In a way, it was the day Jeff Curran had been waiting for since 2004. He was coming back to the UFC, and his first bout in the Octagon since his UFC 46 match against Matt Serra was going to be against Scott Jorgensen on October 29th. Ironically, it was…
“Bart’s been with me since he was 15 years old, and I’ve been at every fight of his with him,” explained Curran. “This time, he was the first person I had to call when I got the phone call for the fight. I said ‘Bart, if you feel this is gonna take away from you or overshadow your focus or the attention you need to prepare for this fight, I won’t do it.’”
That’s selflessness. But Curran shrugs off any praise for the action, simply calling it the right thing to do.
“It’s hard to let people know without sounding like I’m tooting my own horn, but I always put my fighters first,” he said. “I’m a coach, they came to me, and trusted in me as a coach. I’m Bart’s coach, his mentor, his leader, his best friend, and I’m a lot of roles with him. Even though this is the biggest opportunity of my career, of course I’m hoping he says ‘yeah man, do it.’ (Laughs) And I know Bart well enough to know that, but I still give that respect to say ‘if this is not gonna fly with you, I won’t do it.’”
Palaszewski was all for his coach’s return to the UFC, and together, they’ve been putting in plenty of hours together, not just as fighter and coach, but fighter and fighter. It’s been a good change of pace for Island Lake, Illinois’ Curran.
“He definitely knows that together we can accomplish this,” he said. “It’s been nice. I’ve been able to do my own thing, and at the same time, Bart and I are getting a couple workouts in a week together where we’re really pushing it. There’s been a real good energy between the two of us.”
Now it’s time to bring that to Las Vegas for this Saturday’s UFC 137 event. Curran is no stranger to fighting in the fight capital of the world, having done it five times over the course of his 13-plus year career for the UFC, WEC, and WFA. “I fought for every major organization that is now owned by Zuffa,” laughs “The Big Frog,” who also competed in PRIDE and Strikeforce.
But this time it’s different. At 34, Curran has seen it all, paid his dues, and now he’s looking for nothing but big fights from here on out. So heading into a May bout with Billy Vaughan in Illinois, he made it clear that if he didn’t win and earn a spot in the UFC, retirement may have been the next option.
“The retirement question, because of that comment, has come up in every single interview I’ve done, and I guess I need a chance to explain rather than just say I would have retired,” said Curran, who contacted the UFC’s bantamweight and featherweight matchmaker, Sean Shelby, to plead his case for a shot in the Octagon.
“I told him that I’ve done my part and I’ve done everything possible to prove that I belong at the best level,” Curran recalls. “I’m gonna fight this last fight, and I’m either coming back or I’m not. He said, well, I can’t guarantee you anything. I said that’s fine, you don’t need to. I’m gonna fight, then I know I did my part, and then I’m gonna sit back and either wait for something to come, and if it went on too long, I would either just retire or reevaluate my life six months later. Ultimately, I just wanted to make a statement that I was done playing around in the mid-tiers. I don’t want to risk the legacy that my career has built or any kind of quality credentials that I’ve gained. I don’t want to risk losing to a lower-level guy. If I have a bad night and he has a great night, and something freakish happens, I can lose a lot of respect that I’ve built over the years for something with a low reward. And I wasn’t about to risk that anymore.”
Curran decisioned Vaughan over three rounds, his fourth win in five fights. The phone didn’t immediately ring, yet a month later, the veteran was already chomping at the bit.
“A month after the last fight, I called (manager) Monte (Cox),” he chuckles. “I really don’t think I would have stayed retired very long, so it’s a good thing I got the call.”
That call came in July, and Curran had his second UFC chance. He couldn’t be happier.
“It’s really nice to kinda know where my opportunity lies and not be wondering what’s next and all that kinda stuff, so everything starts to fall in place,” he said. “You start to get on a better schedule, on a better diet, and that’s how I feel. Ever since I got the call about coming back, everything seems to make sense right now.”
He doesn’t have an easy fight to welcome him back in former title challenger Jorgensen, but Curran has never been one to dodge opponents, a fact made even clearer by a WEC stint that saw him take on Urijah Faber, Mike Brown, Joseph Benavidez, and Takeya Mizugaki in successive fights. Now he gets to enter a new shark tank in the UFC’s 135-pound division, and he’s happy to be turning the switch back from fan to fighter.
