Author: By Elias Cepeda

It’s been a long year for Martin Kampmann. The welterweight contender headed into a November 2012 showdown with Johny Hendricks riding a three fight win streak, and he hoped to earn a title shot in the process of beating the powerful wrestler. Instead, Hendricks knocked Kampmann out early in the first round and is now the one set to face champion Georges St-Pierre this November. The Dane has not fought since that devastating loss. But on Wednesday, he gets a chance to right his course against former interim titleholder Carlos Condit, whom he faced and beat back in 2009. Many fighters choose no … Read the Full Article Here

Back in 2010, Matt Brown found himself on a three fight losing skid and with his back against a wall. The Ultimate Fighter season 7 veteran had a reputation for toughness and a penchant for exciting fights, but knew that he was uncomfortably close to losing his job in the world’s best fighting organization.In fact, Brown was certain that he’d get cut from the UFC. Turns out, “The Immortal” fights well when all hope is lost.“I was definitely worried,” Brown tells UFC.com of having his head on the chopping block. “I’d lost three in a row. Anytime anybody loses that many in a row, you have to ass … Read the Full Article Here

You can hear the reluctance in the voice of Nah-Shon Burrell as he hesitates to call his May 2012 loss to Chris Spang in Strikeforce what he really wants to. Ultimately, the welterweight abandons modesty when talking about his last loss.

“I don’t want to say it but…it was a fluke. It was,” Burrell tells UFC.com.

Spang got Burrell out of the cage quickly in the first round with strikes and “The Rock-N-Rolla” was none too happy about it. Adding to his frustration was having to wait a long time for his opportunity to redeem himself with another fight.

Strikeforce was on its way to being folded and began having fewer events, and fewer opportunities for contracted fighters like Burrell to do what they love to do and pay their bills. The financial stresses and self-doubt began to creep in to the Philadelphia fighter’s mind.

“I knew I was good, but the more time that passes and you don’t fight, you start second guessing yourself. ‘Dang, I might not be that good,’” he reveals.

“[Financially] It was hard. It was rough. But I have good management and they helped me out. I have a good team and they all made sure I was taken care of,” he continues.

They also made sure to encourage Burrell to do his due diligence and continue to train, even as it seemed like he would never get another fight. Month after month dragged by without a fight for him but he still got up each morning and made sure he’d be ready in case he got the call. Eventually, Strikeforce had its doors shuttered completely and it was announced that some of their fighters would be making a transition over to the big leagues – the UFC.

Burrell waited and worked. Coming off of a loss, he knew he didn’t have the best shot at being picked up by the promotion, despite having an excellent overall professional record. “I hadn’t gotten the call yet and I contemplated giving it up,” Burrell admits.

“But every day I still went to the gym, every day I ran. I did what I was supposed to do. Just in case I got the call, I wanted to make sure I was even remotely in shape. Even though I had doubts, I never stopped working.”

Working involved lots of water, running, salad and grilled chicken on a meager diet of no more than a thousand calories a day for Burrell. He knew that if he were to get the call up from the UFC, it would probably be to fight on short notice, so he wanted to keep his weight in check and his skills sharp.

In addition to this strict diet, he was doing MMA sparring every day and boxing sparring with future boxing hall of famer Bernard Hopkins. According to Burrell, word had spread about him being a quality fighter with a unique, pressuring style, and Hopkins’ people began bringing “The Executioner” in to work with the MMA welterweight.

All the hunger pangs, punches and sweat ended up not being in vain, as Burrell got the call he was dreaming of, the one that would keep him in the sport. He remembers the moment vividly.

“I was on a crowded train and one of my co-managers, Brian Gillespie, called me and asked, ‘how much do you weigh?’ the 23-year-old recounts.

“You always lie a little bit when you answer that question (laughs) and I said, ‘oh, about 188 to 189.’ He said, ‘good, because the UFC just called. Would you like to take a fight on the card next week?”

