Yesterday, two MMA writers got into a heated discussion at the UFC open media workouts in Las Vegas. Aaron “Tru” Teweles and Wade Eck, the proprietor of MMA Heat, couldn’t decide who was tougher or who would beat whom. Tru has a sanctioned fight under …
Yesterday, two MMA writers got into a heated discussion at the UFC open media workouts in Las Vegas. Aaron “Tru” Teweles and Wade Eck, the proprietor of MMA Heat, couldn’t decide who was tougher or who would beat whom. Tru has a sanctioned fight under his belt, while Eck trains “full contact four days a week bro.”
Much was made of this confrontation (televised to the world via UStream) on Twitter and around the MMA sites. But it should come as a surprise to no one. It’s the Diaz effect. When the Diaz brothers are around, say within a 25-mile radius of your location, it’s about to pop off. Universal law bro.
The Diaz brothers (Nick main-events this weekend’s UFC 143 card; brother Nate will headline the next UFC on Fox show) aren’t built like other fighters. The Stockton, California, natives radiate anger. And wherever they go, violence and controversy seem to follow.
Remember the brawl in Nashville on live national television? Fighter Jason “Mayhem” Miller made the mistake of sneaking into the cage to challenge then Strikeforce middleweight champion Jake Shields. Miller was expecting a nice bit of publicity, maybe even a rematch with Shields for the shiny gold belt.
What he wasn’t expecting was the Diaz brothers. What he wasn’t expecting was something akin to a gang initiation. It was an important lesson, one Miller learned the hard way. The Diazs are not like other fighters. Problems others solve with words and mean mugging; they solve with fists and boots.
The UFC has spent millions of dollars and devoted countless hours to convincing the world—advertisers, state governments, casual sports fans—that this is more than a violent spectacle. It’s a sporting contest, complete with rules and respect. But the Diaz brothers show that to be a long con every time they step into a cage. To them, it’s a fight, not a sport. I’ll let Nick Diaz explain:
You see me. What you see is what you get. You get real martial arts, you get real fighting, you get a real warrior mentality. Some people aren’t mature enough to handle it. This isn’t soccer…To me this is a fight…I don’t worry about looking good. I do what I’ve got to do to survive, to keep my teeth in my head, and my head on my shoulders. I apologize to whoever can’t put that together and understand that.
The best thing you can say about Nick Diaz‘s act is that it isn’t an act at all. It’s not a calculated play for media attention like Chael Sonnen’s antics. Nick Diaz is a pitbull. He’s a darting-eyed, snarling manifestation of rage. Pure energy. He’s the anti-establishment face of an already anti-establishment sport. There is no “off” switch. This is who Nick Diaz is. And it is awesome.
People try to say, ‘Nick Diaz, he’s crazy or not crazy or fake crazy.’ ” I’m like, ‘Hey, bro, what you see is what you get.’ I’m not out here trying putting on an act like I’m crazy. In my opinion, everyone else is crazy. They’re the ones who put on an act for you, doing what they’re told in front of the camera…They turn these guys into robots. I’m just not going to be that guy. Don’t tell me I’m crazy. I’m out here acting natural. I’m the only one here being realistic out here about this sort of thing.
Diaz doesn’t just shoot hard looks at opponents and talk a lot of trash. He delivers on those promises and that talk—that’s what makes him so special. Some fighters talk a good game, about all the harm they mean to do to an opponent, then when the fight starts, turn it immediately into a cautious wrestling match. That’s not Diaz.
Diaz is the man who started a brawl in Nashville. He’s the guy who once fought opponent Joe Riggs—not just in the cage, but while both were being treated at the hospital after the fight. He’s an amazing human being, a 170-pound wrecking ball coming to crush your favorite fighter. And he’s the most entertaining man in the entire sport.
There is some great MMA merchandise out there. I wear my Bad Boy MMA hoodie almost every day, because it’s awesome, and I am just gross enough to wear the same gear daily.But, and this is not an exaggeration, some MMA merchandise is among the worst stu…
There is some great MMA merchandise out there. I wear my Bad Boy MMA hoodie almost every day, because it’s awesome, and I am just gross enough to wear the same gear daily.
But, and this is not an exaggeration, some MMA merchandise is among the worst stuff on the planet. Reprehensibly bad. Comically bad. Amazingly bad.