“I tried not to get myself excited about something that might not happened, so I would watch the fights and see all the bantamweights and I got into it as a fan, but I kinda took myself out of the equation,” said Curran. “And once I got the call, it was automatically like every show, ‘okay, here’s how this could play out.’ So I got back to that normal ‘I want to fight the best guys in the division and I want to be a contender and be considered and respected as one of the best. So it’s definitely a fuel.”
And after Jorgensen, one intriguing matchup could be with an old foe in Kid Yamamoto, who decisioned Curran in 2003.
“The Kid Yamamoto fight was a big eye opener for me because I knew what to expect, but I never felt the same power as he had for such a little guy,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘little guy, it’s not a big deal,’ and I ended up losing that decision. I did have a good third round as always, and then I fought Matt Serra after that.”
Curran lost to Serra at UFC 46, going 19-6 since then. But the past doesn’t really matter at this point. If he gets by Jorgensen on Saturday night, the fighter who was a step away from retirement will have a brand new career. Funny game, this fight business. But Jeff Curran still loves it.
“I’ve got everything to gain and everything to lose from it, so I’m gonna let it all hang out.”
Hatsu Hioki knows what it means to the world of Japanese mixed martial arts for him to be successful in a UFC career that begins this Saturday night in Las Vegas against George Roop. He is well aware of what has happened to his countrymen Yushin Okami,…
He is well aware of what has happened to his countrymen Yushin Okami,Yoshihiro Akiyama, Takanori Gomi, “Kid” Yamamoto, and Caol Uno, in recent times, and he is determined not just to become the first Japanese fighter to win a UFC title, but to make a statement to the world.
That statement is a simple, yet profound, one, and when asked how important a victory for him this weekend would be, not just for himself, but for the Japanese people, he answered, “It is very important since I would like to prove that the Japanese still can fight.”
It’s a message of national pride from a fighter who has competed at a high level in several major organizations in his homeland like PRIDE, Sengoku, and Shooto, winning titles in the latter two promotions. Hence the high level of anticipation for his arrival in the Octagon, one which he knows comes attached with an equally high amount of pressure.
“Yes, I feel some pressure,” he admitted through translator / manager Kei Maeda. “I will try to beat the pressure and Mr. Roop.”
So why is Hioki’s debut such a big deal? Well, start with the fact that he is a groundfighting expert who has finished half of his 24 wins via submission, including victories over Mark Hominick and Chris Manuel, but he can also handle himself on the feet, making him dangerous anywhere the fight goes. He also owns victories over Jeff Curran, Baret Yoshida, Marlon Sandro, and Takeshi Inoue, but his biggest win may have been a 2008 TKO of Japanese legend Rumina Sato.
“That was a huge boost to my confidence as a fighter,” said Hioki, who defeated Sato in the middle of a current 12-1-1 stretch where the only blemishes have been a 2008 draw with Hiroshi Nakamura and a controversial split decision loss to current UFC featherweightMichihiro Omigawa in 2009. Winner of four in a row, an April submission win over Donald Sanchez was also a key one, not just because it propelled him into the UFC, but because it was the first major event in Japan since the tragic earthquake and tsunami that rocked the nation in March of this year.
“I feel really sorry for those who have been affected by the disaster,” he said. “It’s my job to do my best in the fight as always, but I hoped that my fight had some positive and encouraging effects for them.”
After the bout, the word started getting out that the Nagoya native was ready to seek out bigger game, and in June, Hioki made the move to the UFC.
“The UFC looked to give me the best and the hardest challenge now with the current roster,” he said. “The UFC featherweight division is stacked, and at the top of the division Mr. (Jose) Aldo has no holes in his game, it seems. He’s very explosive.”
The 28-year old Hioki is no slouch either, and he promises that new fans will see a bout to remember at UFC 137.
“My style is to utilize all MMA skills and control the pace of fights,” he said. “Please expect to see the toughness of the Japanese fighting spirit.”
It’s something that has never been lacking in the Japanese fighters competing in the Octagon, but for some reason, most have never been able to match their success at home with that in the UFC. When asked for his thoughts on the topic, Hioki said “there are so many reasons, like rules and cultures. However, just like Mr. (Takeya) Mizugaki, who just had a big win (over Cole Escovedo), winning streaks from Japanese fighters will emerge more from now on.”
And Hatsu Hioki is more than willing to lead the charge. Working on “practicing elbows and imagining using the cage in sparring,” he will get a stern test in Roop, who has scored upsets over Chan Sung Jung and Josh Grispi in a little over a year’s time, but he’s ready for him and ready to take his first steps as a UFC fighter.
