Frank Mir’s head grappling coach Ricky Lundell gives MMA journalist Nick Peet the lowdown on getting 260lb-plus athletes battle-ready for the octagon.

it was a moment when the world seemed to stop spinning briefly. As Frank Mir climbed back to his feet, seconds after becoming the first man in 42 contests to submit the great Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira, the thousands in attendance at UFC 140 and millions watching on TV around the world held their breath and stared at the screens waiting for the replay. ‘Had that really just happened?’

The universal wince and collective sigh, both inside the Air Canada Center in Toronto and from living room sofas across the planet, following the replay gave us the answer: Frank Mir had just signaled his intent to return to the top of the UFC heavyweight division by repeating the lethal arm-breaking submission routine that had halted Tim Sylvia back in 2004. And that first submission defeat of arguably the best jiu-jitsu player in the heavyweight division, echoed Nogueira’s first knockout defeat also inflicted by Mir back in 2008.

Yet it could have been so very different. Nogueira’s demise was born out of his own rushed approach to finishing Mir, who just seconds earlier, had been face-flat on the canvas from a long Nogueira right cross to the jaw. It was almost like a re-run of Cheick Kongo’s ‘Comeback of the Year’ reversal against Pat Barry in June, 2011. Like the Frenchman, Mir looked out, but somehow regained his consciousness well enough to reverse his fortunes and submit the guy on top of him.

It’s the type of turnaround that rarely happens in the lighter weight classes, but ensures that the heavyweight division remains the most exciting and dramatic in all of mixed martial arts. These guys are simply just so big and powerful that literally one strike, one wrong move, one blink of the eye can almost result in defeat.

Mir agrees: “It’s just the nature of the game,” he confessed to Joe Rogan inside the Octagon, while stricken ‘Big Nog’ lay surrounded by medical officials on the canvas behind him. “When you are our size and as dangerous as we are things happen and you just get caught. But this takes nothing away from Nogueira.”

In Mir’s corner that night was head grappling coach Ricky Lundell and he too agrees that when it comes to the heavyweights the usual rules of both training and competition go out of the window. The two-time grappling world champion and the youngest North American ever to receive a Gracie jiu-jitsu black belt, the man from Ohio has worked with a catalog of UFC stars including legends Anderson Silva and Georges St Pierre.

Lundell said: “You have a lot of knockouts and submissions in heavyweight fights and that’s because of the amount of power you have in the heavyweight division. The difference is a heavyweight can hit you almost anywhere and really injure you. We have to be extremely careful with our offensive tactics. We have to fight a perfect fight, because one hit can really hurt us.

“A lot of fights end on the ground so if you find yourself on the ground, you have to get up quickly or it will be over and end badly. It doesn’t mean locking your feet and hanging on. It means getting up quickly because heavyweight shots are lethal.  

“Lightweight fights don’t usually end in knockouts because they don’t hit hard enough. A heavyweight’s punch is like a nuclear bomb and a lightweight’s punch is like a hand grenade. But remember, both can be deadly if they are placed in the right spot.”

TAKEDOWN DEFENSE

So if an end can come so suddenly, so abruptly, how the hell can anyone realistically prepare for a fight in the heavyweight division. How does a coach train a heavyweight to prepare for the unexpected? “It is always about who we are going to fight,” Lundell explains. “A Brazilian background jiu-jitsu fighter spends a lot of his time on his back so I will focus on takedown defense. If they can’t take you down then they can’t use their submissions. A stand-up fighter uses his hands so we will look at wrestling so we can take them down and submit them. 

“When you are fighting a heavier guy you can be knocked out easier, so we do have to be more careful. A heavier guy can hit you a lot harder when he is on top of you. Of course, we look at weight divisions, but we have to look at what style we are fighting. Style is what makes fights.

“I spend a lot of time looking at my fighter’s game – how he moves and how he reacts. I look at the fighter he is going to fight to see how he approaches the game. Fighting has a personality. I am not going to change my fighter’s game. I am going to customize the game directly for him. I am going to coach what he needs right now for the next fight. That is the difference between a coach and a trainer. A trainer trains you how to fight. A coach prepares you to win the next fight.