UFC on Fox 2 is officially in the record books. Rashad Evans and Chael Sonnen secured title shots, Michael Bisping looked like a contender despite losing, and Chris Weidman announced his presence to the world.It was a typical fight show, but not withou…
UFC on Fox 2 is officially in the record books. Rashad Evans and Chael Sonnen secured title shots, Michael Bisping looked like a contender despite losing, and Chris Weidman announced his presence to the world.
It was a typical fight show, but not without its weirdness. Fans cheered the police. Fans also cheered a felon. And, if only for a moment, fans even cheered perennial bad guy Rashad Evans.
Burt Watson is pacing the lobby of the Hard Rock Hotel in downtown Chicago. Waiting. It’s not something he likes to do. Watson runs UFC events like a taskmaster, making sure more than a dozen fighters and their entourages are where they need to be, whe…
Burt Watson is pacing the lobby of the Hard Rock Hotel in downtown Chicago. Waiting. It’s not something he likes to do. Watson runs UFC events like a taskmaster, making sure more than a dozen fighters and their entourages are where they need to be, when they need to be there. And right now, Rashad Evans is not where he needs to be.
Finally, the man of the hour arrives. Evans may have taken some extra time, but it was worth the effort. Resplendent in a designer suit and shades, Rashad looks like a star as he walks off the elevator.
“Rashad baby, you’re late,” Watson bellows, literally taking him by the arm to get the show on the road. “You got me waiting here.”
On the Bus
Fighters do a lot of interviews before the show, especially a main eventer like Evans. But this one is the most important, will be broadcast around the world and taken live on every MMA site that matters. Rashad relaxes en route, listening to Kenny Loggins and looking to get his mind right for a showdown with his opponent, the war of words before things get physical a couple of days later.
Coach Mike Van Arsdale lightens the mood, holding court for his team with an impression of Dr. Harold Nichols, his coach in the 1980s at Iowa State. It’s funny enough to get even Rashad engaged, looking up from his phone to hear Van Arsdale’s story.
“There’s the anticipation built up through talking. That’s just a part of the game. You need to get people to watch this. If you just go out there and say ‘Uh, we’re going to give it a good try, it’s going to be a good contest,'” Van Arsdale says, shifting into his “nerd” voice. “They’re not going to tune in. This is why people watch.”
“This is like Spinal Tap.”
Before you know it, a freight elevator ride later, we’re walking through the bowels of the W Hotel in search of the press conference. “This feels like Spinal Tap,” Rashad’s videographer Ryan Loco says. Eventually, we know we are in the right place as UFC President Dana White‘s loud voice, complete with trademark obscenities, comes echoing down the hallway. It’s showtime.
Evans didn’t plan on getting into it with opponent Phil Davis at the press conference. He knew it was going to be the Chael Sonnen show and he was prepared to sit back and enjoy it with everyone else. “Chael, I love him,” Evans says. “He must sit around all day thinking of stuff to say.”
But Rashad can’t keep his growing frustration with Davis in check. All week people have asked him about Davis’s superior wrestling pedigree and he’s tired of hearing about it. The two men go back and forth about their respective wrestling careers. Davis won a national championship at Penn State. Evans had a so-so career years earlier at Michigan State. None of that, Coach Van Arsdale believes, has anything to do with the fight.
“It’s really silly because you’re talking about two different sports,” Van Arsdale, himself a former national champion wrestler says. “That’s just like a guy saying ‘I was a national champion in karate, I can go and win the UFC. I was a golden gloves boxer, I can win the UFC.’ Come on. This is not the same sport. Yes, wrestling is a big part of the sport. But there’s a certain wrestling that works in MMA and a certain kind of wrestling that doesn’t. The stuff he did in college, it doesn’t necessarily transfer over. Look at his last fight.”
The Great Wrestling Debate
Rashad is adamant, minutes later as he waits to do a series of one-on-one interviews that seem to be a never-ending slog of the same questions, that he is a better wrestler than Davis. He defends his contention that Davis’ wrestling technique is “garbage.”
“I’ve trained with real, world-class wrestlers,” Evans says. “(Former Olympian) Daniel Cormier. Mo (Lawal). He’s not on that level.”
Besides, college feels like it was a lifetime ago. Why is Davis, he wonders, bringing up ancient stuff like that?