“I always try to grow as a fighter and enjoy all aspects of this fighting game,” he said.
There is a four letter word prevalent in every conversation with Scott Jorgensen, one that has led him through his 29 years on this earth, from his time as a three-time Pac-10 champion wrestler at Boise State to his current status as one of the best ba…
There is a four letter word prevalent in every conversation with Scott Jorgensen, one that has led him through his 29 years on this earth, from his time as a three-time Pac-10 champion wrestler at Boise State to his current status as one of the best bantamweight mixed martial artists in the world.
Work.
The way life is for “Young Guns,” nothing good happens without that word, and nothing worth having comes without it. So when he went through a flawless training camp for the biggest fight of his career last December against Dominick Cruz, he assumed that all the work was done. All he needed to do was show up on fight night and the first 135-pound championship belt in UFC history was his.
He was wrong. The work wasn’t done yet.
“If you want to be successful, you work for it,” said Jorgensen, who lost a lackluster five round decision to Cruz on the final WEC card in Arizona. “You want to win, you work for it. For some reason, through the security of a training camp that went fantastically great, which never happens for me, (Laughs) I honestly felt like nothing could go wrong for me that day. I had the fight, it didn’t matter what I did, I’d catch him. I honestly felt like I was gonna knock him out, and with a guy like Dominick I should have known better. I should have pulled my head out of my butt and thought back to all those days in wrestling when I thought ‘oh, I’ll go out there and walk through this guy,’ and it didn’t happen. I made the mistake of counting on one thing, and Dominick’s a guy you can’t count on luck with. You gotta put the work in, and the hardest part about that was I was embarrassed about my performance because it didn’t look great, it wasn’t a good performance, and it wasn’t a close fight.”
He pauses, letting his only loss of the last two years sink in once again. Then he reveals his current status update.
“It will never happen again.”
And when it comes to the hard-nosed Jorgensen, that’s a statement you would feel pretty secure taking to the bank, because if you looked at his five fights before the Cruz bout and his first round knockout of Ken Stone in his lone post-Cruz match, it’s a different fighter than the one fighting for the title against the admittedly tough to decipher champion. But part of this game is making everything come together when it matters, and Jorgensen wasn’t able to do that. It was a lesson learned, and as he prepares for his Saturday bout against returning veteran Jeff Curran, he doesn’t dread taking the long road back to a title shot.
“I’m gonna put my nose to the grindstone and do what I gotta do,” said Jorgensen, 12-4. “I did it before in the WEC to get to that shot with Cruz. I’ll do it again, I’m comfortable with it, and I one hundred percent know that I’m one of the best in the world. So it doesn’t matter who you put in front of me, I’m gonna knock ‘em down, beat ‘em up, and keep moving closer to that title, whether it’s three fights or five fights. And the more fights that I get, the better I become. I learn every single fight and I figure out a little bit more between the fights, and that just builds my game and builds my confidence and makes it that much harder to stop me.”
“One of the best in the world.” It’s an accurate statement when it comes to Jorgensen’s place in the bantamweight pecking order, and you’ve got to wonder whether he ever sits back and lets that thought soak in, if only for a moment. Want to guess the answer?
“I learned in college that if you get caught up in the rankings and all that, it’s a false sense of security because that could get taken away in a moment,” he said. “A ranking’s an opinion. The only spot that’s guaranteed is the guy that’s holding that belt. There’s only one number one, and everything else is arbitrary. So it’s just work. If I want to be recognized as one of the best, yeah, I do what I’ve been doing, but that’s not what I’m settling for, and that’s not why I started competing in sports. I’m definitely not in the UFC to fight for second place. I’m fighting in the UFC to be the world champion. It’s been work, work, work, and not paying attention to the talk and the recognition that I get. I appreciate it, but I’ll appreciate it a lot more if I’ve got a big gold belt.”
There’s that “w” word again. Four times in the last paragraph to be exact. When you point it out to him, he laughs, but then explains.
“That’s a wrestler’s mentality,” he said. “You look at guys like Clay Guida, Urijah (Faber), Josh Koscheck, Matt Hughes, Phil Davis, every one of us that came up through the Division I ranks in college wrestling, we knew one thing. We didn’t get the recognition, we didn’t get the interviews or the autographs, we just got that self-satisfaction of being the best, winning a tournament, or winning an NCAA title, which some of those guys did. It’s that wrestler’s work ethic, that grind, that mentality that we never started this because of the recognition or because we thought we were gonna get famous; we started wrestling because we loved the sport, the spirit of competition and just being able to go out there and beat another person at something they’ve been training for as hard as you had.”