Burrell says that the fight could have been the next day and his answer would have been the same – an emphatic “Yes!”

“You don’t turn them down,” he explains. “I’m ready and have been sitting out seven or eight months. I’m ready. I was just smiling so much the rest of that train ride. It was so hard to remain calm, I was smiling so big.”

Even now, he smiles as he remembers the moment. He was set to fight fellow former Strikeforce fighter Yuri Villefort at UFC 157 on February 23rd.

There wouldn’t be many more smiles for about another week, however, as he struggled to make weight on short notice. Burrell says that he had not been drinking enough water all along to cut the weight he needed to make the welterweight limit.

He tried and tried all through fight week but a couple hours before the Friday weigh ins, “I was in the gym and my body stopped sweating. It wasn’t sweating at all. I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ When I realized this, I did a couple more sessions in the sauna. I did a steam sauna, a dry sauna and jumped in the whirlpool. Still, my body wasn’t dropping any more water weight.

“We called [UFC site coordinator] Burt [Watson] to let them know somewhat in advance and be a little bit professional – even though not making weight isn’t professional – that there was a chance I might not make weight. I felt horrible. Not really physically, it was more of a mental thing because I didn’t know what else to do. That was how I usually cut the weight. I had messed up. When I got the call I was not drinking enough water.”

He was told to drink two gallons a day but could only stomach a gallon. Burrell got to the scale at the UFC 157 weigh ins knowing he’d be heavy, but he still didn’t feel extra pressure. “My whole thing was, ‘if they let me fight, he can’t beat me,” he says.

Coming off of a loss and then failing to make weight might add to the stress of a UFC debut but Burrell says that he felt confident that if his opponent accepted the fight despite his being over the weight limit, he’d get the job done.

“I had heard him say that he was more explosive than me and better everywhere than me. I knew that was a lie. It wasn’t my best day but he still couldn’t beat me. So, at the weigh ins I was just thinking, ‘please take the fight,’” he said.

Villefort took the fight and Burrell proved himself right in earning a unanimous decision win. After his roller-coaster year, the UFC debutant felt only relief as his hand was raised in the Octagon for the first time.

Now, he looks towards the future with a renewed hunger and motivation to succeed as a professional fighter. He’s gone through too much to get complacent and self-satisfied.

“I’m not letting [the fact that I’ve won in the UFC] hit me,” Burrell promises. “I see a lot of guys get comfortable with just being in the UFC. I don’t want that to happen to me. I’m focused on fighting and putting on good shows. I didn’t let it set in. I am just trying to stay in shape and sneak my way on to that coming Jersey card. I took a couple days off and now I’m back to training.”

When Stephan Bonnar began his UFC career back in 2005, he was more incredulous than ambitious.

“I really didn’t think about going for a title, it was more like, ‘wow, I’m actually doing this for a living now? Are you kidding me? I get to quit my day job and just train and fight now? Oh well, I’ll give it a try,’” he chuckles as he remembers.

Bonnar’s mindset and gratitude didn’t change as he built a successful career. This past year he was able to end his career on his terms, with a win streak and having fought the best fighters in the world time and time again.

“I should have probably lied and said that I wanted the belt, but I never cared too much about it the way some guys do, like Chael Sonnen, where they feel they are failures unless they become champion,” he says.

“Each fight is its own unique challenge. Just because I didn’t fight for the belt doesn’t mean that I didn’t fight the best in the world. I did. From Lyoto Machida to Rashad Evans, Forrest Griffin and Jon Jones. I just fought them before people realized they were the best in the world. I always took it one fight at a time.”

Bonnar continues to take it one fight at a time as steps out of retirement and into the Octagon Saturday with the world’s best fighter, Anderson Silva, in the Brazilian’s home country at UFC 153. When the event was thrown into disarray after injuries to fighters canceled the main and co-main events, Silva offered himself up to save the event.

