Issue 175

January 2019

The seasoned middleweight discusses the art of MMA and his hard road to competing with the sport’s elite.

Q. Over the years many fighters and gyms have put the brakes on hard sparring due to increased awareness of head injuries and brain health. The days of hard sparring are limited but the same cannot be said for a hard roll in practice. You can still go closer to full speed on the ground. Can you talk about still going damn near 100% on the mats?

GM: That’s completely true. Jiu-jitsu and wrestling are two areas of the sport where you can go just about 100% and be in those live situations day in and day out and, as long as you are smart about it, you will get relatively minor injuries. Again, Mixed Martial Arts, as far as striking goes, it’s not just boxing, it’s not just karate or Tae Kwon Do, it’s not just kickboxing and Muay Thai, it’s a hybrid. Because you are in scenarios in wrestling and jiu-jitsu and MMA that aren’t exactly wrestling and jiu-jitsu and MMA but they are very, very similar and you can drill those live. In striking, not only are you having to drill with more technique-based repetitions and a lot more bag work, you have to really find what works. No one is really sure what works yet. We still have guys coming in from a karate background that do really well because people haven’t seen it. We still have guys that come from Muay Thai who fight almost as if they are in a Muay Thai match doing well. Certain things people do are getting exposed but part of it is that you have to have someone who really knows technique and understands that they are not just striking, it’s layered. Another part of it is that no one is really sure what all the rules of some of these other sports are yet because everything is still so new.

Q. No matter how advanced the sport gets and how well-rounded guys are, even as the next generation of kids come through, there will always be the case of a big, strong, grappling heavy guy looking to take down a predominantly striking-based fighter. Do you agree with that or do you see it another way?

Oh, for sure. You get anyone that is that good in any one area and they will nullify everything else. Even with a guy like Demian Maia, he really got back to his jiu-jitsu, even with his takedowns, he’s not doing a lot of wrestling takedowns, he is pretty much doing jiu-jitsu stuff . He is such a high-level guy that he can go in there and do that. I train with Ben Askren, who is easily the best wrestler in MMA. He just wrestles at such a high level that he can get away with doing that. Now, will a lot of people do that? No. There are maybe three or four guys that can fight with one style like that and be OK. They are more anomalies than anything. It’s correct to say that there is always that chance, with four ounce gloves, sometimes technique isn’t always going to win out. Especially when you are mixing striking in with the takedowns. If you are big enough and strong enough and mean enough you will have guys who are just super athletes that will bully people like that. They will get away with it unless they meet someone who is at that level of competency in their technique which is a really hard thing to find.

Q.You started training in 2007 and your goal was, even back then, to be the best in the world. What was the moment that you knew that you were going to commit yourself to this?

A. It was cemented in my head after my first fight. It’s funny because in my first fight I got my ass whupped. I wasn’t hurt but I definitely lost. I think I trained for about a month. I had never done any training before that other than some Tae Kwon Do as a kid but it wasn’t quite the same thing. After the first fight and the training, this was something that I didn’t want to be good at, but I needed to be the best.

It was everything I was looking for and I needed to master it. After that, whether I vocalized it or not, I was training twice a day and making my schedule – no matter if it was work or school – built around my training time.

Q. We spoke of your goals of being the best in the world. You were competing and excelling for ten years as a pro prior to your UFC debut. Were there moments where doubt crept in, with regards to whether you were going to get to the highest level of the sport?

A. Oh, for sure. Anyone that says they never doubted themselves or have never been scared are lying. There were moments of doubt but even in those moments of doubt I never stopped pursuing my goal. There were plenty of times when I thought ‘Man, I have been doing this for a while. Something has to give soon or I might have to think about something else.’ But I never stopped going to the gym. I never stopped training. Really, my thing was, if I am still improving and I know I am getting better there is no reason to stop. If I wasn’t in the UFC and I was still getting better and progressing in my technique and my performances were still progressing, there is no reason to stop. Especially if I knew I could hang with the best in the world. I have a really supportive team and everyone saw all the hard work, so luckily I kept at it.