Fight record databases are filled with the names of guys and girls with one or two fights. Fighting in MMA can seem like such a fun, exciting idea at first. You watch your heroes on television, you find a gym and train hard. Then, one night, after mustering up the courage, you strap on the gloves and take your own walk to the cage.
But, as is often the case, you lose and lose badly, and that is usually it. Fact is, most people who get beat up or knocked out in their first or second fight don’t come back for more.
Lloyd Woodard came back for more. You might now know him as the charmingly off-kilter Bellator lightweight who fights on national television, but at one point he was just another guy who’d gotten it handed to him.
Woodard was knocked out in just his very first amateur fight. Cold. Instead of getting intimidated, he got angry.
“I got pissed,” he tells Cagepotato.
“I wanted that fight back for a long time. I was supposed to get a rematch with that guy but I never got it. Even so, I never considered stopping fighting. From the moment my feet first touched the mat, I knew that there was nothing else I wanted to do with my life.”
Fight record databases are filled with the names of guys and girls with one or two fights. Fighting in MMA can seem like such a fun, exciting idea at first. You watch your heroes on television, you find a gym and train hard. Then, one night, after mustering up the courage, you strap on the gloves and take your own walk to the cage.
But, as is often the case, you lose and lose badly, and that is usually it. Fact is, most people who get beat up or knocked out in their first or second fight don’t come back for more.
Lloyd Woodard came back for more. You might now know him as the charmingly off-kilter Bellator lightweight who fights on national television, but at one point he was just another guy who’d gotten it handed to him.
Woodard was knocked out in just his very first amateur fight. Cold. Instead of getting intimidated, he got angry.
“I got pissed,” he tells Cagepotato.
“I wanted that fight back for a long time. I was supposed to get a rematch with that guy but I never got it. Even so, I never considered stopping fighting. From the moment my feet first touched the mat, I knew that there was nothing else I wanted to do with my life.”
And so Woodard fought on. He won his next fight and turned pro. He won a lot more, actually.
After his first fight, Woodard won twelve straight over five years up until losing to future Bellator champion Michael Chandler in 2011. Tonight Woodard takes on David Rickels in a “loser shaves” bout at Bellator 87, as part of Bellator’s Season 8 lightweight quarterfinals; the event will be broadcast on Spike TV at 10 p.m. ET.
He’s once more coming off of a loss — two out of his last three, actually. The Montana-bred wildman says he took the same approach coming off his most recent stoppage loss as he did after his very first one.
“In my fights I’m like an animal – I have lots of intensity and heart,” he says. “I let my emotions take over [in his last loss to Rick Hawn]. I was caught up in the moment. And a lot of that is alright. I’m not going to change the way I fight, I will always go hard. But like animals, I got caught in a trap. And once an animal is caught in a trap, if they survive, they can learn their lesson. You may have gotten me in that trap last time, but I doubt you’re gonna get me in it again.”
Woodard doesn’t take much solace in the fact that, though he’s lost two out of his last three, they have come against the best Bellator has to offer in Hawn and Chandler. He wants to win, plain and simple.
But the fighter nicknamed “Cupcake” says he wouldn’t trade easier opponents for wins, either. He wants to win, but only against the best.
“I’m out here to have fun and beat all the good guys,” he says. “I want to fight and beat the best. Age and records ain’t nothin’ but a number. I don’t want to look back on my career and see a perfect record if the guys on my list weren’t killers.”
Can you guys imagine what the MMA landscape will be like if Nate Diaz is able to defeat Ben Henderson on Saturday, thus becoming the lightweight champion? For starters, this article will be the first and last time you ever see the word “thus” in a sentence where the subject is a Diaz, but on the grander scale, just try and imagine the ways a Diaz with a belt will throw a wrench into the UFC’s plans. Interviews snippets will be so short and incoherent that MMA writers will be forced to resort to rambling, ludicrous conspiracy theories just to pass the time. And as for the brand-promoting public appearances that have become the standard for a champion? You can forget about those; we’re talking about a man who once tried to fight a fictional Brazilian character at a Jiu-Jitsu expo for Christ’s sake. If one fan even mentions the Maynard fight around Diaz in public, the UFC will probably have a full-scale riot on their hands.