“The Spider” was not in fighting shape and so would fight at a weight class higher than he usually does. Fight fans and fighters alike know that a light heavyweight Silva may be just as dangerous as the middleweight one, considering that his two forays into the 205-pound division resulted in two quick and brutal knockouts.

Silva needed someone to step up to fight him in order for UFC 153 to be saved, however. Bonnar answered the call with three weeks of actual training time left before the October 13th event.

Facing Anderson with full camp is daunting enough; doing so effectively on short notice seems almost insurmountable. Bonnar compares the work he’s done with conditioning, skill sharpening and strategy to prepare for Silva to studying for a big exam.

“You try to do a little bit of everything,” he explains. “It’s like cramming for a final in college. You’ve just got to hammer it home as much as you can. I train in the mornings and evenings, nap in between, and at night I ice everything, put his fights in and watch them to find weaknesses and holes. It is not easy with a guy like Anderson. He’s a complete fighter.”

There are positives to fighting the best fighter in the world for Bonnar, though. As a huge underdog (some betting lines opened with Silva as a 13:1 favorite) Stephan says he feels liberated. “It takes a lot of the pressure off. People don’t expect you to win,” he explains.
“I love being the underdog. I’m eating it up.”

Bonnar knows perfectly well what a win over Silva could mean. He could either go back into an official retirement, having earned perhaps the biggest upset in MMA history and become a legend, or he could parlay that win into even bigger paydays and matchups.

He says that only this type of opportunity could have lured him out of retirement, where he was happy doing television broadcasting, partnering in businesses and spending time with his expecting wife. “I was pretty fine with having hung it up,” the light heavyweight admits.

“I tried to get the big fights. I lobbied to get a job coaching The Ultimate Fighter with Forrest [Griffin]. I thought that would be a great final hurrah – bringing it full circle to the show and get a win over him. Dana [White] didn’t go for it, so I took it as God’s way of telling me to move on.

“I didn’t just want to continue to fight the best guys in the world before they had the recognition of being the best guys. I’d done that too much. So I was done. It was no big deal, I was cool with that. After eleven years fighting I had a lot of miles on my body and it needed a break from it anyway.”

When he got the offer to fight Silva, Bonnar was happy that his body had, in fact, healed up a great deal since fighting last November. As far as his Zen mindset in retirement, Bonnar says that fans shouldn’t worry about him not snapping back into fight mode at UFC 153.

“When you are fighting the best pound for pound guy on the planet with three weeks of training it lights a hell of a big fire under your ass,” he assures.

That fire has been driving Bonnar in training, but he admits that he won’t know for certain if he’s been able to get himself in good enough shape to fight at the type of pace he always has. “I don’t even know if I can be in good enough shape to fight the way I normally do – being an aggressive fighter who doesn’t waste time in there. We’ll find out on fight night,” he says.

Despite that uncertainty, “The American Psycho” does not plan on biding his time and taking it slow against Anderson. “I’ve never really gone in there and stalled, looked for stand ups, held on. I go in there to fight. I don’t know if I can go in there and slow it down,” he says.

“Especially with a guy like Anderson who is so fast. What, am I going to let him get into a rhythm and pick me apart from the outside? Not a good idea.”

Make no mistake though, Bonnar’s number one goal is shocking the world and beating Silva on Saturday. He just believes that the winning strategy will also be an exciting one.

“The way I beat Anderson Silva is not going to be the boring way. I cannot lay back. To beat Anderson Silva I’ve got to get after him,” Bonnar believes.

“I’ve got to take some of that power away [from him]. I can’t let him get his rhythm and confidence by picking me apart and countering me. I’ve got to mix it up and pressure him. Yeah, the way to beat Anderson isn’t to be boring, it’s to get after it.”

Joe Lauzon had multiple wins in the UFC, beaten a former world champion and fought on national television before he even decided to make professional fighting his full-time career. Back in 2006, the man currently in second place (behind Anderson Silva) for most UFC fight night bonus awards was a kid just out of college making his organizational debut against legend and former lightweight world champ Jens Pulver.

