Tag: MMA training

Interview: Duke Roufus Discusses GLORY, The Pettis Brothers, And the Chaotic Art of Striking


(Roufus [at far left] with Sergio Pettis, Anthony Pettis, Ben Askren, and Roufusport BJJ coach Daniel Wanderley. Photo via Dave Mandel/Sherdog.)

By Elias Cepeda

Duke Roufus had an illustrious career as a kickboxer before becoming even more well-known as an MMA coach. In recent years, his highly regarded Roufusport 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.)

By Elias Cepeda

Duke Roufus had an illustrious career as a kickboxer before becoming even more well-known as an MMA coach. In recent years, his highly regarded Roufusport 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.

Look at the fight between Diego [Sanchez] and Gilbert [Melendez]. Everyone says they loved it. It reminded me of the Gatti/Ward fights. I love watching them but I don’t want to be in them.

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.

UFC Purchases ‘LA Boxing’ Chain; Over 60 Gyms to Be Re-Branded This Year

(OH SNAP, THEY GOT THOSE ROPES THAT YOU WIGGLE UP AND DOWN?? I’M SO IN, SON. / Props: UFCgym)

Since the first UFC Gym opened in Concord, California, in January 2010, the branded fitness chain has expanded in slow, humble fashion — three more locations popped up in Cali, followed by the recently opened UFC Gym BJ Penn in Honolulu, and a Long Island outpost slated to open this spring. With the first wave now complete, it’s time for phase two of the invasion. Dana White confirmed today that the UFC has purchased the LA Boxing franchise, and will re-brand all of its gyms — more than 60 locations in 23 states — as UFC Gyms in the coming year.

“UFC Gyms has been huge for us,” said White. “It’s been an incredible, incredible business for us.”

Although the re-branding might increase the number of douchebags in your neighborhood who claim that they “train UFC,” this is a positive development for MMA awareness. Not only are the existing UFC Gyms massive (some up to 40,000+ square feet) and well-outfitted with the latest training equipment, they also feature a crapload of classes that help introduce members to the basics of MMA. For example, the class list for the Concord facility includes Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Boxing, Muay Thai, Judo, MMA Wrestling, San Shou, and “Hot Hula,” the art of mesmerizing an attacker with your gently swaying hips before savagely kicking them in the balls. Children welcome!

No, these are not legit MMA training camps, and they don’t promote themselves to be. But for MMA fans who just want to burn some calories and learn a few techniques, these places look pretty sweet. I can’t speak from personal experience, though, so if any of you have had good/bad experiences with UFC Gyms that you’d like to share, please drop ’em in the comments section, or e-mail [email protected] to protect your anonymity.


(OH SNAP, THEY GOT THOSE ROPES THAT YOU WIGGLE UP AND DOWN?? I’M SO IN, SON. / Props: UFCgym)

Since the first UFC Gym opened in Concord, California, in January 2010, the branded fitness chain has expanded in slow, humble fashion — three more locations popped up in Cali, followed by the recently opened UFC Gym BJ Penn in Honolulu, and a Long Island outpost slated to open this spring. With the first wave now complete, it’s time for phase two of the invasion. Dana White confirmed today that the UFC has purchased the LA Boxing franchise, and will re-brand all of its gyms — more than 60 locations in 23 states — as UFC Gyms in the coming year.

“UFC Gyms has been huge for us,” said White. “It’s been an incredible, incredible business for us.”

Although the re-branding might increase the number of douchebags in your neighborhood who claim that they “train UFC,” this is a positive development for MMA awareness. Not only are the existing UFC Gyms massive (some up to 40,000+ square feet) and well-outfitted with the latest training equipment, they also feature a crapload of classes that help introduce members to the basics of MMA. For example, the class list for the Concord facility includes Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, Boxing, Muay Thai, Judo, MMA Wrestling, San Shou, and “Hot Hula,” the art of mesmerizing an attacker with your gently swaying hips before savagely kicking them in the balls. Children welcome!