“I learned with the coaches and training partners that I’ve had that there was only one way to get better, and that was by outworking your opponent,” he continues. “And whether that comes by way of knockout or submission or a decision, you’ve got to outwork them. You’ve got to be prepared for anything and that’s a wrestler’s mentality and this is a wrestler’s sport.”
With comments like that, it doesn’t sound like Scott Jorgensen is the kind of guy you want to fight, because win or lose, you’ll know you’ve been in a grueling, punishing scrap. But over 13 years into his career, Curran has seen it all in rings and cages around the world, and if the “Big Frog” knows anything, it’s that if you want to make an impression, why not take on the baddest guy you possibly could? And that’s what he’s doing with Jorgensen.
“A lot of people said ‘why would he take you as a first fight,’ and there have been interviews where he said he picked me to fight over Mike Easton,” said Jorgensen. “But I’m a bigger name, and if he does get a win, great, it builds his career again. If he loses, he just lost to one of the top guys in the world again, so chalk it up to the game.”
“I know after his last fight, he said ‘I’m retiring if I don’t get back in the UFC,’ and I think it was really hard to find a lot of guys that were willing to fight me,” he continues. “I’m in a position where it’s a tough fight for a lot of guys. So with Curran wanting to be back in the UFC, and from what I may have heard through the grapevine and through different avenues, it was hard to find a fight for me and he was willing to step up and take it. This was the risk he was willing to take, and if this was his way back into the UFC and back into that spotlight, he was gonna do whatever it took. But it doesn’t matter to me. I’ve got to go back in there with the same mentality as I had before.”
The plan was simple, but it was the simplicity of it that made it brilliant. There wasn’t going to be some intricate series of maneuvers for Joe Lauzon to pull off if he defused Melvin Guillard’s striking in their UFC 136 bout earlier this month an…
The plan was simple, but it was the simplicity of it that made it brilliant. There wasn’t going to be some intricate series of maneuvers for Joe Lauzon to pull off if he defused Melvin Guillard’s striking in their UFC 136 bout earlier this month and got close enough to implement his grappling attack; just a few key moves that were drilled over and over again by Lauzon with a newcomer to his camp, Ricky Lundell.
If the name sounds unfamiliar, that’s okay for now, because the 25-year old Utah native is used to being the secret weapon in fight camps around the mixed martial arts world. Suffice to say for now that Lundell is a two-time grappling world champion, the youngest North American to earn a Gracie Jiu-Jitsu black belt (he was 19 when Pedro Sauer awarded him the honor), as well as a two-year letterman in wrestling for Iowa State, which is even more impressive considering that he never wrestled in high school.
With that out of the way, it’s back to Houston and UFC 136, and a confident Guillard came out firing his punches and kicks, looking for a highlight reel finish. But it was Lauzon who caught “The Young Assassin” with a counterpunch and rocked him. It was time for his new coach’s plan to kick into gear.
“I had Joe stick to the front headlock,” said Lundell. “Front headlock, guillotine, front headlock, run around, choke. And that’s because Melvin Guillard is so athletic and explosive that had we not gone front headlock, he might have gotten away.”
Lauzon worked for the front headlock, but with his arm tied up, he ran around, sunk his hooks in, and finished Guillard off with a rear naked choke. Perfect plan, perfect execution, game over. Lauzon, already sold on his new coach, couldn’t have been happier.
“For pretty much all my camps, I’ve always been the main coach,” said the lightweight contender. “I have a boxing coach, I work with jiu-jitsu guys, and I work on other things, but the gameplan is usually my gameplan. I figure out what I want to do and we talk about it and figure it out. This is really the first camp where I kind of took a back seat and listened to Ricky. And we talked all about the front headlock, though we didn’t think the front headlock was gonna come off me dropping him with a punch. We worked a whole bunch of takedowns, a whole lot of keeping him on the ground and really doing our best to keep Melvin on the ground and negating all the stuff he likes to do to get up. But as a Plan B, when Melvin posts up, we’re gonna grab his head and put him in a front headlock, and then we’re gonna work. And that’s where all the stuff from Ricky came in.”