Lauzon emphatically showed that he belonged in the UFC by finishing Pulver in the first round and went on to make an impressive run on the talent-rich Ultimate Fighter Season 5 but was still working a 9 to 5 in the information technology world. “Initially, I liked the idea of doing both,” he tells UFC.com.

“I didn’t want to put all of my eggs in one basket. I worked during the day and trained at night. When I finished college it already felt like I was training so much more because it was just work and training, no classes.”

His time on TUF motivated Lauzon to give MMA his full attention, however. “When I went on TUF I met Allen Berube, who was another fighter competing for the contract. At the time he was a little bit older, around 31, and he wanted so bad to be in the UFC. But he had only been doing Jiu-Jitsu for a few years and time had passed him up,” Lauzon remembers.

“He was a couple of years too late and a few years too old. It made me realize that if I wanted to do this, if I wanted to fight, then I needed to do it. If I half-assed it I could be kicking myself in a couple years, wondering what would have happened if I trained one hundred percent. I decided that if I won my fight on the finale then I would quit my job. If it didn’t go so well then that would be a measuring stick.”

Berube opened Lauzon’s eyes to the opportunities before him, generally, but the financial success he soon found fighting in the UFC really let him know what he could achieve. “At the finale I won and got the Submission of the Night award. I had already gotten Knockout of the Night against Pulver. I made more in these two fights than in a year of working at my IT job. I thought, ‘I can do this. I can definitely make more money fighting than I can make working.’ If it ended up being that I just did it for a couple fights or years, then I could always go back to work,” Lauzon says.

Many wins, submissions and KOs later, Lauzon says that he’s “not worried about going back to work,” anymore.

It took Chris Lytle more than two UFC fights to realize he could make a good living from MMA. The Indiana fireman first fought in the UFC before its current ownership, Zuffa, took over.

Back in 2000, Lytle made his promotional debut at UFC 28 and made $500 for his efforts. But the money on the line during the fourth season of TUF got Lytle’s attention.

The winners of “The Comeback” season were to be awarded $100,000 UFC contracts as well as $100,000 sponsorship contracts. “I was fired up about the big money,” Lytle remembers.

The father saw an opportunity to pay his family back for all the time he spent away from them while training MMA for so many years, if he could only win TUF. The result was that Lytle fought very conservatively, to not lose instead of aggressively going after victories.

He made it to the finals against Matt Serra but lost a razor-thin split decision in a mostly slow fight. Lytle came in a distant second and Serra went on to win the welterweight championship of the world.

“[Being focused on the fighting] affected me,” Lytle remembers. “I felt a lot of responsibility to my family. I had missed a lot of stuff and I wanted to pay them off for it. I got too focused on the money. I thought, “I don’t care if anyone likes this fight, all I care is if I like it. And if I win, I’ll like it.”

When Joe Lauzon earned Fight of the Night and Submission of the Night honors at UFC on FOX in August of this year, he moved past Lytle and Nate Diaz into second place on the organization’s all-time bonus list. Devastated, not by losing, but by not giving it his all and then losing, Lytle changed his fight philosophy after the TUF Finale.

The result was that the journeyman transformed himself into a star and he retired last year as one of the very best welterweights on the globe. “When I lost to Serra it ended up being about a $240,000 difference between winning first and second. What I figured out is the only harder thing than losing a fight is losing a fight where you didn’t go out there and give it everything you had. That’s as bad of a feeling as you can have and I wanted to avoid that at all costs,” he says.

“After losing TUF 4, I thought, ‘all that pressure that I put on myself, it is always going to be gone from here on out. Now, I’d rather go out there and lose a great fight and feel good about myself than knowing I just didn’t do what I could in the fight.’ I just got that in my head and that was it.”

