Issue 176

March 2019

The German featherweight on his training regime at MMA Spirit and resemblance to a certain rap star.

Your team, MMA Spirit is growing by the day. You have a beautiful facility in Frankfurt and a great set-up which is known as the ‘Home of the Champions’. How have you grown as a fighter during your time there?

MMA Spirit plays a very, very big part in my fighting career. I feel like when MMA Spirit first started, the whole thing changed for me.

I live very close to the gym, so I can just drive there and have everything under one roof. Before that I had to drive forty minutes in one direction for wrestling, and then drive in another direction for over an hour for striking. It was a lot of driving. It was unstructured training.

Now at MMA Spirit we have everything in one place and in the best possible way. We have so many great trainers. We have Mohamed Ouali for striking, Saba Bolaghi for wrestling, Sascha Rankovic for jiu-jitsu. We have great, great trainers. Plus, we have an environment that includes everything a professional fighter needs for training.

We have a complete gym with everything you need. We have a sauna. We have a physical therapist. The coaches and the managers take such good care that I can just focus on training and fighting. It makes my life very easy to get ready for a fight. I don’t have to think about all the other stuff. I can just think about the essential things, the main things, getting ready for a fight and fighting.

We have a great competition team as well. There are many great guys who are helping me get ready for each fight. I really love every single one of them. We are like a big family. We help each other and push each other to get ready. I can’t think of a better team to have in my corner.

You mentioned many invaluable aspects of training – high level partners, a top of the line facility, everything under one roof, eliminating distractions, and more. That’s got to be a dream come true.

It is. Every time I show someone who comes to our gym and wants to train, it doesn’t matter if it’s for fun or if it’s for professional fighting, I tell them the exact same thing. To be honest, I am a professional MMA fighter and this is the place to be to get better and to share the passion of the sport and improve. In the beginning of the sport we were training in garages, in the cold, and now we have everything under one roof. It’s perfect.

What is the most memorable moment form training?

There are so many stories that it’s hard to pick just one. Right now we have a thing going on where my good friend Max Coga is losing his battle with his hair. It’s a real competition. He is still fighting for his hair but everybody sees that there is no way out. Sooner or later he has to get rid of it or it’s leaving by nature. This is his weak point and everybody is enjoying watching it play out.

Speaking of gym stories, how did you ever get the nickname of Drake?

Well it started when I was fighting for Bellator in the US. I recognized that more and more people were saying I looked like Drake. When I fought in the final in Canada every second person called me Drake. It kept going and going because my teammates at the gym really wouldn’t let it go, so it stuck as my official nickname. Like always, the nickname is something other people give you. Whether my teammates were serious or joking, it’s just a funny thing.