“Next year it will be 10 years since I graduated from college,” Evans says. “Everyone’s talking about Phil Davis and what he did in college. It’s an accomplishment to win an NCAA title. I don’t want to discredit that. But I believe if I would have wrestled him in college, I would have beat him. He can say ‘Oh your record was this, your record was that.’ There’s a lot of reasons I didn’t perform the way I could have in college. Going to college, I was a new parent, I lived in another state. I just wasn’t mentally into it when I was in college.”
Van Arsdale is less concerned with what Davis had to say, about wrestling or anything else. He wasn’t focused on his mouth and the trash talk that spilled from it. He was watching his eyes. And he liked what he saw.
“When I looked at his face, it looked like he was really starting to become torn up. Phil Davis is probably all wrapped up in it because he’s never had all this before. He might be really concerned or worried about it…it looked like it,” Van Arsdale says.
Some fighters work themselves up before a fight, especially a fighter in their first big main event like Davis. But Evans is a veteran of plenty of huge fights and reality television. It’s a day at the office for him, Van Arsdale says. As easy as walking down the street.
“This guy, man, just like you and I could sit down and go to a movie, that’s how easy it is for him to fight. People who don’t train for this, a fight is huge for them. Because they don’t understand it. For Rashad, this is just what he does. Like, if I were to watch a guy get on a bull, I’d be like ‘What is he crazy?’ But he gets on that bull every day. It’s nothing to him. Same thing. He’s a fighter, it’s a fight. That’s what fighters do.”
Rashad Stories As Only Family Can Tell Them
Minutes stretch into hours as Rashad does interview after interview, sitting in front of bright lights and a UFC on Fox banner. He flirts mildly with one anchor as she tells him the interview is almost ready to start because she can see him in the monitor. “I wish I could see you,” Evans says with a sly smile.
His brother, Nate Bryant, fills the time telling me Rashad stories. Evans, it seems, was a born fighter.
“When we were growing up, there was this sixth-grade kid that wanted to fight me,” Bryant recalls. “I wasn’t a fighter. But Rashad was ready. He was only in the second grade, but Rashad don’t care. ‘I’ll fight him. ‘ No matter the adversary, he’s always been like that. Scrappy.”
Evans didn’t contain himself to fighting other kids in the school yard. When his parents divorced, any man that came to the house to see Rashad’s mother or sister had to contend with him just to make it down the hallway.
“If they were there to see my mom or my sister, they had to see Rashad,” Bryant says. “He always wanted to spar with them, wrestle with them. Just to see what they were made of. Even as a little kid. You know how you play with a little kid a little and think you were done with them? No. You had to wrestle Rashad to get in the house.”
“I was just so rambunctious as a little kid,” Rashad remembers. “It started because I hung out with my older brothers and their friends. I always had to fight to prove I was tough. So when people came over to the house, it just continued. I thought that’s how guys hung out. That we just wrestled and fought each other all day. That’s all I wanted to do, fight and wrestle all day. It’s all I would think about, and I wanted to watch everything I could on TV that had to do with fighting and wrestling.”
The Grind
Finally, the interviews are done. The crew is hungry, snacking on mints while Rashad drinks distilled water to prepare for his weight cut. Now it’s time for grub. But even when the media is over, it’s never really over. Rashad’s head of Public Relations Jen Wenk has one more interview for him. He’s reluctant, but the writer had helped Rashad get in Source Magazine and was an important contact.
The former head of the UFC’s PR department, Wenk knows the MMA space better than anyone. Now working with Glenn Robinson’s Authentic Sports Management, Wenk is part of a tight knit group that guides a fighter’s career, not just in the cage but beyond it. Wenk pushes Rashad until he acquiesces. For the van ride back to the hotel, we hear Rashad do one last interview. Same as it ever was.
“You get tired of answering the same questions over and over again,” Evans admits. “It gets to the point where you’re just like ‘let’s fight.’ You don’t want to answer no more questions. You don’t want to hear the questions. You’ve got the questions memorized. You’ve got your answers memorized. It just becomes so monotonous. You could do the whole interview by yourself, both parts.
“But it shows the magnitude of what we are doing. That there’s so much interest. We have such a fan-friendly, media-friendly sport. And we want it that way. So they can have the access, have what they need, to come and write about our sport.”
As Rashad stops outside the hotel to sign what felt like endless autographs, his brother takes in the scene.