If you would, just picture Nate Diaz at an anti-bullying seminar for a moment. After showing up 3 hours late and being reluctantly called to the stage, Diaz will deliver a one minute diatribe aimed at America’s “faggoty yoots” who should “just like, yeah, I dunno” before calling out “that bitch Georges,” his eyes never lifting from the linoleum floor. When he is informed that he is in fact the lightweight champion and can’t fight GSP right now, Diaz will declare that he’s “done with this shit” before slapping that stupid ass hat off the school’s gym teacher on his way out the door. Simply put, it will be glorious.
Anyway, MMAInterviews recently asked a bevy of pros including Frankie Edgar, Randy Couture, Gray Maynard, and Donald Cerrone to determine the likelihood of a world in which a Diaz is champion, and believe it or not, the overwhelming majority of them believe it’s something we should start preparing ourselves for.
Part 1 is above and part 2 is after the jump.
Can you guys imagine what the MMA landscape will be like if Nate Diaz is able to defeat Ben Henderson on Saturday, thus becoming the lightweight champion? For starters, this article will be the first and last time you ever see the word “thus” in a sentence where the subject is a Diaz, but on the grander scale, just try and imagine the ways a Diaz with a belt will throw a wrench into the UFC’s plans. Interviews snippets will be so short and incoherent that MMA writers will be forced to resort to rambling, ludicrous conspiracy theories just to pass the time. And as for the brand-promoting public appearances that have become the standard for a champion? You can forget about those; we’re talking about a man who once tried to fight a fictional Brazilian character at a Jiu-Jitsu expo for Christ’s sake. If one fan even mentions the Maynard fight around Diaz in public, the UFC will probably have a full-scale riot on their hands.
If you would, just picture Nate Diaz at an anti-bullying seminar for a moment. After showing up 3 hours late and being reluctantly called to the stage, Diaz will deliver a one minute diatribe aimed at America’s “faggoty yoots“ who should “just like, yeah, I dunno” before calling out “that bitch Georges,” his eyes never lifting from the linoleum floor. When he is informed that he is in fact the lightweight champion and can’t fight GSP right now, Diaz will declare that he’s “done with this shit” before slapping that stupid ass hat off the school’s gym teacher on his way out the door. Simply put, it will be glorious.
Anyway, MMAInterviews recently asked a bevy of pros including Frankie Edgar, Randy Couture, Gray Maynard, and Donald Cerrone to determine the likelihood of a world in which a Diaz is champion, and believe it or not, the overwhelming majority of them believe it’s something we should start preparing ourselves for.
By a final tally of 8 to 3 (with 4 undecided), it appears as if Diaz would be the heavy favorite coming into Saturday’s fight. The most telling pick in my opinion would be that of former champ Frankie Edgar, who you might recall actually beat Ben Henderson at UFC 150 yet was declared the loser (YEAH, I SAID IT). Edgar believes Diaz will lay a good old fashioned 209 curb-stomping on Henderson. The bookies, however, do not share this sentiment, as Henderson is currently a slight favorite hovering around -155.
So we might as well get the obligatory question out of the way: Who do you like for this fight and how, Potato Nation?
It only made sense for Ray Sefo to start his own MMA promotion. Well, it only made sense once the stars aligned in a unique way that told him he’d better start an MMA promotion or else. You see, back when K-1 was falling apart, Sefo happened to do an interview where he discussed how much money the promotion owed him and the possibility of starting his own company. The thought ran through his mind heavy after the call. After all, he has put on a successful K-1 event in New Zealand, and he had a pretty good idea how to handle the business. So he decided to sleep on it.
The next morning, a wealthy friend of his named Sig Rogich gave him a call out of the blue and invited Sefo to breakfast so they could discuss something. Mind you, Rogich had never heard the interview from the night before.
