Tag: Randy Couture

Exclusive: MMA Fighter/Grappling Guru Robert Drysdale Talks Training, Fighting, Judging, and Body Hair


(Photo courtesy of Jason Norwood)

By Nathan “The12ozCurls” Smith

Robert Drysdale’s BJJ credentials include being a six-time World Jiu-Jitsu champion, ADCC Absolute Division Champion as well as winning over 90 BJJ tournament titles. He has a MMA record of 3-0 with all three victories coming by way of submission, showing his versatility in those fights by using a guillotine, an arm-bar and an arm triangle choke. Within the MMA community he is regarded as one of the best BJJ instructors with a virtual all-star list of hall of famers, former champs and current contenders to support the claim. Names like Randy Couture, Wanderlei Silva, Forrest Griffin, Martin Kampmann, and Evan Dunham have all excelled under the tutelage of Drysdale, just to name a few.  He was also brought in on TUF season 8 by Frank Mir (a black belt in BJJ himself) to help coach his team. Despite having enough trophies and medals to fill a dump truck while instructing some of the sport’s elite, Drysdale still trains/teaches at his BJJ academy in Las Vegas.

This past weekend, Robert Drysdale hosted a seminar at the World Jiu-Jitsu Expo in Long Beach, California, where he was kind enough to give CagePotato a few minutes of his time.

Cagepotato.com: You have trained the cream of the crop in MMA, both skill-wise and personality-wise. Do you have any personal favorites?

Robert Drysdale: There are a lot of guys that I really like but me and Frank [Mir] get along pretty well. John Alessio is a very good friend and then there is Danny Davis.  Forrest [Griffin] is a trip and it’s always fun to have him in the gym. There are so many guys down at the gym that it is hard to name all of them but I get along with all my students.

CP: Are the stories true? Is Forrest really that hairy?

RD: (laughs) He tries to be as hairy as me but he is not winning that fight because I have better hair distribution.

CP: According to your Wikipedia page, you fought in Houston Texas last night. Apparently not everything is true on the internet. What happened?


(Photo courtesy of Jason Norwood)

By Nathan “The12ozCurls” Smith

Robert Drysdale’s BJJ credentials include being a six-time World Jiu-Jitsu champion, ADCC Absolute Division Champion as well as winning over 90 BJJ tournament titles. He has a MMA record of 3-0 with all three victories coming by way of submission, showing his versatility in those fights by using a guillotine, an arm-bar and an arm triangle choke. Within the MMA community he is regarded as one of the best BJJ instructors with a virtual all-star list of hall of famers, former champs and current contenders to support the claim. Names like Randy Couture, Wanderlei Silva, Forrest Griffin, Martin Kampmann, and Evan Dunham have all excelled under the tutelage of Drysdale, just to name a few.  He was also brought in on TUF season 8 by Frank Mir (a black belt in BJJ himself) to help coach his team. Despite having enough trophies and medals to fill a dump truck while instructing some of the sport’s elite, Drysdale still trains/teaches at his BJJ academy in Las Vegas.

This past weekend, Robert Drysdale hosted a seminar at the World Jiu-Jitsu Expo in Long Beach, California, where he was kind enough to give CagePotato a few minutes of his time.

Cagepotato.com: You have trained the cream of the crop in MMA, both skill-wise and personality-wise. Do you have any personal favorites?

Robert Drysdale: There are a lot of guys that I really like but me and Frank [Mir] get along pretty well. John Alessio is a very good friend and then there is Danny Davis.  Forrest [Griffin] is a trip and it’s always fun to have him in the gym. There are so many guys down at the gym that it is hard to name all of them but I get along with all my students.

CP: Are the stories true? Is Forrest really that hairy?

RD: (laughs) He tries to be as hairy as me but he is not winning that fight because I have better hair distribution.

CP: According to your Wikipedia page, you fought in Houston Texas last night. Apparently not everything is true on the internet. What happened?