“It’s a surreal experience. It’s cool to be a part of it and see what his life is like,” Bryant says. “I didn’t know his day was filled with all these different activities. From the time he gets up, his time is monopolized. Just leading up to the fight. It was exhausting for me. I told him ‘I don’t know how you do it. I’m going to bed, I’m tired.’ He said ‘Oh, you can’t hang?’ I told him I had true appreciation for what you do.”
The Whole Crew is Lounging
Finally the whole crew is back at the hotel for a little relaxation. We’re in a suite at the Hard Rock, so high the view is obscured by clouds. But this could be any group of friends, anywhere in the world, watching Avatar on TV and talking about girls.
Rodney Brewer, Rashad’s event manager who runs the show during fight week, is the good-natured butt of joke after joke. Brewer, Rashad says, gets uncomfortable the more black people that are around. When they went to a club earlier this month, Brewer called it “ghetto.”
Rashad contends it was because the patrons were mostly African-American. When Brewer responds by showing a picture of an old girlfriend, a beautiful Cuban girl with striking eyes, Rashad laughs out loud.
“Everybody has a black friend,” he says. “I guess this is no different… Wait, isn’t that a picture from a magazine? All of these are from photo shoots. You probably don’t even know this girl. Show me a real picture.”
There’s an easy vibe in the room. Rashad is among friends.
“It feels good, because these are the people I’m with on a daily basis. I see everybody here almost every day,” Evans says. “It makes me feel like it’s a normal day. And when you’re doing something like a fight, there’s a tendency to make it a bigger deal than what it really is. You are fighting in front of millions and want to perform well, but at the same time, this is something I do every day, on a smaller scale. Having these people around me? It’s just another day. It makes me more comfortable.”
As Rashad’s mental performance coach, Al Fuentes shows me how he can control the energy in his body, making goosebumps appear at will in a 72-degree room, conversation shifts to Rashad’s brother, Lance. An Army infantry scout, Lance is on his way to Afghanistan for a tour of duty.
Bryant, a Navy reservist and rescue swimmer who saved lives in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, thinks their brother will come back a different man. Rashad agrees things will never be the same for Lance.
“I just hope I can do well and that will inspire him a little bit. He loves it. He’s been texting and calling. He’s so into the fights. He never misses a fight,” Evans says. “We turned professional on the same day. Had our first pro fight. He loves to be here and he’s missing it, and that’s kind of hard. But at the same time, I know if I go out there and have a good fight, he’ll be happy.”
Time to Get Serious
At nine in the evening, Rashad hits the gym for one final workout. As former kickboxing star Ray Sefo holds pads across the room, Evans rolls with jiu jitsu coach Flavius Silva and hits the mitts with Dutch kickboxer Brian Douwes, his striking coach who sounds eerily similar to Rocky Balboa’s nemesis Ivan Drago.
The mood has shifted noticeably. The time for media appearances is over. Wenk has cut off all interviews so Rashad can focus on the bout. Now Van Arsdale is in control, watching calmly from the mat. The time for talking is over. The fight approaches.
“This,” the coach tells me. “This is why we are here.”
The one thing you cannot say about UFC President Dana White is that he isn’t passionate about the job he has.I talked to Dana as part of our UFC on Fox 2 preview, which takes place on Saturday from the sold out United Center in Chicago. The p…
The one thing you cannot say about UFC President Dana White is that he isn’t passionate about the job he has.
I talked to Dana as part of our UFC on Fox 2 preview, which takes place on Saturday from the sold out United Center in Chicago. The preliminary portion of the card starts at 5ET/2PT and airs on Fuel TV, with the main card starting at 8ET/5PT on Fox.
I asked Dana if he believes in pre-fight trash talk and more.
White on Chael Sonnen, and whether he will face Anderson Silva if victorious against Michael Bisping:
Anderson Silva was injured and is recovering from his shoulder injury. It’s 100 percent true, 100 percent legit. Nobody fakes an injury in the UFC. If you call and say your injured, we fly you to Las Vegas. You see our doctors and we find out what’s wrong with you and then we go from there. So it’s not true, nobody has faked an injury in our UFC over the last 10 years, meaning the Zuffa era.
