Former TUF winner Ross Pearson talks about the next chapter in his career in UFC. MMA journalist Nick Peet visited his old rainy hometown to hear more.

As the seemingly relentless rain (it honestly never stopped once) hammered down on the corrugated iron shutters at Barry Gibson’s GrappleFit gym in the far North East town of Sunderland in the UK, the proprietor raises his voice to bark out instructions to an all-too-familiar sweat-dripping local hero.

It’s been a while since the pair last trained together. This damp and dark fall afternoon in England is a million miles away from the new training base of the UFC starlet that’s back home for a few days visiting his family. Ross Pearson traded the dank streets of Sunderland to chase his dream of becoming a world champion – and accepts his mission remains a work in progress.

“This will always be home, I’ll always be a lad from the North East wherever I live,” says Pearson, who shot to fame winning TUF 9 in the summer of 2009 and has been an Ultimate Fighting Championship mainstay ever since. “But I had to move to California. My dreams demanded it.

“I’ve dedicated my life to this – it’s not a job, it’s something I love. No one likes doing work, but I love fighting. I love being able to do what I love doing for a living. It’s amazing to me and I just enjoy it. I just want to keep pushing to be a better Ross Pearson both inside and outside of the cage.

"I want to put on amazing fights. I want to get better as an athlete and, yeah, I just want to go in this sport as far as I can go. And a critical part of doing that was moving to train at Alliance MMA in San Diego."

ALLIANCE

Ross continues: “Since I moved there, I’ve improved one million percent with my wrestling and jiu-jitsu, that goes without saying. The last two camps, I spent the whole camp there just working on wrestling. Just working on jiu-jitsu. And then adapting it to my style of fighting, so that’s definitely the biggest thing that I’ve learnt. 

“Getting to roll with Jimmy Harbison, JT Torres, Wilson Reis, Andre Galvao, the list goes on, you know – these are like superstars in the jiu-jitsu world. And I’m rolling with these people on a daily basis. 

“And then I’m wrestling with Mike Chandler, Phil Davis, again, the list goes on… Dominick Cruz. It’s just a complete different style and fight standard that I’m learning. And I love all of it. But, then, I still always come home – I still like to have a good punch up with a North East lad.”

Pearson was practically born fighting. A sports-obsessed child, he describes his younger self as a “little b**tard with a little man complex.” At seven his mother encouraged him to start taekwondo, and by 10 he was a black belt, before switching to the judo mat where he would settle with a brown belt. So where does Pearson think his jiu-jitsu is at right now?

“I’ve only ever fought no gi to be honest, but I see myself being a mid level belt. I’m confident on the floor now. I know the positions. I know the defenses. I know the attacks, and, yeah, it’s helped me a lot. It’s obviously an area I’m committed to improving, 100%.

“I mean, it’s never ever going to be my fighting style. Being on the back for me is the scariest place in the world in a fight. It’s just not me. I like being on my feet. I like being on top and I like to throw punches. For me to be on my back, it’s a scary place. I don’t think I’ll get over the fear. 

“It’s not my fighting style and I don’t think that’s ever going to change. But as a sportsman, as an athlete and as a martial artist, I 100% want to pursue jiu-jitsu and keep learning it, keep improving it and I definitely want to achieve a black belt in it.

“I know already that I’ll be training jiu-jitsu long after I’ve finished competing in MMA. When I hit my 40s, and I’m not too fat, I want to put a gi on and I want to study. I want to add another string to my bow. I’m a UFC fighter and if I have a black belt in jiu-jitsu, it’s going to help me out in my career, and later on in life.”

Representing the UK is something Pearson takes very seriously, as he proved once before on the set of TUF 9, and beating the Aussie on his home turf is proving more than enough incentive for the bulldog Brit. “I love it when the Union Jack is on my shoulder. There’s nothing more honorable than to represent your country in one of your sports – and I’ve done it twice now,” he says. 

“It just makes you want it a little bit more. Not that I’ve got anything against anyone from Australia, my wife (ex-UFC ring girl Kristie) is Australian after all. And I want to live there; I want to retire to Australia. But as soon as you put your native flag on your shirt and you’re up against a group of guys from another country, it makes you want it that little bit extra.”

TRAINING PROGRAM

“My training program all depends on what stage of camp I’m in. If I’m eight weeks out from a fight I'll be finishing off my strength training. 

“Monday will be heavy lifting... heavy squats, back squats - six sets of four, max weight – as heavy as you can go. And then weighted chains, again, six reps of four and as heavy as I can pull. And finally a little finisher – like a little conditioning blast. Nothing that’s going to kill you, because you’ve just worked on heavy lifts. 

Wednesday will be a little more power explosive. A little circuit, raft pulls, over-extended push-ups, then 10 ab roll-outs, followed by 10 keg shoulder presses, and that’s all in a circuit, as fast as I can, and that’s five times through. Then a little finisher with bear crawls, plate pushes with the emphasis a little bit more on power explosive.

Then the Friday, that’ll be more about conditioning. It’s like a fight circuit, so there’ll be a little bit of lifting, punching, a little bit of grappling. It’s three five-minute rounds flat out – as hard as you can go.