RD: I was supposed to fight last night, man, but I had a knee injury a while ago and it has been slow to heal so the fight has been moved to July 13th. I have a three-fight deal with Legacy Fighting Championship and that will be the first one.

CP: Is the eventual goal to compete in the UFC?

RD: I guess the UFC is everyone’s end-game but I don’t think of it like that because that’s not the end. I just want to keep getting better. I think that working hard is really the key and everything else is just the consequence of your hard work.

CP:  You have said that a person can train in Jiu-Jitsu for their entire life and still not master it. That may be true, but since it is your area of expertise, how are you training in MMA to become a “complete” fighter.

RD: I always thought it was a mistake to neglect your ‘A’ game, which is what a lot of people do.  They think, ‘I am going to fight MMA now, so I am only going to work on my hands because my Jiu-Jitsu is good enough.’ A lot of people have told me, ‘Don’t work on your Jiu-Jitsu – just work on your hands.’ But most likely I am going to use my Jiu-Jitsu to win because it is my best weapon. So I want to make sure that my best weapon is always sharp. That being said, it is important to learn other elements of the game even if it’s not your field of expertise. You need to be comfortable enough in that game to be able to hang. That is why I have been putting a lot of time in with my striking to make sure I am comfortable to hang on my feet when I fight because I don’t want to be a one-dimensional fighter.

CP: So take me through an average week for you.

RD: My schedule right now, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday I teach and train from 10:30 am until 12:30 pm. It’s a Jiu-Jitsu slash MMA class. So basically, small gloves, ground and pound, wall wrestling with submissions. In the afternoon, I’ll lift some heavy weights and mix in some conditioning and if I don’t do that then I will do a one hour Muay Thai session. After that I teach a class from 6:30 pm until 8:00 pm. On Tuesdays and Thursdays I spar from 11 am until 12:30, get some striking drills in as well and then at night I do some more sparring and hit some pads.

CP: You were brought in by Frank Mir during his season coaching on TUF. How do you juggle being a coach and a fighter?

RD: People probably refer to me more as a coach than as a fighter because I teach so many UFC fighters in Jiu-Jitsu at my gym. Being a full-time trainer is something I would focus on exclusively in the future. Right now I am a part-time coach because my focus is on my fighting career and that is what I put most of my energy into. Coaching is something I really enjoy and I think I am good at it but it is not a top priority right now.

CP: We have seen guys like Rashad Evans and Forrest Griffin go from combatants on TUF series to coaching on the show. Did the thought ever cross your mind to go from coaching on the show to being a competitor on the show as a way to fast-track you to the UFC?

RD: I have heard a lot of negative things about TUF from people that have been on it, but I guess I really shouldn’t talk about it. Let’s just say it’s probably not the best route for me.

CP: Like yourself, Ricardo Almeida is also here doing a seminar at the World Jiu-Jitsu Expo and he recently served as an official judge during the UFC on FOX 3 card.  What do you think of fighters/trainers operating in that capacity and would that be something you may be interested in down the road?

RD: I would much rather have professional fighters judging. The fact is, I don’t know who these judges are and I don’t want to disrespect them, but it sounds to me that they are either fans of the sport or people that have been around the right people for a long time. So they are like their buddies and then they get hooked up. Then there are others that are boxing experts who don’t necessarily know anything about MMA. I think that Ricardo Almeida being a judge is probably one of the best things to happen to this sport. As far as I am concerned, I think I am unbiased and would make a good judge. I am a reasonable guy and I have refereed Jiu-Jitsu matches before where the match ends in a draw and I have given the decision to the guy who is not my friend. I am that kind of guy.

CP: Where are you after the three-fight deal with Legacy Fighting Championship?

RD:  Hopefully with a 6-0 record, maybe get a couple more fights, and then talk with the UFC. Honestly, I don’t think that far ahead. It is hard enough to think one step ahead much less think 20 steps ahead. That is a little ambitious in my opinion. I live today. I live the now, and I try to be the best I can be right now. Everything unfolds and everything is a consequence of me making the right decisions in my life.