“(Sig) said ‘What do you think about starting an MMA fighting league?'” Sefo says when reflecting on the origins of World Series of Fighting. “I looked at him and said ‘Are you kidding me? That’s exactly what I was going to talk to you about on Monday!’ It was just meant to be. The stars aligned for us and this was meant to happen.”
Plans were laid out, business was taken care of, and fighters were signed. November 3rd marks the inaugural fight night, which will emanate from the Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, and air on NBC Sports (formally Versus). It’s not your average rinky-dink startup operation, as WSoF 1 features a loaded card that includes the likes of Andrei Arlovski, Anthony Johnson, and Miguel Torres on the main card. While newer promotions may struggle to land talent, WSoF has had many of its fighters fall right into their lap. In particular, guys like Johnson and Torres had been cut by the UFC this year for weight issues but are still marquee names in the sport. Inking with WSoF made perfect sense for them, partly because of Sefo’s own background
“Many of them were up for it right away because of my involvement and with the understanding that I am a fighter becoming a promoter,” Sefo explains. “I understand what a fighter goes through to prepare for a fight. That appealed to a lot of the guys.”
It only made sense for Ray Sefo to start his own MMA promotion. Well, it only made sense once the stars aligned in a unique way that told him he’d better start an MMA promotion or else. You see, back when K-1 was falling apart, Sefo happened to do an interview where he discussed how much money the promotion owed him and the possibility of starting his own company. The thought ran through his mind heavy after the call. After all, he has put on a successful K-1 event in New Zealand, and he had a pretty good idea how to handle the business. So he decided to sleep on it.
The next morning, a wealthy friend of his named Sig Rogich gave him a call out of the blue and invited Sefo to breakfast so they could discuss something. Mind you, Rogich had never heard the interview from the night before.
“(Sig) said ‘What do you think about starting an MMA fighting league?’” Sefo says when reflecting on the origins of World Series of Fighting. “I looked at him and said ‘Are you kidding me? That’s exactly what I was going to talk to you about on Monday!’ It was just meant to be. The stars aligned for us and this was meant to happen.”
Plans were laid out, business was taken care of, and fighters were signed. November 3rd marks the inaugural fight night, which will emanate from the Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas, and air on NBC Sports (formally Versus). It’s not your average rinky-dink startup operation, as WSoF 1 features a loaded card that includes the likes of Andrei Arlovski, Anthony Johnson, and Miguel Torres on the main card. While newer promotions may struggle to land talent, WSoF has had many of its fighters fall right into their lap. In particular, guys like Johnson and Torres had been cut by the UFC this year for weight issues but are still marquee names in the sport. Inking with WSoF made perfect sense for them, partly because of Sefo’s own background
“Many of them were up for it right away because of my involvement and with the understanding that I am a fighter becoming a promoter,” Sefo explains. “I understand what a fighter goes through to prepare for a fight. That appealed to a lot of the guys.”
Sefo also admits that he’s not done bringing in more high caliber fighters to the promotion. Once the debut is in the bag, he’s already plotting for another card in Las Vegas at the end of January.
“We’ve been very fortunate that a lot of guys came to us. After this first event, even more will come to us. I don’t think we have to look far,” Sefo says while noting that the abundance of talent in the UFC has left some great fighters out in the cold — talent that Sefo will gladly scoop up. “Everyone doesn’t have a home and if you’re a fighter that’s to be reckoned with, you will have a home with us.”
While most promotions come in with the goal to eventually topple the UFC, Sefo believes that idea is one that ends up with many of these promotions not living up to their own expectations. For the New Zealander, adding another promotion isn’t competition at all.
“It is good and healthy to have more than one promotion, especially with so much talent out there,” he says. “For those that don’t believe either of those statements, we wouldn’t have the card that we currently have if these fighters weren’t available. That’s the reason we can put on such a great card for our first show.”