GYM RAT

“I like to build up my body before I start the important stages of a fight camp. I’m a naturally fit person anyway, and I keep a natural high level of fitness even when I’m not even in camp. I’m a gym rat. I also seem to just eat cleanly and, if I’m not in camp, I’m going down for a swim, I’m going for a run, I’m staying active and healthy, so I always maintain a pretty good level of fitness. But I’m rarely ever in what I would call ‘fight shape.’ That only comes around three times per year, but I’m always at a good level of fitness. 

“When I start off camps I like to get nice and big and strong. Lifting heavy weights and get that out the way for the first four weeks and then go into camp; where I’m strong, I’m heavy, I’m using a lot of force and I’m grinding sessions. Then, through the weeks of the camp, we’re reducing the weight, we’re picking up the speed, the timing the conditioning and obviously, the last few weeks, we focus on game plan, technique, skills and how we’re going to win this fight.”

And it’s that feeling fight week when everything comes together that Pearson admits he lives for. When the previous weeks all fall into place and the mind can at least be at ease that everything has gone to plan. “When you come out of sparring sessions and you’re practicing wrestling and jiu-jitsu and my coaches are patting me on the back and saying that everything’s working, ‘Job well done.’

They’re the things I’m enjoying because I know that I’m learning and I’m doing what the guys are asking me to do and that’s the bit what I enjoy about camp training.”

Confidence is key to Pearson. His self-assurance is anything but cocky, just based on the fact he’s done things the hard way his entire life. He grew up in a blue-collar town where fighting was a prerequisite rather than an option. And he learned from a young age that dedication can unlock even the wildest of dreams.

Pearson adds: “It’s all inside your head and how much you really want it. If you want something that bad, you’re going to go out there and get it. I was never the best sportsperson in my school growing up. I was never the best athlete. I was never the biggest, the strongest. I was never ‘that’ guy. 

“I was a little s**t and I used to scrap a lot, but I knew I wanted it in my head so bad that I was going to prove people wrong and I wouldn’t let anyone say otherwise. I don’t know, I think it was just the little man syndrome in me that made me an aggressive little b**tard. But I knew what I wanted and nothing was going to stop me. That’s still the way I feel today.”

Postscript: Ross made his move to Australia; he and Kristie are proud parents to a daughter born in 2016. Ross is still fighting: in 2018 he defeated Mizuto Hirota in UFC 221 and currently holds a 20-17 MMA record.

Ross Pearson: Why 145lb Was A 'Near-Death Experience'

Ross Pearson has fought at Lightweight or Welterweight most of his career; but he had a brief, never to be repeated, foray down at featherweight. An experiment that went wrong, he insists it took all the fun out of fighting.

Pearson says: “I got offered to see if I could do it. I spoke to my coaches and it was a challenge. I just looked at the bigger picture and thought, ‘The featherweight division, I’m going to go down there and perform the way I did at 155lb and I’ll be two fights away from a title shot.’ 

“I saw the bright lights, and I saw the title belt. I just had all these pictures running through my head and was like, ‘Let’s try it.’ but unfortunately for my style – a come-forward slip-and-rip type of fighter – it didn’t work. I lost too much of what I am in the weight cut. 

“It’s like a near-death experience to be honest. I’m not going to go down there again unless my body frame changes and I’d drop a lot of weight. I’m happy at 155lb; I love the fun side of it. I don’t have to worry about what my weight is because once I get fit, I’m about 165lb. I’m just 10lb out, and it’s only one day where you cut that final 10lb, it’s not a big deal.”

For the record as a Featherweight Ross first defeated Junior Assuncao by unanimous decision in UFC 141, before losing his second and final fight at the weight by TKO to Cub Swanson in June, 2012.

Ross Pearson: San Diego Caveman Diet

Q: What’s your diet like in camp? You say you’ve always got a good diet, but are there any staples that you go for?

Ross: “Yeah, I always eat meat and veg – it’s all I seem to ever eat. I like seafood too – I like a lot of seafood. Seafood, steaks, chicken, green veg and a little bit of fruit. That’s all I ever seem to eat. If I ever go to a restaurant, it’s a seafood restaurant and I’ll get some sort of fish, or it’s an Italian and I’ll get a steak. I don’t really seem to venture too far away from that.”

Q: What’s the food like over in San Diego?

“It’s good. I mean, the Mexican food isn’t really great for you, but I like a burrito now and then. There’s a lot of fresh seafood, which I like and there are actually a lot of good, nice restaurants downtown in San Diego. You’ve got a lot of Greek kebab places, Persian places – that’s all really good. That just seems to be me. I don’t like using a knife and fork and if I can gnaw it off the bone that’s even better; caveman style.”

Q: Is there no junk in there at all – you don’t have a little cheat, you don’t have a sly bit of ice cream or…?

“I mean, don’t get me wrong, after eating like that, sometimes, like, Kristie (wife and ex-UFC ring girl) has the worst sweet tooth you could ever imagine. I don’t know how she has the body that she has because she’s ripped and all she eats is sugar. She’s always the influence when it comes to dessert, so if we order a dessert, she orders a chocolate brownie dessert then will have vanilla ice cream on the top. Then I’ll have the vanilla ice cream and she’ll have the brownie!”