“I look at the fighter and his coaches. In the case of Frank Mir, his coaches Jimmy Gifford and Shawn Yarborough have been the key to his successful stand-up game. Their job is to place Frank at an angle where takedowns and grappling can occur at a world-class level. That’s where I come in.”

WRESTLING

So is it tactics that count most when training a heavyweight for competition? Ahead of, say, speed or even power? “Successful tactics for heavyweights include staying out of the reach of the other guy and cutting angles or smothering him so close he cannot hit you hard,” Lundell says. “We spend a lot of time strategizing with our fighter. At this skill level, we do not depend on getting lucky and catching our opponent. We plan by looking at old films and focusing on his opponent’s movements. 

“One of the key things about the fight is the anticipation of what is going to happen. If, for the last 10 years, he has been doing a certain move, we know what he is going to do next because that is what he has been doing for the past decade. We count on him reacting perfectly and we beat him with his perfect movement.

“In the cage, wrestling lets you pick where it is going to happen. With anything else, your opponent determines where it is going to end. It is the one skill that is the most undertrained in the UFC. You will get your submissions from jiu-jitsu and your knockouts from good boxing; but wrestling determines whether you end up on the ground as a winner or loser.  

“A good example is Anderson Silva. He has a good takedown defense and then he knocks them out. Wrestling is what changed the game. Wrestling is not a game ender. It decides where the game ends. Jiu-jitsu and boxing end the game.”

Mir agrees. His submission victory over Nogueira at UFC 140 completes a fine double for the Las Vegas native, who became the first man ever to knockout Big Nog when they fought for the UFC interim heavyweight title at UFC 92 in 2008. “Wrestling gives you a great athletic base and obviously one of the areas that’s holding back the Europeans is the wrestling," Mir says. "Right now in MMA, the way the rules are, the way the sport is, wrestling is the most fundamental skill to have. 

“I love boxing, kickboxing and jiu-jitsu but if you had to separate the arts, wrestling is going to dictate more wins than any other sport. If you really look at who does well it’s usually the countries that are the powerhouses in wrestling. Russia produces a lot of good fighters. Why? A wrestling base. Great Britain and Ireland, how many Olympic wrestling gold medalists have they produced?”

THE PERFECT MIX

These days the heavyweight division is also popularized by some of the biggest athletes in sports, yet Lundell admits that it’s a fighter with greater reach, rather than muscle mass, who should win the day. “Reach is definitely more critical. Size is important but if he can’t ever reach you then size doesn’t matter. Weight is only crucial if it is functional weight. With heavyweights, we focus on angles of attack. You have to find a proper angle in order to attack successfully. It’s all about combining mixed martial arts and wrestling. This is not your mother’s MMA.”

Like every other division in MMA, the heavyweight class also has its specialists, however. Mir and Nogueira boast advanced ground games like no others, while ex-UFC champion Junior Dos Santos has great boxing and recently deposed Heavyweight champion Daniel Cormier can boast Olympic standard wrestling.

But then you also have champions who have had more than just advanced skills. Guys like Randy Couture, who fuelled their mixed bag of tricks with sheer heart, guts and that will to succeed. So what value matters most to a heavyweight coach?

Lundell thinks he’s found the perfect mix. “I think a heavyweight who can put on a good offensive fight is very dangerous because he can end the fight at any time. A person who can keep coming back is a will breaker. A scary guy is a guy who comes back in a later round because you have annoyed him and he is coming back for you. However, a heavyweight with heart who is offensive all of the time is the most dangerous man in the world. This is the goal for a champion like Frank Mir.”

And Lundell asks, when his cornering heavyweight star like Mir, once the Octagon door slams shut it’s a case of keeping your fingers crossed and hoping that all the hard work and preparation goes to plan – just like it ultimately did against Nogueira. “When the bell rings, it is the most intense moment of all. I look over at the other coaches and we all wonder if we have done our best. We are about to go to war. It’s not just between the two fighters, but between coaches. Who has done their homework the best.”