It will certainly be an exciting and stressful week for Sefo and the WSoF as they inch towards their first event, though Sefo is quite confident that the 7,000 seat venue will be full on Saturday night. And with all the excitement in the building thanks to the compelling matchups — featuring Andrei Arlovski vs. Devin Cole in the main event, and Anthony “Rumble” Johnson and D.J. Linderman trying to knock each other’s heads off in the co-main — not to mention the lovably spastic commentary duo of Bas Rutten and Michael Schiavello in the broadcast booth, you’ve got to wonder if Sefo will get the itch to return to fighting.
The short answer is “Yes.”
“Seven more fights,” the 2000 K-1 Grand Prix runner-up says when asked if he’ll continue fighting. “I’ve done 93 professional fights. I want to reach 100 before I retire.”
He admits that it will be quite a challenge to focus on training when he’s the President of the company but he’s certainly up to the challenge. After all, fighting is his first love. Sitting around in a suit making business decisions comes secondary.
“I was looking to fight again soon but I haven’t been able to focus on training like I want to with the company taking up a lot of my time,” Sefo says as he ponders when his next fight will be. Regardless of who or when he fights, Sefo has established that he’s not fighting arbitrarily to reach 100. “I want to go out on top. I’m not there just for a number, I’m there to win.”
With his fight career behind him, and the MMA promotion that he helped build heading towards disintegration, Frank Shamrock has reached a reflective moment in his life. Armed with the perspective from years of struggle, Shamrock has poured his thoughts into an autobiography published last week, Uncaged: My Life as a Champion MMA Fighter. In this revealing interview with CagePotato.com, “The Legend” discusses his formative years, the experiences that carved his mind and body into fighting shape, and the massive labor of love that resulted in his book. Enjoy…
CAGEPOTATO.COM: How are you doing?
FRANK SHAMROCK: I am slightly jet-lagged and my spine is killing me.
You just came back from ‘Glory 2’ in Brussels? Did you enjoy the fights?
Yeah, it was awesome, totally awesome. I’ve never called kickboxing, but I liked it. They [Glory] have a serious shot there. They have really good production people involved, the distribution seems to be pretty solid for the plan. Everybody just seemed to be on top of the world. It was pretty cool.
I read your book — in one sitting, because it was so riveting. It touched on a lot of personal issues, a lot of sensitive things [child abuse, molestation, incarceration, alcoholism] that we almost never hear fighters talk about. How tough was it to write this book? It was pretty tough — not the sharing part, but just the learning part. There was a lot of stuff that I didn’t know about myself during the book writing part. It was healing and it was challenging. I think it was more healing than anything.
How long did it take to bring this project to completion? It took four-and-a-half years. We started with an outline — I always knew I’d write this book — but it was an outline about four-and-a-half years ago. My story is my story, it didn’t change, it just kept growing. I wrote the skeleton down and got it going, and as soon as I found a writer [Charles Fleming], which took me a couple years, then it took me a year to sell him on the project. It took a long time to get people to realize what the depth of the work would be.
With his fight career behind him, and the MMA promotion that he helped build heading towards disintegration, Frank Shamrock has reached a reflective moment in his life. Armed with the perspective from years of struggle, Shamrock has poured his thoughts into an autobiography published last week, Uncaged: My Life as a Champion MMA Fighter. In this revealing interview with CagePotato.com, “The Legend” discusses his formative years, the experiences that carved his mind and body into fighting shape, and the massive labor of love that resulted in his book. Enjoy…
CAGEPOTATO.COM: How are you doing?
FRANK SHAMROCK: I am slightly jet-lagged and my spine is killing me.
You just came back from ‘Glory 2’ in Brussels? Did you enjoy the fights?
Yeah, it was awesome, totally awesome. I’ve never called kickboxing, but I liked it. They [Glory] have a serious shot there. They have really good production people involved, the distribution seems to be pretty solid for the plan. Everybody just seemed to be on top of the world. It was pretty cool.
I read your book — in one sitting, because it was so riveting. It touched on a lot of personal issues, a lot of sensitive things [child abuse, molestation, incarceration, alcoholism] that we almost never hear fighters talk about. How tough was it to write this book? It was pretty tough — not the sharing part, but just the learning part. There was a lot of stuff that I didn’t know about myself during the book writing part. It was healing and it was challenging. I think it was more healing than anything.