Learn more about Robert at DrysdaleJiuJitsu.com, and follow him on twitter @RobertDrysdale.

UFC 146: Ranking the Dominance of the Past Seven Heavyweight Champs

Junior Dos Santos has yet to encounter trouble in the UFC. The towering Brazilian has utilized his boxing, and little else, to dispatch his eight UFC foes with ease. His punching proficiency shines in the octagon. Junior comes into his May 26 cham…

Junior Dos Santos has yet to encounter trouble in the UFC. The towering Brazilian has utilized his boxing, and little else, to dispatch his eight UFC foes with ease. His punching proficiency shines in the octagon. 

Junior comes into his May 26 championship bout with Frank Mir as the strong favorite. His betting line is listed at -550 on 5dimes.com, meaning a risk of $550 on Junior will win the wagerer only $100. 

Unlike many of his peers, Dos Santos is almost unanimously liked. The gentle giant defuses trash talkers with his disarming demeanor and sweetness, a contrast to some of his fellow UFC champs; polarizing characters like Jon Jones and Anderson Silva. 

With his sparkling track record in mind, many are hailing Dos Santos as the man to clean out the division, just as many thought Cain Velasquez would do the same.

In fact, many thought Brock Lesnar would hold the belt for a long time, too.

See a trend? 

One thing that UFC history has taught us is that the heavyweight belt tends to get around. The coveted gold has yet to be defended more than three times by the same man, and no more than two times consecutively. The heavyweight division has yet to see a true “dominator”.

“Dominance” is a word we like to associate with fighters. Who’s the most dominant heavyweight champ of all time? Given how often the strap changes waists, can the word “dominant” really be used to describe any UFC heavyweight champion?

Sure it can. 

Here’s a ranking of the past seven UFC heavyweight champs based on their “dominance” in the UFC. 

Quantifying “dominance” is subjective. Since no heavyweight has an outstanding number of title defenses, title defenses aren’t the most important variable here.      

Begin Slideshow

Bas Rutten and 7 Other Ex-Fighters That Are Still Relevant in MMA

The sport of mixed martial arts as we know it is approaching 20 years of age. Since Royce Gracie introduced most of the world to Jiu-Jitsu and won three of the first four UFC tournaments without suffering a defeat, the sport has seen its share of domin…

The sport of mixed martial arts as we know it is approaching 20 years of age. Since Royce Gracie introduced most of the world to Jiu-Jitsu and won three of the first four UFC tournaments without suffering a defeat, the sport has seen its share of dominant fighters come and go to help mold the sport as we know it today. 

While Royce Gracie was displaying his dominant fighting skills on the ground, dominant strikers like Bas Rutten were displaying dominant standup skills and evolving that aspect of the sport. 

Over the past 19 years, most fighters that created legacies in the ring/octagon became disconnected from the the sport after they retired. However, there are some fighters that continue to stay relevant in the sport and keep contributing to the sport even though they no longer step inside the cage themselves to fight competitively. 

Here is a list of fighters that are still relevant and will likely continue to be relevant in the sport long after their fighting days are done. 

Please feel free to add other fighters below that you think should have made this list. Keep in mind I tried to make sure these were all “ex-fighters” and tried to justify their current contributions. 

Enjoy. 

Begin Slideshow

MIA in MMA: 5 Fighters Who Seemingly Disappeared

If there’s one thing fans of MMA can count on, it’s the fact that things happen fast.One day you’re witnessing the birth of “The Machida Era,” and the next day you’re seeing it end before it really began.With so many fighters out there, sometimes it’s …

If there’s one thing fans of MMA can count on, it’s the fact that things happen fast.

One day you’re witnessing the birth of “The Machida Era,” and the next day you’re seeing it end before it really began.

With so many fighters out there, sometimes it’s easy to forget a name or a face, even if it’s just for a little while.

Then, when you go back through your fight library and pop in a classic, a face comes on the screen and then you remember why you liked them.