Lauzon’s meeting with Lundell was a happy accident, as the most recent UFC fighter summit in May coincided with the New Englander’s training camp for his June bout with Curt Warburton. Wanting to take in the summit while still staying busy in Vegas, Lauzon arranged to hit pads with respected striking coach Jimmy Gifford, and it was Gifford – one of Frank Mir’s coaches – who recommended “J-Lau” work a bit with Lundell, who was in camp with the former heavyweight champ.
“I don’t want to work out with some guy that’s here to train Mir,” said Lauzon. “He’s got to be enormous.”
“He’s like 155 pounds,” responded Gifford.
That response got Lauzon’s gears turning.
“Mir can bring out anyone in the world, and he’s bringing out this kid Ricky Lundell,” he said. “So we just grappled and the kid was phenomenal. He made a huge impression on me, but I think I made a little bit of an impression on him too, and I’m thinking, ‘this kid’s perfect.’ He’s a jiu-jitsu guy, he has great wrestling, he’s my size and he’s a great communicator. The communication was a big thing.”
That’s not surprising, considering that unlike most wrestlers who add jiu-jitsu on later, Lundell did things in reverse, studying jiu-jitsu from the age of six, getting his black belt, and then getting involved in wrestling at the behest of one of the sport’s greats, Cael Sanderson. So for jiu-jitsu based fighters like Lauzon, Mir, and Penn, Lundell not only had the wrestling tactics to add on, but he came from a jiu-jitsu background, so he spoke their language.
“The communication aspect is huge, and we definitely speak the same language,” said Lauzon. “You have very, very few guys that are good at jiu-jitsu and wrestling that started as jiu-jitsu guys. BJ’s really the only guy that started with that too. Most guys are more like Jake Shields, who wrestled first and then did jiu-jitsu. So it definitely helps to have that jiu-jitsu first mindset.”
“I think that’s a huge area that’s helped me, and it’s helped me in reverse the other way too,” explains Lundell. “I’ve worked with Sean Sherk and he felt like I could speak his wrestling language and teach him the right jiu-jitsu that he needed. And in reverse, Lauzon and those guys know that if I show them a shot, we both know that he won’t end up in a triangle or an armlock or a guillotine from this shot. Whereas if he went to just a wrestler or a wrestler who had trained up to purple belt or something in jiu-jitsu who wasn’t really well-versed, he may be showing you shots that are really going to get you submitted at a higher level; he just doesn’t know it yet. So it helped me a lot because I already knew the submissions, and then going to wrestling, I was already able to build a base from the ground up, rather than being a wrestler who’s standing above and has to learn the ground.”
Yet given his skill and technique on the mat, it begs the question – why isn’t he fighting as well?
“I thought about fighting before, but it wasn’t my first interest,” he said. “I enjoy coaching and the sport of wrestling and jiu-jitsu together. So I’ve spent my time trying to perfect those areas of the game, and I think that in order to be the best coach I can possibly be, going out and working on my boxing and striking is good, but it’s not where I should spend the majority of my time if I want to be able to coach the best guys.”
And he’s obviously made the right call, as he’s become “the” guy for many of the world’s top mixed martial artists. It’s an amazing feat, considering his age and his journey to this point – come on, he graduated college, yes college, at 18 – and he’s done well for himself with his University of Grappling school in Lindon, Utah. But it’s his ability to break down the ground game in an understandable fashion that has put him where he is today.
“It’s not about how many moves you know,” he said. “I think a lot of people have a hard time understanding this, but let’s say you have three five minute rounds. Well, because we have three five minute rounds, that means we only have 300 seconds to scrap per round. Let’s say it takes us 10 seconds per shot that we’re gonna do in this fight, and that’s way overexagerrating, but let’s just pretend that it only took us 10 seconds to set up every shot. That means you only have the opportunity for 30 shots in an entire five minute round. So if you know 500 shots, how is that going to help you? There’s 470 that you didn’t even get to cover yet.”
As an example, he points to UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre, who has become one of the premier wrestlers in MMA despite not having a traditional background in the sport. But what he does have is a killer and nearly unstoppable shot that has been built not only from technique but from repetition.