How long did it take to bring this project to completion? It took four-and-a-half years. We started with an outline — I always knew I’d write this book — but it was an outline about four-and-a-half years ago. My story is my story, it didn’t change, it just kept growing. I wrote the skeleton down and got it going, and as soon as I found a writer [Charles Fleming], which took me a couple years, then it took me a year to sell him on the project. It took a long time to get people to realize what the depth of the work would be.
You’ve campaigned against bullying, in particular through your organization Stand Together. What about situations where there’s an institution that protects an abuser, like Penn State and Jerry Sandusky? What do you think can be done better to protect people?
Besides going back to public execution? I don’t know. I think people need to be honest. This is one of the reasons that I wrote the book — I want to give people courage that it’s okay to be real and honest and if something happens to you, man, one of the worst things in the world is to carry a secret around. It hurts everybody.
It seems like when people try and stand up for themselves, like in Middle Eastern countries where if women file a police report for [sexual] assault, they’re the ones who are going to get arrested. It seems like the victim gets punished a lot of times.
Yeah, it’s true. We’re blessed in this country that we have a judicial system that will step up and take care of these things. A lot of people don’t. And there’s a lot of fear in this country, a well — the stigma of abuse and molestation and rape — there’s all these fears that people run away from. That’s the reason it continues to happen. People don’t talk about it, people don’t stand up. And we can.
In a cage, there’s rules, there’s officials. In prison, you could have gotten killed. It’s eight on one in one situation. The story in your book about where your television time gets taken away because eight guys want to watch In Living Color. Did you think about backing down [from fighting them], because there’s eight guys and just one of you — or would that have just set you up for more conflict in prison? That would have set me up to be — you name it. That would have been a life-changing experience had I not stood up to those men. The odds of them killing me were fairly high, but I knew what I was fighting for. In those types of places, you don’t back down or you’re done. And I was not done, by any means. It’s the same with bullies. When you’re 12 years old, if you don’t stand up for that kid, you’re going to feel like that for the next 20 years. You need to stand up for what you believe in, for yourself and protect yourself. And that’s an extreme situation — fighting eight men over television, it had nothing to do with the television. It had to do with respect. If I hadn’t have stood up, those 2,000 men [in the prison] wouldn’t have respected me and would have turned on me.
A lot of people seemed to have turned their backs on you, or they actively stood in your way. Like Bob and Ken Shamrock saying you didn’t have what it takes to be champion. How painful was it personally to hear that negativity? Did it make you doubt yourself? It definitely made me doubt myself. I turned it into a positive. I used it as a driving force. They [Bob and Ken] were the people I loved the most in the world, and they told me “You can’t really do it. We don’t think you can do it.” I turned it into something that motivated me and gave me energy. When I look back on it, they were two men who earnestly believed “He’s too nice. He’s too nice of a person.” They didn’t understand that you can be a nice guy, and be a killer. You just got to train for it. When I got older, I thought “Well, I can’t hold it against them for that,” because it gave me the drive to go do it.
A lot of people said the same thing about Georges St-Pierre, that he was too nice, he wasn’t vicious, but fighting is actually a skill that you condition yourself to do. What do you think your big strength was as a mixed martial artist? It seemed that you trained completely different than Ken. My strength was, I could always figure out a way to win — mentally, physically and technically. Because my mind was so hardened from the life I had, because of the things I experienced in my life, I was ready to go fight for my life. I’ve been there, it was scary, but it was a fear I faced so much, it didn’t seem that crazy.
What kinds of things did kickboxer Maurice Smith show you or work on together? On the stand-up, I just didn’t “get it” until Maurice came along. Ken [Shamrock] was the brawler, and everybody he brought in was either a boxer or like an American above-the-waist kickboxer guy. It wasn’t until Maurice came along, and he had a very simple system about a clock and angles, and all this made sense. And he was really personal, he was a brother that I needed at the time. We gelled in that way. But it just made sense, and it never made sense with anybody before. And when you added conditioning and training, to have the gas to do it, it was just so effective.
