that kind of genuine good feeling and positivity.”
After so long building his career abroad does he feel like he’ll ever fight in the USA again? I’m surprised to hear so. “PRIDE have booked the Thomas and Mack Center in Las Vegas for late October, and they plan to run in California next year so I expect to be a part of that, and while there’s no love lost between me and the Nevada State Athletic Commission, a job’s a job and I don’t go out there to fight for them, I go out there and fight for my fans. I would love to be fighting in the states for all those people who are able to see me live because I fight in Japan all the time.”
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