Joe Lauzon is very proud of his reputation as an exciting fighter, but believes that it is the product of his always trying to go for a finish. “J-Lau” says that he never wants to be seen as tough for tough’s sake, because that means that all he’d be doing is taking a lot of punishment for the entertainment of fans.

“I love fighting but I also want to remember where I parked my car when I’m 40,” he says. “Unnecessary head trauma is not good for anyone. Anytime someone says you’re a ‘tough guy,’ it means you got your ass whooped but kind of survived and got out of there. I’d rather have great defense, not get hit that much, have great Jiu-Jitsu and be a good finisher.”

Lytle does not express the same disdain for the term, ‘tough guy,’ but emphasizes that, even when he made the switch after TUF 4, it was always about winning. “I don’t want to make it seem that winning wasn’t extremely important, because it always was,” he explains.

“It’s that it wasn’t enough just to win. I had to win the way I wanted to win. If I went out there and won an ultra conservative, boring fight, then I wasn’t happy with myself.”

Both Lytle and Lauzon should be very happy with themselves based on what they’ve done in the Octagon. Each man has also managed to move their careers way past their humble beginnings due to their excellence and exciting fighting styles.

UFC fight night bonuses have transformed Lauzon and Lytle’s lives. Lauzon has parlayed his success as a fighter to owning and operating his own gym in Massachusetts, and he no longer fears having to return to the 9 to 5 office grind. Lytle says he’s achieved a degree of economic freedom that gives him pride and allows him to provide for his family of six.

“I’m just trying to set up for our future,” he says. “And the bonuses have meant a certain level of freedom, of not having to worry about different things. I don’t have to worry about how [my family] is going to get by or pay for this or go there. I have been able to make a few different investments, I have a few properties now and a business that I’m involved with. It is amazing the amount of freedom that they have given me. I have always felt a sense of loyalty and duty and responsibility to the UFC because of this. They’ve given me the opportunity to do this.

“I’ve always taken a great deal of pride in my being the only provider for my family. There’s six people I’m responsible for and it is good peace of mind knowing that I’ve been able to do that. It has helped me feel better about myself. If there’s something that needs taking care of, it’s going to get taken care of and I’m the one taking care of it.”

In April of 2011, Georges St-Pierre dominated Jake Shields in the main event of the historic UFC 129 in Toronto to successfully defend his UFC welterweight championship. Yet because of a torn ACL in his knee, St-Pierre has not fought in the near year and a half since and fight fans have had a serious “Rush” deficit, missing one of the sport’s best and most likable competitors.

On August 28, GSP was finally medically cleared to begin full training for MMA competition and is planning on facing interim belt holder Carlos Condit in November. That’s the good news. The more worrisome issue is that we simply won’t know how well he has recovered until he steps foot into the Octagon again.

Not many years ago, ACL tears were considered career-ending injuries in most sports. St-Pierre is known for his athleticism and dynamism and fans are wondering if he will be the same fighter he has been in the past.

UFC.com sat down with some of St-Pierre’s coaches to get their perspectives on the fighter’s recovery. Below, head coach Firas Zahabi, Muay Thai coach Phil Nurse and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu legend Renzo Gracie talk about the characteristics GSP possesses that have made him the fighter he is and why they think he’ll continue his reign.
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“He didn’t throw a punch for six months,” Tristar gym leader Firas Zahabi says of St-Pierre. “This is definitely the longest Georges has gone with that level of inactivity in his career.”

Because of St-Pierre’s physical limitations while recovering from ACL reconstructive surgery, Zahabi knew that it was important to keep his mind engaged. “I got him into coaching. He’d continue to come to the gym and watch practice. He cornered several MMA fights with me. Coaching kept Georges’ head in the game,” he said.