What exactly gave you the conditioning to train for two hours and not get tired? It was a combination of making my vascular system as strong as it could be, which [previously], I had no understanding of — no understanding that your heart pumping and the blood flowing is what really gives you the energy and the gas to go. So once I’d figured that out, and I had a vascular system that was really, really strong, that plus my understanding of the technique, to where I wasn’t wasting energy, wasn’t doing anything that wasn’t in line with my body’s natural mechanics, once I got those two things together — the cardio and the body mechanics idea, it’s like I had endless energy because I didn’t take the same amount of effort. I could just do anything — literally, anything with my body.
I read in an interview way back that Japanese fans used to ask you to kick them? Yeah, of course. Very common — kick ‘em, punch ‘em, choke them unconscious, and they wanted you to blast them. And they would be deeply hurt if you didn’t. In the beginning, we punched them in the head, that kind of stuff. We’d knock them out with it, we’re fighters, “Bam! There you go,” like trying to help a fan out. And then we realized, it wasn’t helping them. They were getting smashed. So we started kicking them in the legs, punching them in the shoulders, and stuff like that. And they wanted it — they would say, “You don’t respect me because you didn’t hit me hard.” They wanted a piece of it, a piece of the experience.
Did you have any interesting stalker-type fans? I never had the stalker fans. I had a lot of ladies who would pursue me around. The ones who made me uncomfortable would be the married ones who would have a few drinks and get really close to me; rub up on me in uncomfortable ways, that was a little bit different.
There were a couple of times after your UFC championship run in the late ’90s when the promotion made you an offer to come back. One time was after the Cesar Gracie fight in 2006, correct?
Yes.
What were you offered at that point? What did you have to give up in exchange?
I was offered what everyone else was offered at the top, at the time. I would have had to given up my exclusivity and control of my brand, and that was something I never believed in.
Are we talking about your likeness rights, video game rights… Everything.
…foreign sales, sponsorships? They want everything…Randy Couture was still going strong, the thing was, ‘You’ll get the same [money] as Randy and everyone else.’
That could have been you at the epicenter of the MMA world, taking the UFC middleweight title. Was it hard to turn down something like that? No. I mean, it was hard the first time [in 1999] when I retired to get out of my contract and be a free agent. But once I was free, I started to realize what was going on, and how much these guys were taking and how much it was becoming a chance that you might win it all, because of the factors coming into play. I wasn’t into the chance. I wanted to create something wonderful, do some amazing things, and then ride off into the sunset.
You love fighting, this is probably one of the things you love most in the world. It must have been hard to walk away from.
Yeah, it was hard. But the other thing is, my body is done. I didn’t have a choice, it was ending for me anyway. I was told when I was 16 that I’d never play contact sports, that I was going to be in pain for the rest of my life, and I had terrible scoliosis and I had to wear this crazy brace. I was like, “Yeah? I am going to be a world champion fighter and we’ll talk about it later.” And that’s what I did. I don’t believe in the normal. I believe you can do whatever you want. And my time is done with fighting; my body said “No.”
There was an incident, where you were with [UFC president] Dana White as his personal trainer for two weeks. When was that? I think that was right after they bought it, so 2001? They had just bought [the UFC], they were so new.
You were training Dana White, he’s doing some jiu-jitsu and a female grappler is trying to help him out and you mention an incident [in your book] where White is “overpowering her and grinding her to the mat.” I taught him to do balance and control, move his body. I had a really good jiu-jitsu girl help him — one of the top in the world at the time. Granted, he did the technique perfectly. He ground her to the ground using balance and control. But to me, there was something inappropriate about what was going on, in that he was trying to grind, he was trying to smash this girl who was trying to help him. It just didn’t make sense to me. I could never see myself doing that. I just realized then, we were creatures of different cloths.