White on ESPN contacting Bellator about the fighter pay controversy:
What I’m happy about, the only thing that I can say about this, is that we filmed [ESPN] filming that report. The interview that Lorenzo (Fertitta) did, the raw uncut speaks for itself. I mean if you watch that interview, who looks uncomfortable? Lorenzo or the interviewer (John Barr). The interviewer.
Once the artifice is stripped away from a UFC event—the media narratives, the back-and-forth banter, the UFC on FOX theme music—what’s left is something simple and magnificent. It’s athletic competition at its purest. Two men will stand acr…
Once the artifice is stripped away from a UFC event—the media narratives, the back-and-forth banter, the UFC on FOX theme music—what’s left is something simple and magnificent. It’s athletic competition at its purest. Two men will stand across the cage from each other and try to impose their wills on one another.
Chael Sonnen and Michael Bisping won’t be able to talk each other to death Saturday night on FOX. In the end, as is the case in all sporting events from tee ball to the Super Bowl, things will be settled on the field of play.
And that’s why people at Team Quest in Oregon were all smiles last week when Bisping replaced former NCAA champion Mark Munoz as Sonnen’s opponent in a fight to determine the next top contender for Anderson Silva‘s UFC middleweight title.
“We were actually kind of happy. We weren’t really concerned at all. In a way, we thought this wasn’t that much different than the Brian Stann fight,” Sonnen’s head coach Scott McQuary said.
“Except Stann hits a hell of a lot harder…Bisping breaks easily. I think he’s mentally weak. Watch how he fought Dan Henderson. I think he was totally intimidated. And I think he’s going to be intimidated by Chael too…Chael is such a hard worker and he has such a fast pace. Bisping is much more lackadaisical. He likes to throw a jab, throw a kick, keep his distance. He’s not going to be able to keep up the pace Chael forces. Whether on the ground or standing.”
There were some legitimate questions about who would win the wrestling battle between Sonnen and Munoz. Mark had bested Sonnen in college, but that was 10 years ago. A lot can change in a decade, and Sonnen’s teammates and coaches felt he could put Munoz on his back.
But all agreed it wouldn’t be easy. The fight, they feared, might even devolve into a kickboxing affair between two wrestling greats—never the prettiest sight.
Bisping is another beast altogether. He’s a fighter seemingly tailor-made for Sonnen to beat—a jack of all trades who’s not exceptional at any one aspect of the fight game. He’s the type of fighter Sonnen has traditionally made mincemeat of.
“I like this quite a bit better. I think it’s a much higher-profile fight,” Chael’s mentor and longtime trainer Matt Lindland said. “I wasn’t super excited about the Munoz matchup. Mark and Chael was much scarier, because we didn’t know what was going to happen. Would Mark be able to shut down Chael’s wrestling? Sometimes with two high-level wrestlers, it just comes down to who gets the first good shot in. Look at Hendricks and Fitch. I think Munoz was a much tougher fight stylistically…this isn’t a knock on Michael’s abilities or his skills. His skills just don’t match up with Chael Sonnen’s. Where Michael is weak, that’s where Chael’s real strengths are.”
A win over Bisping in Chicago will land Sonnen a second title shot at Anderson Silva. The Brazilian is probably the greatest fighter ever to step into the UFC Octagon, but that didn’t stop Sonnen from giving him a drubbing in their first meeting. Only a last-ditch, final-round submission saved Silva’s title.
It’s perhaps the most valuable loss on any fighter’s resume. Sonnen didn’t take the title, but he earned everyone’s respect. Another strong showing against Silva would immediately propel Sonnen up another notch in the fans’ esteem. It’s a rare second shot at greatness.
Leading this charge towards MMA immortality is Scott McQuarry. The head trainer at Team Quest Tualatin, McQuary is a 50-year-old Judo black belt who’s taken control of Sonnen’s ground game. In the past, Sonnen’s impeccable wrestling has been a blessing and a bane.
When he’s won, it’s been with his wrestling—attacking non-stop, implacably, unstoppably. But his inability to make the most of this strength, and his inclination to score the takedown and then bide his time, has cost him.
Too often—eight times, in fact—he’s tossed an opponent down, only to be submitted from the bottom.
But what others count as a weakness, McQuary saw as a potential strength. Sonnen, he thought, was able to put himself in great positions with ease—positions most grapplers would kill to be in. What if, McQuary pondered, Sonnen used his wrestling skill, not just to plant people on the mat, but to finish them there as well?
