Issue 184

After a second shot at the UFC lightweight belt was stripped away from him due to a knee injury, ‘The Bully’s determination has only thickened. He reveals why his wrestling background means that winning is the only way he knows, and how he’s still on route to title glory.

It’s midday in Las Vegas and the heat is soaring. Gray Maynard has just braved the blistering sun by running 8,000ft into the Sierra Nevada with his dogs. The landscape is volatile and the air is thin.

So what brings the UFC lightweight to such an unforgiving location?

To get his protein hit, of course. 

Gray has come to catch a hybrid species of scorpion, known for it’s poisonous venom, it’s also a highly nutritional food source.

Using his dogs to hunt the arachnids, he catches them with his bare hands. Some may see this as an extreme way of fueling his body – and getting in a tough cardio session – yet to him this is normal.

After all, there are dedicated athletes, and then there is Gray Maynard.

Now 13-7-1(1 NC) in the UFC, in just four years Maynard has scaled the ranks of MMA’s biggest promotion to become the number-one title contender. After already holding the current lightweight champion Frankie Edgar to a draw in January, he shows unparalleled determination to finally see the belt wrapped round his waist.

This hunger for success was evident when he was just a tiny child who was barely able to walk, let alone compete.

“I’ve always been a determined athlete,” says the 32-year-old.

“I started wrestling when I was just three years old. I played all sports but I loved wrestling because I could just get out there and throw a kid around. I was always the kid at school who’d grab the other kids and be like, ‘Let’s try this move!’ I actually broke a kid’s arm once.

I got into a lot of trouble.”

He admits to being a very hyperactive child who found it incredibly difficult to focus at school. 

“I grew up in Tennessee in a house that was way out in the middle of nowhere, we had horses. It was nice but school was hard for me.

I couldn’t sit still, then I’d start to f**k with somebody and the next thing I knew I was getting spanked in the office by the principal with the paddle,” he laughs. “I don’t think I was a troubled kid but I got in trouble just because of how active I was.

It’s like, ‘Sit still!’ and I’m like, ‘I can’t f**king do that! I want gym class, I want recess. Let’s hurry up through this math crap ‘cos I wanna have fun!’”

It quickly became evident that wrestling was the perfect way to channel his extra energy and groom that natural desire to compete.

By the time Gray finished high school he’d already accumulated a 135-16 record, being undefeated in both his sophomore and senior years.

He went on to join the renowned Michigan State University where he would gain multiple All-American honors. It was here he’d develop a special bond with former UFC light heavyweight champion Rashad Evans.

“As a teammate, you had a guy you’d always stay with on trips in hotels and for me it was Rashad,” says Gray. “He was my boy, we clicked, and we knew how everything worked.

We knew what time we needed to sleep and train and if we were overweight, and we kept each other motivated.”

Both competing on the MSU wrestling team, the pair became motivational tools towards one another’s careers and would spur each other along, sharing good times, bad times, and according to Gray, strange times. He recalls a particularly odd incident when they were both away for a wrestling competition.

“We were in Illinois dueling against them. We kept the scale in our spot and kept the doors unlocked for anyone who wanted to check their weight. One night, at 3am, I’m woken by this dude walking in.

I thought he must have a tough cut and be coming in to check his weight. The next thing I know, I feel him crawling into my bed and I think, ’This guy must be cutting weight hard ‘cos he doesn’t even know where he is!’” he laughs.

“Then I smell alcohol. Rashad wakes up and says, ‘Hey Gray, who the f**k came in our room?’ So I turn around and it’s a dude I don’t even know so I scream, ‘Rashad, get up man!’

So we get up and turn on the lights and there’s this random dude in my bed. In college I had two of my front teeth missing so this dude wakes up drunk out of his mind, thinks he’s in his room, sees a big ass black dude and some crazy motherf**ker with no teeth and is terrified.

We pull the sheets down and he’s completely naked except for a pair of black socks! He then stands up and we’re like, ‘Get the f**k up, what the f**k are you doing?’ You know, you don’t wanna punch a naked guy – you don’t even wanna touch a naked guy.

We’re like, ‘Get the f**k outta here,’ and he starts trying to put on my clothes. We threw a towel at his face and then there’s a knock at the door. This girl creeps in, looks at the situation terrified, doesn’t say a word and grabs his arm and leaves. Weirdest situation ever man.”

As such colorful characters and solid wrestlers the pair were making a strong impression around campus. It was here Gray would earn his moniker ‘The Bully.’

“My nickname? Well, I’m not the type of dude who grabs people’s lunch money, it’s in respect of my dog,” he says.