You’ve been the subject of controversy in the past where you were talking about an anti-bullying campaign, and then [UFC fighter] Mike Swick came out, and he was a little upset because of how you trained at AKA together. You did some things to toughen him up, and he still carried this. Then you tweeted to Dana White, ‘I watched you beat up a girl and celebrate.’ Was this the incident that this was referring to? Yeah, that was. And poor Mike [Swick], god bless him. He’s the nicest kid. He used to write me letters from when he was in Afghanistan, or Iraq, or wherever he was. I brought him in and trained him, set him on a good career path. It was really sad to see him do that in search of an opportunity. It was really sad to see him go outside of himself and do what wasn’t honest.
We’re seeing a lot of revisionist history. There’s a lot of bonus money being floated around, there’s all kinds of incentives [offered by Zuffa] to play along. The flipside is that it kind of weakens the soul. It’s kind of tough to swallow sometimes. A lot of guys have just become sycophants. Obviously, you see that. All the time. I never sold myself, man. I believed in who I am, what I am, and what I stand for. I won’t trade that, and I won’t see something wrong happening and not stand up it because it’s not who I am. That’s not how Bob Shamrock raised me. I see the way the industry is going, and I see the way Dana White is the biggest star, and leading the charge with F-bombs and bigotry — it breaks my heart to see something so beautiful, this sport, treated that way.
Nick Diaz tested positive for weed after his fight with Carlos Condit. What was your reaction? My thought was, ‘Wow, that’s pretty silly.’ It’s not professional, of course. I don’t know, to me it all seems silly. If you can’t control yourself, and stick to the rules, you’re not going to make it. Guy’s got all the talent in the world, but you’ve got to be functional. I disagree with them saying it enhances your performance. Does smoking weed enhance your performance? I don’t know, but it’s against the rules.
Have you thought about doing jiu-jitsu tournaments, or something else competitive [besides fighting] that’s physical? No, absolutely not. I can, some days, barely get up. I have to have two fusions on my spine. So I do nothing physical, except for hiking and stepping down off a plane with my bag. And carrying my daughter, who currently weighs 40.5 pounds, which is a lot of weight.
Frank, is there anything else you wanted to say about your book, or in general? It’s tough for people to separate what they see on camera and that image from the person that I am. I think the book will give people great insight, not only into who I am, but what a human being can do if they really set their mind to it. And that’s one of the reasons that I wrote the book.
How can I describe Nate “The Train” Landwehr? Imagine an evil government experiment in which the combined DNA of Clay Guida, Riff Raff, and Ric Flair were mixed together in a petri dish and left to ferment in a sock drawer for like three weeks. He’s a fully hyped up sumbitch, and he does his best work directly after his fights, whenever a microphone is aimed near his face. This clip came after Nate’s second-round TKO win over Chris Wright (“I mean Chris Wrong”) at XFC 20 on Friday, which began with some trash-talk and ended in a near-brawl inside the cage. During the post-fight interview with our bros at MMA:ITC, he’s a bouncing ball of adrenaline, who appears ready to break out a freestyle rap verse at any moment. He’s the anti-Gunnar Nelson.
Two more of Landwehr’s post-fight interviews are after the jump, along with his first XFC win over Billy Mullins in June, which ended in a horribly late stoppage.
How can I describe Nate “The Train” Landwehr? Imagine an evil government experiment in which the combined DNA of Clay Guida, Riff Raff, and Ric Flair were mixed together in a petri dish and left to ferment in a sock drawer for like three weeks. He’s a fully hyped up sumbitch, and he does his best work directly after his fights, whenever a microphone is aimed near his face. This clip came after Nate’s second-round TKO win over Chris Wright (“I mean Chris Wrong”) at XFC 20 on Friday, which began with some trash-talk and ended in a near-brawl inside the cage. During the post-fight interview with our bros at MMA:ITC, he’s a bouncing ball of adrenaline, who appears ready to break out a freestyle rap verse at any moment. He’s the anti-Gunnar Nelson.