“He (St-Pierre) almost shoots the exact same shot every time,” said Lundell. “I know what GSP’s going to do, but the thing is, he’s practiced that shot 25,000 times. And then I’m like ‘hey, we know what he’s gonna do; here, do this defense.’ And you practice it 300 times. So you have the defense practiced 300 times, and GSP’s coming in with a total count of offensive shots at 25,000? You don’t have a prayer to stop that shot yet because you haven’t put in the time to be actually able to stop GSP’s go to. Just like Cael Sanderson, everybody knows he’s going to ankle pick you. He’s going to ankle pick and double leg. There’s no question, everybody knows, but you can’t stop him because he’s done it so many times and he’s so good at it that your defensive level doesn’t match up to his offensive level.”
It’s that type of unglamorous, often tedious, work that most don’t want to go through on a daily basis, but that wrestlers have perfected because it’s been ingrained in them since they were competing as kids. So if you wonder why wrestling is the dominant discipline in MMA today, one that five of the seven UFC champions (Cain Velasquez, Jon Jones, GSP, Frankie Edgar, and Dominick Cruz) would probably count as the core of their style, it comes down to the years of work in wrestling rooms around the country. It’s also why you see many wrestlers picking up solid striking and jiu-jitsu games, but few strikers and jiu-jitsu players doing as well on the wrestling side.
“This may offend people, but I believe that wrestling requires a lot more work ethic,” said Lundell. “It’s very difficult, it’s grueling, it’s not rewarding, it’s painful, and because of that, I think not as many people like to really work in those areas. The thing is though, a wrestler comes in, they’re already naturally strong, they’ve trained hard, they’ve built explosive power, they’re able to endure constant pressure, and they’re extremely fit, so it’s pretty easy for them to come in and already understand position for jiu-jitsu and stay in good spots and move and learn those areas. They also have super heavy hands, so they have that knockout power and learn how to strike really, really easy. But when you take (boxing champion) Floyd Mayweather, he can get punched, but he’s not structurally built to shoot under another person, lift them up and slam them down on the ground. And that’s something that’s only built through years of time and actually doing it and having it done to you. So it’s gonna take somebody years and years to do that because most guys start wrestling when they’re 15 or younger. And how are you gonna catch up to (middleweight contender) Chael Sonnen, who’s been wrestling since he was a kid? It’s gonna be almost impossible.”
So how did he do it as a fresh-faced teenage jiu-jitsu black belt?
“I think the transition’s difficult, no matter what you do,” said Lundell. “Wrestling’s a very difficult thing to pick up, but I think it gave me different views than everybody else has because I got to understand jiu-jitsu fully. I got my black belt and then I started wrestling, and I think it gave me different views than other people, especially because I wasn’t just wrestling with the local best junior high and high school coaches. My training partners have been Cael Sanderson and Justin Ruiz. They helped make wrestling easier for me when it came to proper technique and those types of things. I think a lot of people have a hard time learning how to wrestle because they don’t go to the right guys for answers, and they’re not necessarily learning technical wrestling; they’re learning brute force strength, just blow through somebody wrestling.”
It’s almost a jiu-jitsu-esque approach to wrestling, where it’s not just about size in a fight, but who has the better technique and who the smarter combatant is. Unfortunately, dealing with high-profile MMA fighters before high-profile UFC fights doesn’t allow him to reinvent the wheel. If you’ve got a bout with a world-class wrestler like Sonnen coming up, you won’t have the time to catch up to his wrestling, so Lundell instead focuses on those few moves that will allow you to nullify his game and implement your own.
“The first thing you want to do is look at that person and how they think and how they like to play the game,” he said. “Then you don’t focus on 20 moves from each spot and 30 moves from 30 setups; you focus on the right setups for the right guy. And each guy’s different. When I worked with BJ Penn, his stuff is way different from Sean Sherk’s. With Sean, it was power, explosive shots, and those types of things. When I worked with BJ, it was making sure your elbows were deep so that you could actually lift the guy up. Way different thought process. I know Sherk’s 5-foot-6 and his neck is like three feet in diameter (Laughs), so when he shoots in on somebody, I’m not super worried about things happening to him. BJ, on the other hand, he’s got a skinnier neck and a bigger head, so if he gets his head stuck in a guillotine, he might have a hard time getting out of there. So we tailor your game to you.”
