DOB: July 13th, 1967Gym: American Top TeamLocation: Orlando, FloridaMartial Arts Background: Jiu JitsuNotable Fighters: Vitor Belfort, Minotauro Nogueira, Murilo Bustamante Ricardo Liborio’s early years Ricardo Liborio is a lifelong martial that has been training nearly his whole life. Starting in Judo, when he was 4, then training in Taekwondo, and finally training Jiu Jitsu when […]
DOB: July 13th, 1967 Gym: American Top Team Location: Orlando, Florida Martial Arts Background: Jiu Jitsu Notable Fighters: Vitor Belfort, Minotauro Nogueira, Murilo Bustamante
Ricardo Liborio’s early years
Ricardo Liborio is a lifelong martial that has been training nearly his whole life. Starting in Judo, when he was 4, then training in Taekwondo, and finally training Jiu Jitsu when he was 15.
He began training Jiu Jitsu at the Carlson Gracie Academy in Copacabana directly under Master Carlson Sr. Under Master Carlson’s tutelage, Ricardo was immediately successful within Jiu Jitsu.
Winning several tournaments within his first year of training. His Judo background helped him pick up Jiu Jitsu fast and especially in competition, where he excelled.
Liborio would often compete in the heavyweight and absolute categories, because he liked fighting bigger opponents. His walking around weight was only 80kg(178lbs), but he would use his Judo and speed to beat the heavyweights.
Before he was 30, Liborio would win multiple Brazilian championships and also a world title in 1996.
The formation of Brazilian Top Team
Ricardo had a special relationship with Master Carlson, but their relationship would fray during the late 90s. Carlson Sr began spending more time at his Chicago school away from his Rio de Janeiro school.
Leaving many of his top students to run the school while he was out of the country. This caused friction within the school as his students were left to train for competitions without their leader.
Gracie’s top students forced him to sign a contract that he would train them for competitions, but he didn’t follow it. Liborio would go to ADCC in 2000 with his teammate Ricardo Arona, then immediately to Japan to corner Murilo Bustamante.
Once Ricardo returned to Brazil, he found out that Master Carlson had expelled him and many of his top students. Ricardo flew to Chicago to talk to Gracie, but Carlson would not overturn his decision.
Upon returning to Brazil, Liborio met up with expelled students Mario Sperry, Murilo Bustamante, and Bebeo Duarte. They would form one of the best Jiu Jitsu camps in the world, Brazilian Top Team.
Ricardo Liborio forms American Top Team
Liborio would only spend a year with BTT after helping form the team. After cornering Minotauro Nogueira in Japan, Ricardo was offered to coach in Japan for 6 months.
Before accepting the offer, Ricardo went to the US to help his friend Murilo Bustamante train for Chuck Liddell. When he was in Florida, he met an American businessman and Jiu Jitsu practitioner Dan Lambert.
Liborio began telling Lambert about his proposal in Japan and Dan made Ricardo another offer. He wanted Ricardo to help him create one of the biggest training centers in the world.
Ricardo loved living in the US, so he immediately jumped at Lambert’s offer. He would cut contractual ties with BTT, while still staying on good terms with them.
Lambert and Liborio would recruit the Silveiro brothers Marcelo and Conan to create American Top Team. Liborio bought the ATT name and they would open American Top Team in 2001.
ATT dominates MMA
Within the first decade of the gym’s existence, the gym immediately became a powerhouse in MMA and Jiu Jitsu. Florida became a huge hot spot for MMA and hundreds of fighters began flocking to ATT.
A lot of their success is due to being created close to the UFC’s explosion in popularity. Any time you watch a major MMA event, there is usually at least one fighter from ATT on the card.
Ricardo was already a very respected grappler and coach, but respect for him went into the stratosphere after ATT was formed. He took Lambert’s idea and constructed the world’s best training center.
Notable students
Liborio has had literally thousands of students that have trained under him including numerous high caliber fighters. Here are two of his most notable fighters.
Murilo Bustamante
Murilo was Ricardo’s training partner for years at Carlson Sr’s school before Ricardo started to help train him. Ricardo would help organize training camps for Murilo and prepare for various MMA and BJJ competitions.
