Issue 176

March 2019

Bodybuilder, Martyn Ford, will soon be the latest bodybuilder will soon be the latest behemoth to enter the cage with Brock Lesnar nearing another title shot. What does the future hold for the big men in MMA?

To all wannabe warriors, let's pose the question: ‘Who would you rather go toe-to-toe with: a raging 265lb bodybuilder built like a tank, or a 155lb MMA fighter who seems placid, yet secretly bears the tools to tear you apart?’

It’s one of those hypothetical wringers that’s likely to crop up when you’re stood in a bar with your buddies after sinking a few cold ones – like, ‘Who would win in a fight between a bear or a gorilla?’ or, ‘How low would you go for a million dollars?’ Yet the size and strength vs skill and power debate still surprisingly lingers on within bodybuilding and MMA forums today.

There certainly exists a deluge of meatheads thinking they can be dropped into the middle of the Octagon, thrown a pair of four-ounce gloves and then just let rip until Dana White is humbly wrapping the UFC strap around their waist, and in some ways it’s understandable. ‘I’m big, I’m strong, I’m ready to kick yo’ ass!’

Yet according to former UFC heavyweight champion Bas Rutten – a man known for getting in a bar fight or two – there’s a simple way of dealing with these types.

A former doorman often faced with guys pumped up on steroids and strung out on whisky, he would recite ‘his speech’ with such cutting precision it could have been pulled straight from the lips of Samuel L. Jackson in Pulp Fiction.

“Listen gentleman, I know why you’re so big. You were constantly picked on in gym class and that made you feel sad and insignificant. Then one day, you realized that when you lifted weights it made you bigger and bigger and suddenly people stopped bullying you. But I don’t fall for that, my friend. I see the same little man that you were in school. Okay? Now, let’s talk about what I do. I train to fight. Instead of lifting stupid weights, I hit bags and spar with other great fighters. I also do weights, but only the ones that make me hit harder. It’s what we do two times a day, six days a week; we train to become stronger and better warriors.” Now mid-flow, Bas’ imagination is clearly back on the doors.

“So please, get it out of your tiny head that you’re going to beat me. I know that everybody else will decline your challenge because they fall for the big muscles but not me. I actually really enjoy it; I always can use an extra workout.

Here’s the options: you take a swing at me first so everyone can see that you started and I get the ‘green light’ to go to town on you without getting into too much trouble with the police, or we can go back inside, I get you guys a drink, you all have fun and none of you wake up with your faces caved in tomorrow morning. So, guys, what’s it gonna be?”

It may sound like the type of stuff one could only pull off in the movies, but Rutten insists it works without fail. “And that would be it, they would take ‘option number two’ every single time,” he laughs. “If there’s more than one of them, which was usually the case, I just told them I would fight them all at the same time and that it was ‘close to a professional fight anyway.’”

Yet Rutten is keen to distinguish that bodybuilders and meatheads are two different types.

“Now I have to say that these are meatheads we talk about, not professional bodybuilders, because all the professional ones that I know carry themselves very peacefully.

If there’s a lesson to be learned from Rutten’s story – aside from the fact you don’t want to f**k with ‘El Guapo’ – it’s that bodybuilders are slowly coming to terms with MMA and, in many ways, now hold a deep respect for the sport.

While the ’90s may have been permeated with guys flexing their guns and claiming the army’s just called them because they need a tank, many bodybuilders are swapping throwing weights around in the sweatbox for throwing somebody else’s weight around in the Octagon. But can bodybuilders really hack the bright lights and brutal battlefields of the cage, or is all that mass simply dead weight?

STEP UP MUSCLE MAN

In recent years, there has been a number of former bodybuilders breaking into the higher ranks of MMA. Former UFC middleweight Karlos Vemola is just one of them. After taking UK bodybuilding titles in the men’s divisions at just 20 years old, he made the crossover from bodybuilding to MMA. After storming through a run of lesser competition in the UK, Vemola struggled when entering the UFC, finding it impossible to use his strength base from bodybuilding in the heavyweight ranks against elite wrestler Jon Madsen.

“I was just way too small for the heavyweight division. Madsen was very powerful and used his wrestling to completely control me. I wasn’t fit enough for heavyweight so I went down to light heavyweight, but still I’m dropping to middleweight because I have too much muscle for my frame,” Vemola admits.

“Bodybuilders find it very hard to make the transition to MMA because it’s such a different sport. It’s a lazy-man’s sport. You do eight to 10 reps and as little cardio as possible. You overfeed yourself and you’re actually very unfit.”

Still, there are bodybuilding aficionados who are sure to argue that possessing huge muscles will serve them well in a tear-up. This theory will receive a stern examination if, as seems likely, Brock Lesnar gets his chance to take on Daniel Cormier to regain the UFC heavyweight belt. Though noticeably smaller in recent months, Lesnar remains one of the biggest men to have enjoyed success in the UFC and the gap in size between himself and Cormier will be one of the fight's main selling points should it come to pass as expected.

Lesnar, it should be remembered, has a background as a highly successful wrestler and the same is true of Jake Hager, another big man making the move from pro wrestling to MMA. His career at Bellator will be watched with interest.

But the last word should go to Vermola.

“In the MMA world I’m one of the powerful fighters, and that’s in part due to my bodybuilding base,” he concedes, “but I get this power through strength and speed together. You look at former world strongman title-holders like Marius Pudzianowksi; you’d think he’d overpower and beat people up in the cage but he doesn't. Muscles and strength alone don’t make a fighter.”