“I got Hank when he was two. I knew a guy who had loads of pitbulls. Hank was in the yard the whole time and he’d get jumped by the other dogs and nearly lost an eye. He was mangy and dirty and there was always blood on him. I felt bad for him.

One day I took him for a walk and he just kept looking at me with his sad eyes and I was like, ‘F**k, I’ve gotta keep him.’ 

“He was trained as an attack dog from the previous owner but I thought it’d be okay, you know, take him home and feed him human food.

I took him to my mom’s and she had a labrador and he just attacked it and I was like, ‘S**t, I gotta learn how to train this dog and it’s a bull terrier!’ They try to be the alpha so you gotta stay on him.

I took him back to college, trained his ass, kept an eye on him.

We butted heads a lot but I managed to chill him out. He then started going on jogs at college with the team, we’d run everywhere.

He’d even hang out at the parties. He’s my boy but he was a bully – that’s where I got my name from. It became a joke, the way I compete and my dog, we were both bullies.”

A bully indeed. Gray continued to dominate his opponents and by 2004 he made a shot for the Olympic wrestling team.

However, after being unsuccessful, it was here his wrestling career would take a turn.

“I tried out for the 2004 Olympics and it didn’t work out.

I came home and I got with a guy and went to Cobra Kai in Las Vegas. You know, it had ‘Mayhem’ Miller, Phil Baroni, Kendall Grove, Jay Hieron. It was before anything. They were all starting out.

I went in there and did my takedowns but didn’t really know anything.

I learned jiu-jitsu and it kept me from getting fat and then I got a call from BJ Penn’s brother. I didn’t even know who BJ was. I thought, ‘S**t yeah, I’ll take a trip to Hawaii!’ Back then I wasn’t even sure if MMA was a sport. 

“I flew out there and trained and it was an eye opener. He was really tough to take down and that made me realize that there was more to it than I thought. I was out there for three weeks. That’s the spot where I knew that I wanted to get serious with MMA.

Hieron ended up getting with Randy Couture at his camp, who was training for Chuck Liddell at the time.

They trained hard. I knew that’s how you train. I kept getting my ass whooped, those guys really put it on me.”

Gray would go on to join Randy’s legendary gym, Xtreme Couture – the perfect place to hone his MMA skills. A former collegiate wrestler himself, Couture could offer his wisdom and teach Gray how to refine and adapt his wrestling technique to be a successful MMA fighter.

Gray trains there to this day. 

In 2007, during an appearance as a cast member on The Ultimate Fighter 5 for Team BJ Penn, he would reach the semi finals, only losing to UFC lightweight Nate Diaz via a guillotine choke.

Despite his loss, Gray’s strong wrestling pedigree and impressive run was enough for UFC president Dana White to grant him a shot in the UFC.

Like a number of wrestlers in the organization, Gray has gone on to find success with his explosive takedowns and supreme power and he is just one of the growing crop of former stand-out college wrestlers who seem to be currently dominating the upper echelons of UFC competition. 

“I believe wrestlers are strong in the UFC because wrestling is geared around working as hard as you possibly can.

Coaches will push you to the point where you snap, where you think you can’t go anymore and they’ll make you keep going,” says Gray. 

“You get to the point where you think, ‘Well I can do anything.’

You’ve got the icons like Tom Brands [head wrestling coach at Iowa University] and Dan Gable [1976 Olympic gold medalist] and their training is something else. I’ve had hundreds of matches, each time having to make weight so I’m used to it. It’s nothing new, we just have to add a couple of tools and we do that by getting in the gym and working our asses off. Your mind’s geared to outwork whoever it is so you go out fight night thinking, ‘I’m gonna f**king kick this guy’s ass.’”

Gray’s words are earnest. His mind is geared to the best of its ability; always in top gear. 

“I’m focused. Any time you’re going hard or heavy, it isn’t a burn, but you feel it more the day after and the day after that – particularly heavy leg stuff like squats. There’s not a lot of stuff that I hate but I just think, ‘OK, it’s hard but I got the best job in the world and I love to train.’

For me, I’ve been through stuff where you think you can’t do it.

This was from an age in my teens where the coaches would make you puke time and again, in one session. Afterwards, the reward is knowing you dug deep and got through that. If I didn’t, it’d eat me up the whole night and I’d be thinking, ‘I could have gave more! Why didn’t I?

You’re a f**king pussy!’ You get there with a winning attitude. I don’t want squats to win, I wanna win.”

It’s this philosophy that Gray channels not just into his training, but his diet as well.