While training with Liborio, Bustamante would win the ADCC championship in 2000 and BJJ World Championship in 1999. Also helping Bustamante in the prime of his career when he was in the UFC and Pride.
Ricardo Arona
Another one of Liborio’s young teammates that he ended up training was Ricardo Arona. Ricardo was a huge up and coming athlete from Carlson’s with a lot of buzz around him.
During the prime of his BJJ and MMA career, he was primarily trained by Mario Sperry. Liborio has had a hand in helping Arona prepare for fights before going off to create ATT.
In the late 90s, Arona would win the World BJJ Championship twice and the ADCC in 2000. Then going on to earn a 14-5 record in MMA before retiring.
Liborio creates helps create an MMA empire
With the help of Liborio, ATT became a powerhouse in the MMA world. They have produced numerous MMA champions and have grown to multiple training centers in Florida.
In 2009, Liborio was recognized for his work as a coach and won Fighter’s Only Coach of the Year award. An achievement that Liborio received in only 9 years of the gym’s existence.
Not only has helped train top MMA fighters, many of whom became great coaches after their fight careers. Two of those fighters that now coaches at ATT are Mike Thomas Brown and Thiago Alves.
Liborio’s work within MMA and BJJ also got him recognized in Fight! Magazine. He is currently ranked 13th in most significant power players, movers, shakers, ambassadors, and game-changers in MMA.
Martial Arts Nation
Fourteen years after helping form ATT, Liborio left ATT to form Martial Arts Nation. A martial arts firm that specializes in consulting and helping martial arts businesses get licensed.
On top of his firm, Liborio created a Jiu Jitsu program at the University of Central Florida. Also creating the first afterschool martial arts program within in Orange County, Florida.
Duke Roufus had an illustrious career as a kickboxer before becoming even more well-known as an MMA coach. In recent years, his highly regardedRoufusport camp has produced such talents as UFC champion Anthony Pettis, his younger brother Sergio, and former Bellator champ Ben Askren. In advance of the Glory 13 event in Tokyo this Saturday that Roufus is doing color commentary for, CagePotato sat down with him to look back on the twists and turns of his career, and look towards the future of some of his biggest stars.
CAGEPOTATO.COM: What would you say your role with Glory is, Duke? We hear and see you doing color commentary during events but when you were in Chicago last fall, you also had a big presence in all sorts of other pre-event activities.
DUKE ROUFUS: Well, about ten years ago they had me do color commentary for K-1 on pay-per-view broadcasts. This was really a natural progression when they came back with Glory. My role is that of a color commentator but I’m also just a huge kickboxing enthusiast. I love the sport. I’m just as big a fan as a participant.
We’ve always heard Joe Rogan talk about “K-1 level striking” in certain UFC fighters — meaning that a particular guy had great striking, so much so that he could survive in K-1, which was recognized as the top kickboxing promotion in the world. Has Glory replaced K-1 in that role?
Yeah, for sure. K-1 just struggled internally. Japanese kickboxing and MMA have had some internal issues. The guys from Glory have really stepped up. They are also huge kickboxing enthusiasts. Now, all the best fighters are fighting for Glory. We also did something similar to what MMA did with unified rules, and we’ve tried to set that up for kickboxing. We want to make it a fan-friendly fight. The fans can really tune in and enjoy the fights. We created a rule set that makes it fun for the fan.
As an expert kickboxer and one who knows Muay Thai so well, don’t you think that the Glory rules could be better, though? You have many fighters who have trained and competed under full Muay Thai rules — using elbows, using the clinch, using sweeps — and now they get to this point and they’re not allowed to use these effective weapons.
Well, with those things allowed, the tournaments would have a different outcome, that’s for sure. There would be more cuts from elbows and so more guys wouldn’t be able to move on in the tournament. And clinching is how you defend not getting elbowed.
The uneducated fan boos when the clinch happens. Uneducated MMA fans do the same thing when Jiu Jitsu happens in a fight. I understand clinching and the art of it. I understand trips and dumps. Unfortunately here in America, people want to see big punches and big kicks. It can be difficult to understand Muay Thai. Even the scoring is a little difficult to follow. Kickboxing is very similar to boxing. That makes it easy to follow.
(Roufus [at far left] with Sergio Pettis, Anthony Pettis, Ben Askren, and Roufusport BJJ coach Daniel Wanderley. Photo via Dave Mandel/Sherdog.)
