There’s a serious difference between having your hand in the dirt and having your hand in the air.
Sure, football and MMA are both contact sports, both involving strength and toughness and reaction times. And there are certainly things that translate between the two. But the transition is not as smooth as the ones who’ve done it before might make it seem.
That’s especially true if you’re someone like Eryk Anders. Anders could have stopped three years ago and claimed a stellar sports career. In January 2010, Anders won a national championship as a starting linebacker for the University of Alabama, under now-legendary coach Nick Saban. No question Anders is a great athlete, but he’s not what you’d call a freak. And the velvet rope of professional sports doesn’t peel back so easily when genetics doesn’t deal you a royal flush.
Nevertheless, Anders didn’t want to give up on sports. A heavy work ethic and a competitive fire got him into the habit, and those same qualities would deliver him. After two years of serious training and an 8-3 amateur record, the former linebacker is now looking to be a pro mixed martial artist.
But let’s back up a second. Crimson Tide fans may remember Anders as a key starter from that national title-winning squad in the 2009 season, in which he manned the “Jack” linebacker position, a hybrid spot that essentially asks one man to play two roles.
“They called me a linebacker, but I was more of a defensive end,” Anders said. “I had some coverage responsibilities, but most times I was rushing the passer or I was on the line of scrimmage. Bigger guys on the line couldn’t impede my progress to the quarterback, especially later in the game. I was quicker, I was faster and I had more endurance.”
You probably don’t need to restrict your college football to the SEC Network in order to remember Anders from the fourth quarter of the championship game versus Texas. He led the defense with six solo tackles in that game, and forced a fourth-quarter fumble that helped ice Alabama’s first title since 1992.
“It was crazy,” Anders said of the moment when the clock hit quadruple zeroes. “It was pure excitement.”
Purely addictive, too. Anders spent a year in arena football, drank the proverbial NFL cup of coffee and then heard the same call to reality that so many athletes hear when their 40 time isn’t intergalactic. Anders hear the call, but he couldn’t walk away cold turkey.
“I went out and got a job, but I missed the competition,” Anders said. “That’s like my drug. I have to do it. Otherwise, there’s a void.”
In 2011, he hooked up with current UFC heavyweight Walt Harris and others at Alabama’s Champions Freestyle MMA gym. Anders is not the first person to make the leap from the gridiron to the cage—current UFC fighters Matt Mitrione and Brendan Schaub, for example, both spent time on NFL rosters before moving to combat sports. What makes Anders such an unusual case is his glory at the college level, which would have been a fine final chapter for many athletes, and his work ethic, which had to fill the athleticism gaps that the Mitriones of the world never noticed were even there.
Part of that desire, Anders said, came from Saban, who tended to impart simple lessons with force substantial enough that they lodged in the brain like a bull rush lodges in the quadriceps. Think about a thumbtack driven in by a jack hammer.
“Focus on what you’re supposed to do,” Anders said of Saban’s lesson. “You can give up something big because you weren’t where you were supposed to be and doing what you practiced.”
Fast forward to when he started pursuing MMA. Anders wasn’t exactly starting from scratch; he had wrestled in high school. But he had a long way to go, too.
“The top guys have been doing jiu-jitsu or kickboxing for so long,” he said. “They’re so much higher up than me.”
But what does football specifically prepare a fighter to do in MMA? Some things translate to MMA from football. Some things don’t.
“Strength is the biggest asset for me this far in MMA,” Anders said. “Lifting weights all those years gives you core strength. That burst and explosion I got coming off the ball definitely served me well in MMA. I’ve never met anyone as strong as me in MMA.”
The toughest part for Anders? The stand-up game.
“In football, you’re going forward, but in striking it’s not always forward,” he said. “The footwork in boxing is totally different. The lateral movement takes a lot to get used to. It would probably be better to come into MMA from basketball because you’re doing a lot of shuffling and that would be a better strong point that you could use.”
So what’s next? He said he has heard “whispers” that two promotions deep in football country—Florida’s Xtreme Fighting Championship and Texas-based Legacy Fighting Championship—are interested in him. But now he’s just waiting to see if the hard work will pay off.
“I don’t need any more experience in the cage,” Anders said. “It’s come to the point where if I can do it I will. I have the skills I need.”
The Beaten Path is a series profiling the top prospects in MMA. Scott Harris is a writer covering MMA for Bleacher Report. For more, follow Scott on Twitter. All quotes obtained firsthand unless otherwise noted.
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