“During camp I eat six times a day. It’s all grass-fed meat that’s pure and clean. I eat steak twice a week, not too much though.

I heard an interview where Brock ate a whole cow from June to August. That’s a lot of meat. With anything, if you do too much of it, it can hurt you.”

Gray explains that his diet stays exactly the same outside of camp as it does during camp. It reaffirms the notion that staying healthy is an ideology of Gray’s rather than just part of the job.

“Outside of camp I still eat organic, no sweets, a lot of fruit.

I eat a lot of blueberries, salmon, tuna. I started working with Mike Dolce in the last camp. It’s geared towards my overall health.

You read stuff on steaks and meats that are just unhealthy and processed. I hear how they clean meat with ammonia and it’s scary.

A lot of people don’t know that. My mom and dad were hippies a long time ago so we always ate pretty clean. 

“Now time’s evolved, they just mass-produce food and people have no idea what they’re eating. You get families who eat all this junk food because it’s cheaper than eating healthy but they gotta realize that in the long run they’re going to get all kinds of health issues as a result and have to pay for it in later life with medication.

I used to love junk, but the more you don’t eat it, the less you crave it. You get to a point where it doesn’t even appeal to you. That’s the hard part, getting there. Food’s like a drug.”

It is clear Gray’s dedication holds no boundaries.

After drawing with Edgar in January, Gray was reset to face the champion again at UFC 130 in May. In a twist of fate, Gray picked up a knee injury in training yet was still determined to compete.

“I had an elbow injury and a knee injury but I just thought, ‘Get this f**king belt! Don’t let anything hold you back,’” he says.

“When you’re going for a belt, for me, it’s like an unspoken rule that I can’t pull out for nothing.”

Unfortunately, Edgar had also tasted a bout of misfortune, damaging his ribs forcing him to pull out. Gray’s title opportunity had been snatched away from him. “I was devastated. After talking to Joe Silva [UFC matchmaker], it hurt. It’s so close. It’s right there then it’s stripped away from you. So close yet so far.”

When both athletes fully recover, a rematch is sure to be staged.

But what has Gray learned from his last meeting with the lightening-quick champion? “In the first round, I knocked him down a few times but I went crazy and I drained. I thought I gotta ease up and stay calm and not try and kill him. Problem is, I smelt blood, I went for it 110%.

It’s like a car crash. All the adrenaline and everything hits you and then you’re all of a sudden drained and tired. I had an adrenaline dump.

I then had to fight four more f**king rounds with no arms or legs.”

Gray is now currently training to iron out his mistakes with Edgar and solidly rehabilitate his knee. He has assembled some of the best coaches in the world, including Gil Martinez, head striking coach at Xtreme Couture [also interviewed here], Jake Bonnacci, Couture’s S&C coach, and he’s flown in US wrestler Jamill Kelly, ‘04 Olympics silver medalist. Plus he’s also added Luke Richardson, S&C coach for the Jacksonville Jaguars football team. 

After coming so close to the title in his first outing with Edgar, Gray has already seen his profile skyrocket, attracting a lot of unwanted attention from fan boys and from fighters eager to call him out.

In many fans’ eyes, after destroying Edgar with such intensity in the first round at UFC 125, he is already the champ. 

Yet as complex a character he is, Gray remains unassuming and tries to shy away from the media spotlight and all the attention success brings. “I don’t look at my own headlines or go on the Internet,” he says. “There’s only two outcomes doing that; you either get an inflated ego or a deflated ego and both of those are bad.

So what I do is try to just listen to the people I closely work with.

That’s the critique I want. People that don’t know you and aren’t there everyday, they don’t know.”

With such drive, Gray’s success is inevitable, whether it be after his next fight with Edgar, or in the future. So what will the acclimation of the UFC lightweight title mean to Gray?

“It’d mean everything to me but one thing that I learned growing up through the sport is you can do a great job, you can enjoy it that night but it’s back to work tomorrow.

You’re always focusing on your next fight and thinking what you can do to evolve. You never stop. You always progress.

You never give up.”

The true sign of a champion.

BLOWING IN THE WIND

Airdyne bikes are an essential piece of exercise equipment for the injured warrior immersed in a rehab program.

Fighters will experience an intense workout with wind resistance that exponentially increases the harder they work. It’s low impact on muscles and joints which is key in the formative stages of rehabilitation.

Building the bully

Mike Dolce - Gray’s dietician

Q: How strict are you with Gray’s diet?

Mike: “Every single nutrient Gray consumes is part of an equation. I leave no room for variables. Gray Maynard is a world-class athlete and this is a world-class endeavor.”