No, these are not legit MMA training camps, and they don’t promote themselves to be. But for MMA fans who just want to burn some calories and learn a few techniques, these places look pretty sweet. I can’t speak from personal experience, though, so if any of you have had good/bad experiences with UFC Gyms that you’d like to share, please drop ‘em in the comments section, or e-mail [email protected] to protect your anonymity.

CagePotato PSA: Help ‘Ten Count Bag’ Get Off the Ground, Win the MMA Training Tool of the Future

(Props: Ten Count)

Inspired by that punch-power machine Drago was lighting up in Rocky IV (seriously), Michael Williamson designed the Ten Count Bag to be a cutting-edge training tool for boxers and MMA fighters to analyze their striking power and frequency, and track their improvement. The tricked-out heavy-bag uses a bluetooth connection to transmit information to your computer, tablet, or cell phone, telling you how hard you hit, the average force of your strikes, and how many punches you throw per round, giving you hard data to compare your workouts over time; you can even compare your performance against other users online.

Williamson and his team are producing the Ten Count Bag independently — which ain’t cheap, as he explains in the video above — so he’s looking for some outside help to get his product to market. Here’s the link where you can donate money to his cause or pre-order one of the bags. And here’s what’s in it for you:

– Once the Ten Count Bag has raised $30,000, one CagePotato donor will be randomly selected to receive one of the bags. All you have to do is type the word “CagePotato” in the comments section of the Indiegogo page after you kick in some cash, and you’ll be entered to win.

– Everyone who pre-orders a bag (check out the $299 “Super Early Bird” level) before December 9th will receive a free pair of MMA gloves and a set of handwraps, compliments of CagePotato.

Once the Ten Count Bag hits market, Williamson plans to develop another product that will monitor concussions in combat sports — which could revolutionize training safety in MMA and boxing. (You wouldn’t need to be a Ph.D. candidate to know when to quit fighting, for example.) So give the video a look, donate or order if you can, and help an awesome new training product get off the ground — and possibly into your own home.


(Props: Ten Count)

Inspired by that punch-power machine Drago was lighting up in Rocky IV (seriously), Michael Williamson designed the Ten Count Bag to be a cutting-edge training tool for boxers and MMA fighters to analyze their striking power and frequency, and track their improvement. The tricked-out heavy-bag uses a bluetooth connection to transmit information to your computer, tablet, or cell phone, telling you how hard you hit, the average force of your strikes, and how many punches you throw per round, giving you hard data to compare your workouts over time; you can even compare your performance against other users online.

Williamson and his team are producing the Ten Count Bag independently — which ain’t cheap, as he explains in the video above — so he’s looking for some outside help to get his product to market. Here’s the link where you can donate money to his cause or pre-order one of the bags. And here’s what’s in it for you:

– Once the Ten Count Bag has raised $30,000, one CagePotato donor will be randomly selected to receive one of the bags. All you have to do is type the word “CagePotato” in the comments section of the Indiegogo page after you kick in some cash, and you’ll be entered to win.

– Everyone who pre-orders a bag (check out the $299 “Super Early Bird” level) before December 9th will receive a free pair of MMA gloves and a set of handwraps, compliments of CagePotato.

Once the Ten Count Bag hits market, Williamson plans to develop another product that will monitor concussions in combat sports — which could revolutionize training safety in MMA and boxing. (You wouldn’t need to be a Ph.D. candidate to know when to quit fighting, for example.) So give the video a look, donate or order if you can, and help an awesome new training product get off the ground — and possibly into your own home.

[VIDEO] The Greatest Exercise Equipment Ad Ever, Starring Chael Sonnen (Of Course)


(Triangle defense sold separately.) 

We first caught a glimpse of the incredible human Whack-a-Mole style training device designed by Nexersys when Matt Serra took us on a tour of Chael Sonnen’s house in between trips to the deli to get some nice gabagool. Chael could not speak highly enough of the revolutionary piece of equipment, so much so that he recently decided to appear in an ad for the product. Sort of.