Two more of Landwehr’s post-fight interviews are after the jump, along with his first XFC win over Billy Mullins in June, which ended in a horribly late stoppage.
Toughest chin: That has to be Masakatsu Funaki and my last opponent Ruben Villareal. Funaki I hit and kneed so hard that my palms and knee were bruised, until the final knee where I grabbed Funaki’s hair and drilled the knee in his face, but boy, every time he got back up, it was crazy. Villareal, although I had a rib out and couldn’t hit a bag the last two weeks [of training], I still hit him hard, and right on his chin every time. First he said to me, “Damn, you’re fast.” I said “Thank you,” then I hit him again and he said, “And you hit hard.” I told him, “Apparently not hard enough!” It was funny.
Heaviest hands: I was very fortunate never to have anybody connecting full. I have pretty good defense. So I honestly can’t tell you; I’ve never been hit hard. Though I guess in training I have. Pedro Rizzo has very heavy hands.
Toughest chin: That has to be Masakatsu Funaki and my last opponent Ruben Villareal. Funaki I hit and kneed so hard that my palms and knee were bruised, until the final knee where I grabbed Funaki’s hair and drilled the knee in his face, but boy, every time he got back up, it was crazy. Villareal, although I had a rib out and couldn’t hit a bag the last two weeks [of training], I still hit him hard, and right on his chin every time. First he said to me, “Damn, you’re fast.” I said “Thank you,” then I hit him again and he said, “And you hit hard.” I told him, “Apparently not hard enough!” It was funny.
Heaviest hands: I was very fortunate never to have anybody connecting full. I have pretty good defense. So I honestly can’t tell you; I’ve never been hit hard. Though I guess in training I have. Pedro Rizzo has very heavy hands.
Best grappling/submissions: At the time I would say Funaki and Ken Shamrock. I never faced Ken with my new and improved ground skills, After my last loss against Ken, I finally found one person who would train with me. We would go crazy, only ground, two or sometimes three times a day. From my next eight fights, I won seven by submission. I got “the bug.”
Most underrated:Keiichiro Yamamiya, he beat guys like, Denis Kang, Chris Lytle, Nate Marquardt, Chael Sonnen — he was always flying under the radar.
Fastest on his feet/hardest to hit: Mezger.
Most annoying:Jason de Lucia, was complaining about that I hit him in the throat, pills, and did some other things. First of all, I didn’t hit his throat. Second, you know how hard that is when somebody has his chin down? The kick is also not even close to the pills. You will hear me say in the fight, “Tell them the truth Jason.” But Jason could also be on my list as the most underrated. I think he had a lot of bad luck all the time, but he had good ground and striking skills, one of the first fighters who had both, but for some reason it didn’t work out for him, which surprised me.
Best overall fighter: Probably Tsuyoshi Kohsaka, Kodokan black belt Judo and Maurice Smith taught him striking. I think Guy Mezger also had good overall skills, and later Frank Shamrock, when he improved his striking.
Most surprising:Kiuma Kunioku, he was fast on the ground and hard to submit. I caught him in a guillotine but he used a “rope escape” later that won me the fight. I thought he would be easy to submit or KO, was he was very “slippery” — not from grease, but from skill. From his 58 matches he only lost 4 times by submission.
Sweetest victory: My rematch with Funaki. He beat me the first time, then they waited for my rematch until my last fight on the contract was up. They thought he was gonna beat me again, and that would be, of course, good for the new contract negotiations. They were wrong.
Most bitter defeat: My second match against Ken. I trained to defend that knee bar for four weeks, two times a day, we focused on that exact move, “Knee bar from half guard.” But they taught me wrong! They taught me that he was gonna slide his foot over my hip to get it, and in the fight I focused on that, but then he threw his leg over my head? That really made me angry. They should have told me, “just hold his leg,” but since I didn’t have any ground experience, I, of course, listened to the person that was teaching me. It’s OK though, that fight made me the fighter I became. From that moment on I listened, but I always would look for more ways myself, and it worked — I never lost a fight again!