Duke Roufus had an illustrious career as a kickboxer before becoming even more well-known as an MMA coach. In recent years, his highly regardedRoufusport camp has produced such talents as UFC champion Anthony Pettis, his younger brother Sergio, and former Bellator champ Ben Askren. In advance of the Glory 13 event in Tokyo this Saturday that Roufus is doing color commentary for, CagePotato sat down with him to look back on the twists and turns of his career, and look towards the future of some of his biggest stars.
CAGEPOTATO.COM: What would you say your role with Glory is, Duke? We hear and see you doing color commentary during events but when you were in Chicago last fall, you also had a big presence in all sorts of other pre-event activities.
DUKE ROUFUS: Well, about ten years ago they had me do color commentary for K-1 on pay-per-view broadcasts. This was really a natural progression when they came back with Glory. My role is that of a color commentator but I’m also just a huge kickboxing enthusiast. I love the sport. I’m just as big a fan as a participant.
We’ve always heard Joe Rogan talk about “K-1 level striking” in certain UFC fighters — meaning that a particular guy had great striking, so much so that he could survive in K-1, which was recognized as the top kickboxing promotion in the world. Has Glory replaced K-1 in that role?
Yeah, for sure. K-1 just struggled internally. Japanese kickboxing and MMA have had some internal issues. The guys from Glory have really stepped up. They are also huge kickboxing enthusiasts. Now, all the best fighters are fighting for Glory. We also did something similar to what MMA did with unified rules, and we’ve tried to set that up for kickboxing. We want to make it a fan-friendly fight. The fans can really tune in and enjoy the fights. We created a rule set that makes it fun for the fan.
As an expert kickboxer and one who knows Muay Thai so well, don’t you think that the Glory rules could be better, though? You have many fighters who have trained and competed under full Muay Thai rules — using elbows, using the clinch, using sweeps — and now they get to this point and they’re not allowed to use these effective weapons.
Well, with those things allowed, the tournaments would have a different outcome, that’s for sure. There would be more cuts from elbows and so more guys wouldn’t be able to move on in the tournament. And clinching is how you defend not getting elbowed.
The uneducated fan boos when the clinch happens. Uneducated MMA fans do the same thing when Jiu Jitsu happens in a fight. I understand clinching and the art of it. I understand trips and dumps. Unfortunately here in America, people want to see big punches and big kicks. It can be difficult to understand Muay Thai. Even the scoring is a little difficult to follow. Kickboxing is very similar to boxing. That makes it easy to follow.
At the end of the day people don’t care how stylistic a fighter is sometimes. They don’t care about his background in Muay Thai. They just want to see two people put on an incredible show. It’s not about education, it’s about entertaining.
That’s why I moved back into K-1 to fight. Muay Thai is a hard sport to make it in. You struggle financially. It’s like saying, “Hey we gotta go back to the old UFC.” As a purist, yeah that’s cool. But at the end of the day we want mass audiences. It’s why there’s a shot clock in basketball, even college. Dean Smith used to have his Tar Heels get up by ten points and then run the four corners offense to run out the clock.
How did you start getting so involved in MMA?
I always tell people that I wasn’t a big fan of old-school UFC. It was more about finding out who the best street fighter was. And the best street fighter is who can react best to getting hit and doesn’t get knocked out. Street fighting is so far away from real prize-fighting.
But there were a few different things that pulled me towards MMA. In 2002, Duane Ludwig had me help him out for a training camp in Vegas. “Bang” fought Genki Sudo and I haven’t missed a fight show since then.
I also had old friends like Mirko Cro Cop and Mark Hunt from K-1 who got involved in MMA. To see them do great in Pride, I couldn’t help but watch. Chute Boxe was also a big influence. Seeing their success in MMA with a striking background caught my attention.
In 2004 I started having some young students who would get into MMA and in 2005 we brought Stephan Bonnar to the gym, and a week after a little Anthony Pettis joined.
Striking for MMA and for kickboxing can be very different. Did transitioning to coaching striking for MMA come easy, or was it challenging?