Basically, the “ad” is nothing more than the “Oregon Gangster” riffing on prison politics and how awesome he is for just under a minute. He not once mentions the product at hand, or even how it works, but that kind of frivolous information is best left for the puny-brained weaklings who think that a few push-ups a day will transform them into the next Ultimate Fighter. So goes the reasoning of Chael P. Sonnen.

Video after the jump. 


(Triangle defense sold separately.) 

We first caught a glimpse of the incredible human Whack-a-Mole style training device designed by Nexersys when Matt Serra took us on a tour of Chael Sonnen’s house in between trips to the deli to get some nice gabagool. Chael could not speak highly enough of the revolutionary piece of equipment, so much so that he recently decided to appear in an ad for the product. Sort of.

Basically, the “ad” is nothing more than the “Oregon Gangster” riffing on prison politics and how awesome he is for just under a minute. He not once mentions the product at hand, or even how it works, but that kind of frivolous information is best left for the puny-brained weaklings who think that a few push-ups a day will transform them into the next Ultimate Fighter. So goes the reasoning of Chael P. Sonnen.

As you can tell, the Nexersys device is basically a high-tech version of the Bas Rutten Body Action System, proving once and for all that every genius idea to come along in the history of the sport stems from “El Guapo.” In a way, Rutten is kind of like the Kevin Bacon of MMA. And given Sonnen’s history of “borrowing” ideas from legends of their respective sports, it’s not exactly shocking to see him endorsing a product that was half-stolen from one of the greats. On the other hand, we do appreciate Sonnen’s “Cullman Liquidation” style approach to selling the product, which is undoubtedly the greatest marketing technique of the modern era.

So, Potato Nation, where does the Nexersys rank among such MMA-endorsed products as the Body by Jake or the JackRack?

–J. Jones

Is Intense Sparring Really to Blame for the Recent Rash of UFC Injuries?


(The gold don’t come for free.)

By Elias Cepeda

Can you remember a time when the UFC has had more major injuries suffered by fighters in significant upcoming bouts at any other point than it has this spring? The heck if we can. So you can’t blame UFC President Dana White for being a little desperate to find answers as he and his matchmakers Joe Silva and Sean Shelby scramble to find replacement after replacement for televised bouts.

Here’s a brief rundown of some of the fighters who have pulled out of scheduled fights due to injury since last month:

– Chad Griggs from his fight with Phil Davis
– Yoshihiro Akiyama from his fight with Alves, and then Alves himself.
– Brian Stann from a fight with debuting Hector Lombard.
– Michael Bisping from his fight with Tim Boetsch.
– Thiago Silva from a scheduled bout with Mauricio “Shogun” Rua.
– Jon Fitch from his bout against Aaron Simpson.
– Vitor Belfort from his rematch with Wanderlei Silva.
– Jose Aldo from his title defense against Erik Koch.

White recently seemed to put the blame for such injuries on fighters sparring too hard against one another in training camp: “You have so many talented guys out there now all in the same camp, going at it like they’re fighting for the title. These guys need to tone it down in training a bit and stop hurting each other,” he said.

White’s anxiety over the recent rash of injuries is understandable but is he correct in diagnosing the cause? Are the majority of these injuries simply the result of training partners going too hard on each other? Or does Dana imploring fighters to “stop hurting each other,” make about as much sense as him telling fans who don’t have Fuel TV and have trouble watching UFC events to “figure that shit out”?


(The gold don’t come for free.)

By Elias Cepeda

Can you remember a time when the UFC has had more major injuries suffered by fighters in significant upcoming bouts at any other point than it has this spring? The heck if we can. So you can’t blame UFC President Dana White for being a little desperate to find answers as he and his matchmakers Joe Silva and Sean Shelby scramble to find replacement after replacement for televised bouts.