“We just needed to tweak a few things,” McQuarry said. “I told him, ‘We need to work on your defense and I want to work on just a couple of submissions.’ It’s worked really well. We have a number of things in the bag that we haven’t even let out yet. The Brian Stann fight, we were so glad he got that submission we’d been working on. But trust me—he’s got a bunch of stuff he hasn’t even showcased yet.
“I looked at the positions he was most frequently in. A lot of times he was trying to ground-and-pound people with fairly good success. But I told him, ‘We can make this a lot easier. Let’s work for a submission.’ He’s so damn good at keeping his position or transitioning to a new position if things go awry, it was kind of a no-brainer.”
Of course, with Sonnen, the public is less interested in the nuances of his game and more curious about what he said, about whom, and whether or not he meant it. Sonnen has a gift for gab, one he’s used in the latter years of his career to become a superstar.
“Coming from a wrestling background, he tried to take a more humble approach. Over the last couple of years he’s taken a little different approach… Whether they hate him or they love him, they know who he is,” Lindland said. “They want to see him fight either way. I think it’s important that he learned how to do that. This is what it takes in this industry. It’s an entertainment industry. The promoters decide which fights are going to sell more tickets and those are the fights they put together. It’s about building hype and putting on a show. There’s no athletic architecture that says ‘If you beat this guy, your next fight is for a world title.'”
Without trash talk, Sonnen is a middleweight Jon Fitch, a ground specialist who lingers on the undercard despite his perennial contender status. With it, Sonnen is the UFC’s fastest-rising star.
“If you look at Muhammad Ali, he started to get the same type of notoriety when he started believing and selling the same kind of fairy tale. Everyone else says ‘What?’ But he just goes with it,” McQuarry said. “Do I sit back and ask, ‘What are you doing calling yourself the (real) world middleweight champion?’ I don’t question that. I see it, believe it, achieve it. If he has to go that route to it and it sells the fight in the meantime, more power to him.”
No one is beyond Sonnen’s reach. He’s taken heavyweights like Brock Lesnar down a peg, lambasted the entire nation of Brazil and taken special care to eviscerate Silva whenever possible. He isn’t afraid to center the media in his sites either, as witnessed by an ugly exchange with broadcaster Michael Landsberg late last year.
The Landsberg incident is consummate Sonnen. No one can be entirely sure just how serious he is. Those closest to him believe it’s all an act, but a multifaceted one. Sonnen’s trash talk isn’t just to get fans riled up. Angering opponents and getting in their heads is also a pleasant side effect.
The real target of Sonnen’s trash talk is Sonnen himself.
“For Chael, him talking is not as much for the fans as for himself,” Lindland said. “If he’s saying it enough, loud enough, long enough and often enough, I think he starts believing he’s the best guy. He’s going to believe he can beat Anderson. He’s not just trying to sell the fight to fans. He’s selling it to himself. So he can be the hype he’s created.”
Sonnen refuses to let anyone behind the curtain. His is an act every bit as calculated as Stephen Colbert’s. But while Colbert does out-of-character interviews, the real Chael Sonnen is not for public display.
I asked him about the contention that his trash talk is motivational, that he needs it to thrive and continue to push himself. As usual, he deflected with humor.
“Wow that’s deep. No way you got that from ‘someone close to me.’ I surround myself with ‘yes’ men,” Sonnen said.
What about his wild statements. How calculated are his wrestling-style promos? Are they off the cuff, or carefully crafted?
“I’m not sure what ‘promo’ means. I looked it up, and found no definition. If I’m asked a question, I answer it. That’s all.”
In the end, we aren’t any closer to knowing the real Chael Sonnen. We only know the face he’s shown us: smart, cutting and caustic. Chael Sonnen wears a mask. But that’s the beautiful thing about his sport.
In the cage, there’s no escaping who you really are. When the time for talking is done, when it’s time to start backing it up, that’s when a man shows who he is. Fear, pride, strength, resolve: All those things are magnified in the confines of a cage.
Who is Chael Sonnen? We’ll find out Saturday night.
Yesterday, two MMA writers got into a heated discussion at the UFC open media workouts in Las Vegas. Aaron “Tru” Teweles and Wade Eck, the proprietor of MMA Heat, couldn’t decide who was tougher or who would beat whom. Tru has a sanctioned fight under his belt, while Eck trains “full contact four days a week bro.”