 Q: When you first started with Gray, what was the main aspects of his diet that you believed needed changing?

A: “Gray was already an elite athlete when I was brought on board his team. With that said, we were able to identify specific nutritional imbalances that conflicted with his training volume and recovery modules. As an example, I added a considerable amount of sugar into Gray’s diet, which immediately improved his energy output in the gym and showed a marked increase to his general mood during ‘real life.’”

Q: Is it difficult when a fighter like Gray is laid up in terms of his diet changing?

A: “Athletes with the discipline and focus of Gray Maynard are few and far between. Just because Gray is recovering from an injury does not mean we are on vacation, quite the opposite. As far as we’re concerned, we are still in camp and focused on that world-title fight. So, to answer the question, Gray’s diet hasn’t really changed at all. He could weigh-in tomorrow at 155lb and fight 25 minutes just 24 hours later. There’ll be no days off until Gray has that belt around his waist!”

Q: How disciplined is Gray when it comes to food?

A: “Aside for a love of agave [a syrupy plant], Gray would eat broken glass six times per day without complaint if it would make him a better athlete.”

Q: How does Gray’s diet change from normal training to when he’s in fight camp, right up to when he’s weight cutting in the final 24-hour period?

A: “All of my athletes eat a lot of food to fuel their training and recovery during the entire camp and are still eating five meals the day before weigh-ins. I have a unique approach in which I actually feed the body right onto the scale and simply manipulate electrolytes and hydration levels during fight week, which is why my athletes always look so fresh and healthy – never pale or gaunt.”

Q: Do you get Gray to take any regular supplements?

A: “The only supplements I advise on a regular basis is MHP’s Xpel, which is an all-natural, herbal diuretic – totally legal and it really does work well.”

Q: How often does Gray eat?

A: “Gray eats every two to four hours, depending on what he just did and what he is about to do. As I said, everything he consumes is part of a precise equation.”

Q: What is he allowed to eat during his cheat day?

A: “As part of The Dolce Diet, I do not offer ‘cheat days’ but instead my clients will earn ‘Free Meals.’ Gray’s Free Meals are typically steak, baked potatoes and a healthy serving of green vegetables. He likes man food.”

The pirouetting pugilist

From three years old, wrestling wasn’t the only hardcore sport Gray was immersing himself into.

He was also training ballet and (unfazed by the risk of losing man points) is keen to highlight the benefits it can have for the modern mixed martial artist. 

“I think that the Eastern European athletes start out with gymnastics and ballet and evolve from that,” he says.

“It teaches you how to control everything. It teaches you a lot of flexibility, coordination and balance. There’s also so much strength there. The more I look at how they train, it’s so geared to grooming an athlete to be the best.

They’re so geared on how to train smart and that really helped me.”

Gil Martinez

Gray’s striking coach at Xtreme Couture 

Q: How long have you been training Gray?

Gil: “I started training Gray for the very first Frankie Edgar fight [April 2008]. The way we came across each other, the very first person I started working with was Mike Pyle. Then Phil Baroni. Then they started recommending me to other people so it was Jay Hieron next and then Gray came along. Now I’m really happy to be one of his trainers.”

Q: How has Gray evolved since you’ve been training him?

A: “Oh man, as far as his hands are concerned there’s a huge difference. Not just his hands but the way he approaches fighting in general. He’s probably one of the best at setting up training camp. He really goes out and tries to put together the best team. Few people actually go out and do that. It’s all about him wanting to learn new things. When I first got him he was a strong kid but he had no technique. He’d try to kill you with every shot. It didn’t matter if you were two feet away or 10 feet away but now he’s coming into his own. The next fight everybody’s gonna see a much more improved Gray Maynard.”

Q: What’s Gray’s work ethic like?

A: “As everybody knows, man, Gray is one of the top athletes in MMA, if not in the world. He’s one of the hardest workers I’ve ever come across. I think he tends to overdo it sometimes but he’s learning and growing more mature in his career. He’s learning how to adapt to things and do them a lot smarter. With him, it’s all about learning – he loves to learn. I get texts at 10 o’clock at night while he’s watching some boxing fight saying, ‘Hey have you seen what that one guy did to the other!’ So he’s definitely one of those guys that really wants to progress. It’s a pleasure to train someone like him.”

Q: Is there anything you’ve learned from Gray?

A: “Yeah sure. Like I say, the way that he puts camps together and brings people in. The way he approaches every single fight. He’s one of the top wrestlers America has ever produced so I always ask him about things I wanna learn so I can teach them to the rest of my guys.”