Here’s a brief rundown of some of the fighters who have pulled out of scheduled fights due to injury since last month:

– Chad Griggs from his fight with Phil Davis
– Yoshihiro Akiyama from his fight with Alves, and then Alves himself.
– Brian Stann from a fight with debuting Hector Lombard.
– Michael Bisping from his fight with Tim Boetsch.
– Thiago Silva from a scheduled bout with Mauricio “Shogun” Rua.
– Jon Fitch from his bout against Aaron Simpson.
– Vitor Belfort from his rematch with Wanderlei Silva.
– Jose Aldo from his title defense against Erik Koch.

White recently seemed to put the blame for such injuries on fighters sparring too hard against one another in training camp: “You have so many talented guys out there now all in the same camp, going at it like they’re fighting for the title. These guys need to tone it down in training a bit and stop hurting each other,” he said.

White’s anxiety over the recent rash of injuries is understandable but is he correct in diagnosing the cause? Are the majority of these injuries simply the result of training partners going too hard on each other? Or does Dana imploring fighters to “stop hurting each other,” make about as much sense as him telling fans who don’t have Fuel TV and have trouble watching UFC events to “figure that shit out”?

There is no actual way to know for certain, and White was speculating, no matter how certain his tone. That said, it is an interesting subject to speculate on. As disruptive as these recent injuries have been to the UFC, we have no idea yet if we’re even looking at a trend. For there to be any issue to speak of, we’d have to see a pattern like this sustained over a longer period of time than just a couple of months; an eerie couple of months does not a pattern make.

But assuming that we see more months like we’ve had lately occurring regularly over the next couple of years, what could the cause be? If the conditions remain similar to what they are today, there could be lots of reasons.

First of all, we have to remember that each injury has its own individual story, involving the health history, training regimen, and genetics of its owner.

Bisping, for example, hurt his knee. Knee joints accumulate a lot of damage over years just from the unique twisting that Jiu Jitsu puts on them, to say nothing of the nasty impact running puts on them. Vitor Belfort broke his hand. Maybe it was because he was punching a sparring partner too hard, but maybe it was unavoidable because there are so many annoyingly small bones in the hands. Vitor has been working the heavy bag for twenty years now and hands get more and more brittle as time goes on. Just ask Floyd Mayweather Jr.

Unless we’re talking about brain damage, this writer has observed more fighters getting injured from strength and conditioning workouts and drilling than from sparring.

But hey, one can still push it too hard in conditioning or drilling. Some months ago Nick Diaz opined that Georges St. Pierre likely snapped his ACL because of the explosive strength and conditioning he does, as opposed to Diaz’ endurance-focused work.

Some have thrown out the idea that usage of banned performance enhancing drugs by fighters has contributed to recent injuries. I’m no doctor but a lot of those arguments go like this, in essence — steroids can help muscles grow larger and stronger, but they don’t do the same for tendons and ligaments. As a result, tendons and ligaments can snap more easily and often once they have big muscles tugging at them.

Anyone who has been around gyms for a long time, or even followed big-time sports like Olympic-level track and field and professional football, are familiar with cases where this intuitive argument has seemed to be supported. So, for the sake of argument, let’s assume this is true.

Even if it is, we’d have to assume that more mixed martial arts fighters are using steroids than ever before. After being around the sport since 1999 and covering it for a living since 2005, I feel safe saying that this isn’t the case.

I’m not saying that a lot of fighters don’t use steroids; I’m just saying that they always have. I’m also not saying that to provoke moral outrage in readers, because it doesn’t really provoke any in me after all these years. It is just my broad assessment, take it or leave it.

Another issue to take into consideration is if fighters are not really experiencing more serious injuries than they had before, but rather that they are just reporting them more often now than before since the UFC has begun providing medical coverage for injuries sustained in training. It used to be that the UFC just provided health coverage, including covering costs of surgeries, for injuries suffered in their Octagon on fight night.

Last year, however, they began covering their athletes for treatment of injuries suffered in training as well. Given the choice of fighting through torn ligaments to get a pay day and then be able to get surgery to repair them, and being able to repair a serious injury without having to fight with it, perhaps more fighters are choosing the latter.