“Joe Lauzon, different game than what Frank Mir’s gonna have, especially with the weight and how they like to strike and how they like to move their feet,” Lundell continues. “We focus on certain aspects of their training and bring it down to the core fundamentals of what they need to do, and we give them their ‘go to’ shot and their ‘go to’ areas. This is what you’re good at. You’re not good at the scramble, so we’re gonna stay out of the scramble. You’re not good at 50-50 tying, which would be like Randy Couture’s over-under, so we’re gonna work at staying out of the 50-50 tie completely, and just work outside shots. You’re about to fight Dan Henderson, there’s no way we’re getting to the 50-50 there; it’s circle and push out, circle and push out. That’s all we’re doing. So we focus on the real core of what they need to do for that fight, while working on what they need to do to become a better fighter in the long run, which is develop their ‘go to’ areas.”
Hearing Lundell break down the finer points of the ground game, you almost get the impression that he could teach anybody how to grapple. But then you look at how world-class fighters get baffled by a dominant wrestler, and you realize it’s not that easy. It’s the top discipline in the sport for a reason, yet for those who work with Lundell, he lets them in on just what that reason is.
“In boxing, if you miss a punch, the guy steps away and you step away, and you both get to restart,” he said. “If you miss a shot in wrestling, you are now stuck underneath me for the next five minutes unless you can get out. So it (wrestling) is something that’s so tough because anytime you make a mistake, you pay for it. And you really find out how good you are really fast. There’s no fake stuff. It’s really self-revealing as to your actual ability. People find out real quick who’s the dominant player and who’s not. The guy on top is dominant, despite what the jiu-jitsu world wants you to believe.”
CAUTION: SPOILERS INCLUDED – Coach Jason “Mayhem” Miller has led his squad to a commanding 4-0 lead on The Ultimate Fighter: Team Bisping vs. Team Miller, and tempers are beginning to flare on the opposing side.Following Dustin Pague’s win over…
Following Dustin Pague’s win over Louis Gaudinot, Team Bisping’s Diego Brandao gets into it with Team Miller’s Steven Siler.
“I’m going to take your head off,” yells Brandao, but he gets a talking to from his coach when he punches the wall, risking injury.
“Diego’s a little emotionally unstable,” said Bisping. “He’s pissed off and he wants to fight.”
Miller visits his team in the house and finds out that the mole on the squad who is telling Team Bisping the upcoming matchups is John Dodson.
“Now that we know the situation, I’ll try to use it to our advantage,” said Miller, who takes a proposed Siler-Brandao bout off the table in favor of a bout between Dustin Neace and Akira Corassani.
“It’s gonna give us a decided advantage,” said Miller. “Akira will be really fat, Dustin will be really in shape, and Diego will be really pissed.”
Adding to the fire between Neace and Corassani is their continued bad blood with each other over various pranks, and when things extend to the gym, the two need to be separated by Bisping.
At the fight announcement, things keep escalating, but “Mayhem” ends the suspense by announcing the Neace-Corassani bout. Things are calm for just seconds though, as the staredown kicks off a brawl, causing the coaches to step in to break everything up. Then it’s Miller pushing Bisping, and the peacemakers keep jawing at each other.
Once it’s time to fight for real, the action is close until Neace trips to the mat, allowing Corassani to land some ground strikes and take the top position. Neace stays busy in between strikes from his opponent, and he locks in a heel hook and nearly submits Corassani. With a minute left, the two scramble and stand, with Neace finishing his scoring for the round with a takedown.
Between rounds, Neace insists that Corassani tapped out in the first, but he still has to fight another round. In the second, Corassani starts out strong, with his striking attack scoring some points for him, and with three minutes left, he drops Neace hard with a left hook. Neace is able to weather the storm, but Corassani keeps the pressure on from the top position, allowing him to stay in control and wrap up the round.
That isn’t the end of it though, as Corassani taunts his foe after the final bell and Neace jumps at him. The two are kept apart, but Miller squirts water at Bisping and the coaches are at it again. Corassani also gets warned by Keith Kizer, Executive Director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission for his post-fight actions.
Corassani wins a majority decision and moves on to the next round, securing Team Bisping’s first win of the season in the process.
Team Miller stays in the lead in the competition 4-1. Here’s how the teams look: TEAM BISPING Diego Brandao Akira Corassani 1-0 Marcus Brimage – Eliminated in episode two by Bryan Caraway Stephen Bass – Eliminated in episode four by Dennis Bermudez Louis Gaudinot – Eliminated in episode four by Dustin Pague TJ Dillashaw John Albert Josh Ferguson – Eliminated in episode three by Johnny Bedford TEAM MILLER Dennis Bermudez 1-0 Bryan Caraway 1-0 Dustin Neace – Eliminated in episode five by Akira Corassani Steven Siler John Dodson Johnny Bedford 1-0 Dustin Pague 1-0 Roland Delorme
For weekly recaps of The Ultimate Fighter, as well as fighter profiles, stay tuned to UFC.com.