I purposely pulled myself out of the kickboxing world to be able to coach for MMA. If I were an actor, I would be a method actor. I started sparring with these guys a lot. I actually did wrestle in high school a little bit. That’s not saying I’m very good but I never wimped out when it hit the mat. I’m a blue belt in Brazilian Jiu Jitsu now. I’ve won the Grapplers Quest at the [UFC] Fan Expo and won the Arnold’s. I’m comfortable on the ground.
So, back to when I started coaching for MMA, what I did was I started sparring a lot. I got used to trying to strike while being taken down.
Another collaborator and good friend of mine is Pat Miletich. Early on, I spent a lot of time at MFS with him. He’s an old, good and dear friend of mine. We have a lot of same philosophies and mindset when it comes to fighting and training.
Now, it’s funny because things are kind of going backwards. I’ve got a lot of amateur students catching the Glory bug. So, I teach a different curriculum depending on what they are preparing for. It’s just like if you were getting ready for the gi world championships you’d train differently if you were preparing for MMA or even Metamoris.
I enjoy that, though. I’ve been training since I was four and doing competitions since I was six. I enjoy the process of figuring out what it takes to win. One of my favorite compliments that I’ve ever gotten came from Ben Askren. He told me that I have good takedown defense. That was just about the best thing anyone could tell me, considering that he’s a world class wrestler.
I like to get in there with the guys and play around. All that helps me be able to work with Askren. What I teach Ben is anti-striking. We reverse engineer striking in every little nuance. I teach him how to punch hard, about weight distribution so that he can read the keys and cues. That’s why he doesn’t get hit. People say they want to see Askren go in there and stand and bang. That’s silly. That’s like saying,”we want to see Roufus wrestle.” No one cares to see my old fat ass wrestle.
If that’s the way you feel, why are you fighting MMA? Ben said it best after he beat [Douglas] Lima, right to the crowd when he told them “if you want to watch two guys stand and fight all night there’s a sport called boxing.”
Philosophically, is being a striking coach any different than being a grappling coach?
It’s harder teaching striking to people. In wrestling, in Jiu Jitsu, you get to practice killing people every day. You pin, you tap them out; it’s practice killing. If we try and kill each other in striking in practice every day, we would die.
Striking is a very chaotic art. I could grapple all day for the next five years and I could never submit our BJJ instructor, Daniel Wanderley. It’s the same thing with wrestling. I would never be able to pin Askren.
In striking anyone can knock anyone out. I’d have to hit Askren with a shovel to pin him. I’d have to roofie Daniel to get a submission on him. That’s the weird thing about striking. It’s very dangerous.
You gotta realize what’s working in striking for your guys and you’ve got to give some options to them. People want to see Pettis fight stand-up every fight for five rounds. You can’t do that all the time, you’d wreck your body. That’s why he mixes it up. He can take you down, submit you or kick you.
I remember when I started coaching Stephan and he was going to fight James Irvin. Right before we went out there, I told Stephan that if he threw a left hook at him, to duck under and take him down. Stephan said, “you’re my striking coach and you’re telling me to go to the ground?”
I told him, “I’m your winning coach.” He got a Kimura on Irvin and won the fight. Fighters are a little misled sometimes.
So, it isn’t about making a point that you can turn grapplers into slick strikers? You just want to make sure they win?
I try to stay out of the spotlight. That’s why I fought; I had my own lil’ moment to shine. Now, I live vicariously through these athletes.
Like with Anthony arm-barring Ben Henderson. Before the fight I said that he can beat him any way he wants. People said, “Yeah, yeah, right.” Anthony is the prototype for the future of MMA.
Speaking of Pettis, how frustrating is it to have him injured and not be able to keep the ball rolling?
It’s the sport. He also fought five times in the WEC in one year at one point. Anthony wishes he could fight more than anyone else. He’s got a great new contract and it makes him want to fight even more (laughs).
Anthony’s younger brother Sergio just made a successful UFC debut. How happy are you with his performance?
Sergio is doing great. He looked great in that fight against an excellent fighter and he can do even better. He was nervous but he handled it very well.
You had a successful fight career. Now, you’ve got a top kickboxing team, a top MMA team. You do color-commentary for an international promotion. Are you surprised that all this has happened from martial arts? Or, did you always know you’d do all this?
Both. I’m surprised, but it’s what I wanted. It’s just one of those things.