Now for White’s hypothesis — that fighters are being injured simply because they are going after one another too hard in practice. No one can be everywhere and witness every camp of every fighter, but I just don’t see that theory holding up.

Top gyms from coast to coast and everywhere in between all have different trainers and styles, but what we have seen in the last ten years or so is a marked elevation in the sophistication of training methods, in every way, at the camps that produce the most elite fighters. Even back in the day, gyms like Miletich Fighting Systems and Chute Boxe had reputations for being brutal environments precisely because their habits of sparring hard almost every day were so rare in the MMA world.

Nowadays, such philosophies and practices are even rarer in top gyms. At the mega-gyms and teams across the country that White was talking about, there is more “timing” or “touch” sparring  — where fighters move and mix things up lightly, with an emphasis on working on one’s timing, sense of range, and mastering and executing techniques smoothly, if softly — happening every day with actual hard sparring taking place only a few days a week, even for those training for fights.

And when hard sparring is done, it is rarely done with small MMA gloves. Most sparring work is done with large boxing or kickboxing gloves, head gear, shin guards, and often times much more — think elbow, knee pads, etc. Just to make sure I wasn’t seeing things the past decade or so, I called up a handful of UFC-level fighters and trainers from across the country while writing this story and asked them how they approached training.

All of the ones I spoke with said they are keenly aware of the risks involved in fighting and training and so they try to mitigate it by using more timing sparring type work than hard sparring. The fighters I spoke with who originally came from those hard knocks schools like MFS are proud of the intense training they used to do but also made a point to tell me that they now realize it was “crazy,” and said that they don’t train that way any longer.

There are occupational hazards to a job where you and your opponent are trying to knock each other out and break each other’s limbs, and there is a fine line all athletes walk between pushing their bodies to be able to “peak” on game night and pushing them just a tad too far and hurting themselves. For the most part, however, elite fighters and trainers are smart enough to do all they can to manage risk as best as they can and strike the right balance.

Video: Fedor Emelianenko Upgrades to a Nicer Playground in Preparation for Pedro Rizzo Fight

(Props: 2themaXmmaFitness)

Fedor Emelianenko‘s next fight against Pedro Rizzo is just two weeks away, and judging by this training video recently shot at the Vital Skills facility in the Netherlands, Fedor still prefers to work out under the sun. But unlike his previous outdoor training camp, where he swung hammers alongside Stary Oskol locals in bombed-out playgrounds, there’s a sense of organization and modernity to his current strength-and-conditioning drills, and his set of trainers — which include kickboxing legend Ernesto Hoost — don’t seem to give him any special treatment whtsoever. And just from a physical standpoint, it’s impressive that Fedor can still jump up onto a pair of stacked tractor tires with such ease.

It’s never too late in life to re-invent yourself, and the fact that Fedor is seeking out new environments to prepare for his fight suggest that he’s still taking his career seriously. I’m not saying that he’ll ever return to the top of the heavyweight food chain — but there might still be a lot of fight left in this dog.


(Props: 2themaXmmaFitness)

Fedor Emelianenko‘s next fight against Pedro Rizzo is just two weeks away, and judging by this training video recently shot at the Vital Skills facility in the Netherlands, Fedor still prefers to work out under the sun. But unlike his previous outdoor training camp, where he swung hammers alongside Stary Oskol locals in bombed-out playgrounds, there’s a sense of organization and modernity to his current strength-and-conditioning drills, and his set of trainers — which include kickboxing legend Ernesto Hoost — don’t seem to give him any special treatment whtsoever. And just from a physical standpoint, it’s impressive that Fedor can still jump up onto a pair of stacked tractor tires with such ease.

It’s never too late in life to re-invent yourself, and the fact that Fedor is seeking out new environments to prepare for his fight suggest that he’s still taking his career seriously. I’m not saying that he’ll ever return to the top of the heavyweight food chain — but there might still be a lot of fight left in this dog.