“Hey, how’s it going?”With that greeting, welterweight contender Nick Diaz arrived for the UFC 137 media teleconference Wednesday afternoon. Keeping in line with his reputation, he was 45 minutes late to the call, which also saw his October 29th …
“Hey, how’s it going?”
With that greeting, welterweight contender Nick Diaz arrived for the UFC 137 media teleconference Wednesday afternoon. Keeping in line with his reputation, he was 45 minutes late to the call, which also saw his October 29th opponent, BJ Penn, and co-main event combatants Matt Mitrione and Cheick Kongo speaking with the media, but in a twist, he actually showed up, which wasn’t the case when he no-showed two press conferences to promote a main event bout between himself and UFC welterweight champion Georges St-Pierre.
Those misses cost him a shot at the belt in his first UFC bout since 2006, elevating Carlos Condit – who was scheduled to fight Penn – to the championship fight. Diaz landed on his feet and into the Penn fight, but when St-Pierre injured his knee and withdrew from the Condit fight earlier this week, it was Diaz vs. Penn moving into the headline slot.
Confusing? Crazy? Welcome to the world of Nick Diaz, whose every move has been watched since it was announced earlier this year that he was vacating his Strikeforce welterweight title and returning to the Octagon. And if most fighters get their share of media ink by actually talking to the media, the strategy of “Nick being Nick” has made the Stockton, California native the talk of the MMA world without him uttering a word.
But he was talking on Wednesday, seemingly calm in the eye of the storm swirling around him over the last couple months.
“I just try my best to not focus on what’s going on and try to live every day like it’s really not a big deal,” said Diaz. “I don’t know what’s gonna happen with me, but it’s not gonna make a difference whether I whine or cry about it or panic to get things done. I’m just gonna do what I always do and train, and when it’s time to fight, I go fight. And it’s really about me, it’s not about whatever’s going on in the world or who I’m fighting or who I’m not fighting. I’m not gonna really have a choice on that. My job is to fight, so I have to fight when I’m told to fight, and that’s what I do well. Everything else is just gonna be a whole other task.”
How he deals with “everything else” leading up to the bout a week from Saturday will be telling, yet strangely enough, it was Penn – who has dealt with his own share of media controversy over the years – sitting in the pole position as the seasoned vet, the man who has been there and done that, kind of just overlooking the whole situation with bemusement.
“Nick is Nick, he’s gonna do what he does,” said Penn. “I enjoy watching the stuff that Nick Diaz does. He doesn’t change, he’s always himself and that has nothing to do with me. He always shows up to the fight and fights, so I don’t think we need to worry about that stuff.”
So is it much ado about nothing, or is Diaz’ apparent lack of comfort with the media and what he has called the “beauty pageant” of promoting his own fight going to stress him out to the point where he doesn’t perform up to his world-class level on October 29th? If you’ve watched him over the years, you know the answer to that question. Diaz is going to show up in Las Vegas, make that walk to the Octagon, and he’s going to fight Penn in one of the most intriguing bouts of the year.
So whether good or bad, like Penn said, “Nick is Nick.” And after seeing his name trending on Twitter Wednesday and hearing the growing buzz about the fight, walking to the beat of his own drummer seems to fit him just fine.
“People want to see good fights and good fighters, and that’s what I’m trying to bring to the table,” said Diaz.
In a way, it was the day Jeff Curran had been waiting for since 2004. He was coming back to the UFC, and his first bout in the Octagon since his UFC 46 match against Matt Serra was going to be against Scott Jorgensen on October 29th. Ironically, it was the same day Bart Palaszewski, his longtime student, was scheduled to face Tyson Griffin.
to pick up, but I think it gave me different views than everybody else has because I got to understand jiu-jitsu fully. I got my black belt and then I started wrestling, and I think it gave me different views than other people, especially because I wasn’t just wrestling with the local best junior high and high school coaches. My training partners have been Cael Sanderson and Justin Ruiz. They helped make wrestling easier for me when it came to proper technique and those types of things. I think a lot of people have a hard time learning how to wrestle because they don’t go to the right guys for answers, and they’re not necessarily learning technical wrestling; they’re learning brute force strength, just blow through somebody wrestling.”