Eventually, St-Pierre was able to resume some training of his own, but Zahabi says that they moved slowly to guard against re-injury. “We were very gradual. We took baby steps,” Zahabi says. “It was incremental, taking small steps into larger and faster ones. He started by sparring two rounds in a row but then by late August was doing five rounds in a row. We started him with lighter guys, 135-145 pound fighters, then moved him to lightweights and just recently began working in welterweights.”

Zahabi likens St-Pierre getting back into fight training to someone re-learning how to walk. “It was like him learning to walk again. At first it is hard but then you remember it and its natural once again,” he says.

The head coach says that he’s confident that St-Pierre will be back in fine form, in large part, because he’s a natural and practiced competitor, above all else. “Georges has been competing since such a young age that it is ingrained in him deeply. He’s been kicking and punching since he was eight or nine years old. His brain is hard-wired to compete and fight at this point,” he says.

St-Pierre’s Muay Thai coach Phil Nurse says that, as recently as a couple weeks ago, he saw firsthand that the fighter is his old self again. “He came in a couple weeks ago and what I was looking for, mechanically, was that he wasn’t shying about that leg, that he wouldn’t want to do certain things because of it,” Nurse explains. “So I told him ‘let’s just spar,’ because with sparring you can’t really predict what’s going to happen. In sparring and fighting you don’t know what is going to happen, how your opponent is going to move. You just know he’s trying to hit you and that you’re trying to hit him.”

Nurse was heartened by what he observed and felt from St-Pierre. The champ quickly picked up on the things his coach threw at him, adjusted and then began mounting his own creative offense.

“He just started doing what he’s always done,” Nurse says. “He started seeing what I was doing, he kind of looked for the answers…regardless of what footwork or what trick it was or what maneuvering it needed, he did it. And then he started growing into it more.

“I’ll show him a move while we’re sparring. He’ll see it, try to shut it down and then he’s learned it and he’ll start being more creative with the same move. ‘Coach, could I use that move like this and like this in there? And could I disguise it like this and put it there at the same time?’

“If you’re thinking about an injury, you wouldn’t be so creative. To me, I didn’t see nothing much different. He’s the same old Georges. He’s still creative, still trying things out. There was no, ‘I can’t try that because of,’ he just carried on.”

When Jiu Jitsu coach Renzo Gracie got his hands on St-Pierre a few weeks ago, he says he was shocked to feel that the supposedly still-recovering fighter was quick, explosive and more technical than he had been before. “His Jiu Jitsu was already good before, but when he came in here and trained [a couple weeks ago] I could tell he must have been doing a lot of work,” Gracie said with excitement.

“His technique is even better than it was before the injury. He had the same strength and explosiveness as before, but was more technical. He’s always learning, that guy. Everywhere he goes, at all times, he’s studying and doing whatever training he can.”

Nurse also says that St-Pierre seems re-energized and motivated to return to competition. “He kept telling me, ‘wow, I feel so great, I feel so energized. Even though I’ve had a long break I just feel like, for whatever reason, my body needed it, I needed it because now I feel so hungry again. I’m hungry to go back into fighting.’ It’s probably a good thing,” Nurse says of St-Pierre’s injury, recovery and time off.

Now that it is time to focus on fighting Condit, Zahabi says that he personally does not have any extra motivation in coaching against the interim champ’s trainers, Greg Jackson and Mike Winkeljohn, who used to lend a hand with St-Pierre’s preparation during training camps. “No, it doesn’t matter,” Zahabi says. “They are just two guys who I have a high regard for. To me, they are friends. They always prepare their fighters in the best possible way.”

Something else that doesn’t matter, for the moment, is a possible super fight with middleweight champion Anderson Silva, according to Zahabi. It is all about the Condit fight in November, for now.

“We haven’t talked about [fighting Silva] much lately because we are always talking about Condit,” the coach says.

“We don’t want to disrespect Condit. We underestimated Matt Serra before while thinking about other fights and we learned our lesson then. Anderson, yes, I think it’s a good fight, but we consider Carlos Condit to be the biggest challenge Georges has ever faced.”