An unlikely new coaching star, Duane “Bang” Ludwig has surged to the forefront of the competitive MMA coaching landscape after a fortuitous change of scenery. Ludwig is the obvious candidate for 2013’s “MMA Coach of the Year,” and few would question this, despite little fan awareness of his coaching prowess just one year ago.
Ludwig certainly had a tough 2012 that included three consecutive UFC losses, each one by first-round stoppage, the last of which added a fight-ending and career-threatening knee injury to the insult. But almost immediately after beginning the lengthy rehabilitation process, Ludwig got an unexpected phone call from Urijah Faber, and the creator of the Bang Muay Thai system suddenly migrated from the suburbs of Denver, Colorado to Sacramento, California.
Since Ludwig’s arrival at Team Alpha Male in December of 2012, his team’s fighters have been posting wins and highlight reel finishes at an unlikely pace. It’s even more unlikely, literally, when you consider the low share of TKO finishes that normally occur in the smaller weight classes where most Alpha Male fighters compete. The MMA media have been quick to point to the undeniable results of Team Alpha Male’s performance in the UFC as evidence that Ludwig was the missing ingredient to a team with championship potential. To be fair, the team already included former champions and contenders under Zuffa banners, but none that currently held a UFC belt. Now heading into this weekend’s UFC on FOX 9 card, Team Alpha Male has a chance to rack up not just four more wins, but capture its first UFC title of the Bang Era, and hold leading contender status in several divisions.
With all this hype around a team that is making a lot of noise, it’s a legitimate question to ask: Are they really better, or is this just a nice run of luck? The sudden emergence of Duane Ludwig as the MMA Coach of the Year is an extraordinary claim, and if Carl Sagan were still around (and an MMA fan), he would suggest that we demand extraordinary evidence before reaching such a bold conclusion. So I’m going to run the numbers in excruciating detail just to make sure.
(Duane Ludwig [right] with one of his star pupils. / Photo via Sherdog)
An unlikely new coaching star, Duane “Bang” Ludwig has surged to the forefront of the competitive MMA coaching landscape after a fortuitous change of scenery. Ludwig is the obvious candidate for 2013′s “MMA Coach of the Year,” and few would question this, despite little fan awareness of his coaching prowess just one year ago.
Ludwig certainly had a tough 2012 that included three consecutive UFC losses, each one by first-round stoppage, the last of which added a fight-ending and career-threatening knee injury to the insult. But almost immediately after beginning the lengthy rehabilitation process, Ludwig got an unexpected phone call from Urijah Faber, and the creator of the Bang Muay Thai system suddenly migrated from the suburbs of Denver, Colorado to Sacramento, California.
Since Ludwig’s arrival at Team Alpha Male in December of 2012, his team’s fighters have been posting wins and highlight reel finishes at an unlikely pace. It’s even more unlikely, literally, when you consider the low share of TKO finishes that normally occur in the smaller weight classes where most Alpha Male fighters compete. The MMA media have been quick to point to the undeniable results of Team Alpha Male’s performance in the UFC as evidence that Ludwig was the missing ingredient to a team with championship potential. To be fair, the team already included former champions and contenders under Zuffa banners, but none that currently held a UFC belt. Now heading into this weekend’s UFC on FOX 9 card, Team Alpha Male has a chance to rack up not just four more wins, but capture its first UFC title of the Bang Era, and hold leading contender status in several divisions.
With all this hype around a team that is making a lot of noise, it’s a legitimate question to ask: Are they really better, or is this just a nice run of luck? The sudden emergence of Duane Ludwig as the MMA Coach of the Year is an extraordinary claim, and if Carl Sagan were still around (and an MMA fan), he would suggest that we demand extraordinary evidence before reaching such a bold conclusion. So I’m going to run the numbers in excruciating detail just to make sure.
The data analyzed here includes all statistics from UFC fights for Urijah Faber, Joseph Benavidez, Chad Mendes, Danny Castillo, and TJ Dillashaw. Because WEC fights were in a smaller cage, stats from those fights will be skewed to contain more action and finishes. So this is an apples-to-apples comparison of the same five fighters in UFC fights only, before and after the arrival of their new coach. I’m not just interested in total wins and finishes, I want to know specifically how their performance in the Octagon has changed. I’ve got 21 fights for this group of fighters in the UFC leading up to December 2012, and then 14 more that have taken place since. Those are our before and after samples.
