In his regular THFE column this month, respected cut master Jacob ‘Stitch’ Duran takes us through his pre-fight preparation and explains how his rituals can help your MMA.

The late UCLA basketball coach John Wooden was one of the greatest teachers in sports. Wooden led his team to ten national championships and an incredible stretch of 88 straight wins (I was a teenager and living a few hundred miles north at the time).

But much of his legacy isn’t found in wins and losses. It’s in how he related to his players and prepared them for success.

Wooden was such a wizard at communicating that he developed a pyramid of success. To him, success wasn’t always about winning.

He defined it as peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you tried your hardest to become the best that you are capable of becoming.

So why am I talking about John Wooden? Because he was a ‘preparer’. He gave his athletes the tools that they’d need to succeed. His pyramid is littered with terms like industriousness, friendship, skill, initiative, poise, confidence and enthusiasm.

If you want to be a great cutman you have to practice all of the above. When you do that’ll be providing a great service to the fighters as you prepare them for competition, and then see them through each fight.

Before I can prepare the fighters, I have to prepare myself. This is the part of the job that isn’t seen, but it’s essential. I have the same ritual every time: it’s to provide a discipline factor as much as anything else.

I pull out all my needed gear and make sure I have enough of everything. For boxing, I always prepare for five fighters even though I’m working with just one. For the UFC I make sure I have enough for the full card even though I won’t work with everyone on it.

First, I check my adrenaline chloride 1-1000 and make sure I have two bottles. I check my adrenaline and Vaseline mix and make sure I have enough; if not I mix it then. I make sure I have enough swabs, usually twenty five for any event, if not I make some up by using cotton balls and wooden swab sticks. I unravel the cotton, separate it into three strips, stretch them and roll them onto the swab until I have about two inches of cotton on the swab. I break the wooden swab to make it shorter and easier to use. 

Next, I make sure I have enough Vaseline, two KO Swells, five plastic sandwich bags which I use as icepacks, enough gloves for the night, my bucket and enough gauze and tape to wrap ten fighters in the UFC and five boxers. Finally, I iron my clothes for the event. 

By preparing my bag the night before, I remove the possibility of forgetting something. It is important to use the same system every time so that you can discipline yourself to be consistent.

Getting my bag and supplies ready is just the first step to ensure that I will give the fighters the best care possible. 

Once in the arena, I head to the dressing room and cut up towels to the size of face towels. I use them to clean up the fighters. Then I prepare my bucket by putting the adrenaline 1-1000, adrenaline and Vaseline mix, the two KO Swells, bottled water, Vaseline and ice packs in it. 

It’s important to also be consistent with your bucket and put everything in the same place all the time so you’ll know where to locate whatever you need in an instant. Remember, you have to be consistent with everything you do.

After preparing my bucket, I head into the empty arena. There I look at the ring or Octagon and where I’ll be seated plus where I’ll enter, and plan my entrance route. You might notice that I’m usually the first person in the Octagon. After Cro Cop got knocked out by Gabriel Gonzaga at UFC 70, somebody told me it took me five seconds to get to him once he hit the floor. I might even be able to kick Usain Bolt’s ass if we were racing to a downed fighter in the Octagon.

Finally, I make a point to meet and speak with the ringside doctors and introduce myself. I explain my purpose for being there.

This will give you an edge with the doctors as they get to know you better. Many times a doctor will let the fight continue if he knows the cutman is on top of things and doing his job. 

All of this and I haven’t even started with the fighters yet, at least not formally. Sure I’ve bumped into them in the hotel or arena and started planting the seeds of confidence, but the real preparation comes in wrapping the fighters’ hands.

Next time I’ll cover exactly how a cutman can give his fighter an edge while wrapping his hands, and give you some exchanges I’ve had with some of the best combat sports athletes in the world.

I’ll never have 88 fighters in a row end up victorious like John Wooden’s UCLA basketball teams once did, but I definitely help prepare them for success.