Now let’s see what they tell us.
What You’ve Already Heard:
Team Alpha Male has been winning. A lot. And not just winning, but finishing opponents. The implicit suggestion is that they’re doing better than before, but how much better? Here’s how the team’s fight performance looks comparing records before and after the arrival of Coach Bang Ludwig.
So the rumors are true. Team Alpha Male is indeed winning and finishing a lot of fights, and yes, even more so than before. They were already a winning group, but now they hardly ever lose. Their lone losing performance in 2013 was TJ Dillashaw’s gutsy split decision loss to Raphael Assuncao in Brazil. The rest were all victorious, and this doesn’t even include the recent TUF 18 winner Chris Holdsworth (too recent to be included in the analysis). During the course of racking up these 13 victories, Team Alpha Male fighters also finished nine of their opponents, seven via strikes. That’s a much higher finishing rate (and especially KO/TKO rate) than their division peers in the UFC.
But we knew that. What’s new here is that we can now dive much deeper into very specific performance variables on a per-fighter and per-round basis to understand exactly how Team Alpha Male has improved their relative performance.
Standup Striking Metrics
These findings are, well, striking. It turns out that Team Alpha Male has improved on literally every single key metric I follow for assessing striking performance in the UFC. These fighters have improved jab and power head striking accuracy, clinch accuracy, and even their striking defense. They’ve done all this while increasing their striking output relative to opponents and demonstrating greater cage control. In terms of power, they’ve more than doubled their collective knockdown rate on a punch-for-punch basis, and have yet to be knocked down themselves.
It would seem that the addition of a head coach that specializes in striking has made a huge impact on a team that was highly competitive to begin with. They’ve stepped up their striking game across the board, and improved their performance metrics in every meaningful offensive and defensive category. Now what else can we find?
Significant Striking Metrics
In terms of Significant Striking the team has increased their pace by 13%, and improved the overall rate at which they land strikes. Even in terms of defense, Team Alpha Male improved slightly on an already solid metric.
Significant Strikes include all strikes thrown at a distance, plus power strikes in the clinch and on the ground. They are a general, but also useful statistic to measure the overall effective output of a fighter, and by these metrics again the team has improved their performance across the board. But what about on the ground?
Wrestling Metrics
The last category of stats reflects wrestling, both in terms of offense and defense. The results show that these fighters are attempting fewer takedowns than previously, but have been more successful in their attempts. The wrestling-centric reputation of the old Team Alpha Male is at risk of fading given that their fighters are choosing to stand and trade more often. But that doesn’t mean their skills are getting rusty. On the contrary; the team has more than doubled their takedown success rate, have landed those takedowns with more force (more frequent slams), and have also defended a very high rate of attempts by their opponents. In terms of performance, they have once again improved in every category, but this time on the mat.
The Final Word
Whether these results are surprising is not really important. Analysis is still a valuable tool, even when it simply confirms what we already thought to be true. Many believed that Ludwig’s arrival in Sacramento marked an improvement in the team’s performance. But with these analytical findings, now we know that to be true. It’s not a small improvement, it’s significant, and it’s across the board. Team Alpha Male is now a new and improved breed of solid wrestlers that have added crisp and violent striking to their arsenal. While fans of the sport have shared the benefits that this team of “Uber Males” has brought to the UFC, opponents in the promotion’s smaller divisions should be justifiably concerned.
With Benavidez, Faber, Mendes, and Castillo all competing at the UFC on FOX 9 card in their home-field arena in Sacramento, a lot of attention will be given to their performance. In terms of market expectations, Benavidez is currently considered a slight underdog to incumbent champion Demetrious Johnson. Lines on the rest of the Alpha Males are still pending at the time of this writing, but I expect Faber to have a close matchup with McDonald, Castillo to be a possible underdog to Barboza, and Mendes to be the only one getting a clear favorite line over Lentz. These should all be fun fights to watch. But there’s a lot at risk here for Team Alpha Male who are still seeking their first UFC title, and for head coach Duane Ludwig, who is hoping to end 2013 with a Bang.