And if they’ve seemingly disappeared from the sport, you wonder where they are now, and what they’re doing.

Here are five fighters you may or may not know who seemed to go MIA from MMA.

Begin Slideshow

Manny Pacquiao Lookalike Suffers a James Toney in MMA Fight

Ever wonder how boxing great Manny Pacquiao would perform in an MMA fight, assuming he enters an MMA ring as a pure boxer? Well, an undercard involving featherweights of the Universal Reality Combat Championship—the leading MMA promotion in the P…

Ever wonder how boxing great Manny Pacquiao would perform in an MMA fight, assuming he enters an MMA ring as a pure boxer?

Well, an undercard involving featherweights of the Universal Reality Combat Championship—the leading MMA promotion in the Philippines—served as a simulation to answer that question.

Here’s the video of the fourth match at URCC 21 Warpath, held at the SMX Convention Center in Metro Manila in the Philippines last month.

Watch former boxer and now National Kickboxing (Nat Kick) representative Mario Sismundo, a dead ringer of boxing’s living legend, walk into the blue corner.

Into the red corner runs Miguel Alo, a recently retired member of the Philippines’ national wrestling team, representing Team S.P.R.A.W.L.

If you think this featherweight match turned out to be a smaller and obviously less significant version of the classic James Toney vs. Randy Couture fight at UFC 118, you are right. The other major difference being that this fight between the Filipino fighters took much longer, with the armbar submission (instead of an arm triangle choke) coming late in the second round.

(URCC does not observe the Unified Rules of Mixed Martial Arts, and instead features two 10-minute rounds per match a la Pride Fighting Championship of yesteryear.)

The following excerpts are from previous article URCC 21 Results: Nicholas Mann Beats Froilan Sarenas for Superfight Belt:

…The crowd was chanting “Manny! Manny!” during the bout as Sismundo looked like a dead ringer of boxing great Manny Pacquiao.

However, the former Philippine wrestling team mainstay took down the kickboxer at will throughout the fight and unleashed vicious punches and elbows in his ground-and-pound.

When the fight was stopped with the tapout, Sismundo’s bloodied face looked less like Pacquiao’s and more like Antonio Margarito’s—post Pacquiao.

In fairness to Sismundo, he did show some guard, mount, rear-naked choke attempts and takedown defense, albeit mostly inefficient.

What if the real Manny Pacquiao cross-trains in wrestling and ground grappling for a year before, hypothetically, making his MMA debut fight?

That could very well turn out to be a different story.

Read more MMA news on BleacherReport.com

According to Dana White, BJ Penn and Tito Ortiz are “Definitely” Headed to the UFC Hall of Fame


(My qualifications? HERE’S my stinking qualifications!)

It looks like we’ll have to start drafting up new t-shirts to falsely promise you guys, because according to a recent interview with MMAFighting, UFC President Dana White was rather frank about his desire for both former light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz and former lightweight and welterweight champion B.J. Penn to be placed in the UFC Hall of Fame in the near future. Though the jury is still out on whether or not Penn will return to the octagon following his hasty retirement in the aftermath of UFC 137, DW had nothing but positives to say about “The Prodigy” when asked on the possibility of his placement in the HOF:

Definitely. The thing about B.J. Penn is that what he brought to the lightweight division, there was a point in time when we first bought this company when people thought guys in the lighter weight divisions couldn’t be stars and couldn’t see pay-per-views and couldn’t cross over. B.J. Penn was definitely that first crossover guy for us. He’ll be back. It’s tough, when there are 16,000 people in the arena chanting your name, it’s tough to walk away from that. B.J. Penn is a fighter. You hear some of these guys, and Tito was one of these guys, he said he wanted to be famous. B.J. Penn is a fighter.

So there you have it, Penn will join long-time rival Matt Hughes, as well as Randy Couture, Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn, Mark Coleman, Royce Gracie, Chuck Liddell, and Tapout co-founder Charles “Mask” Lewis in that deluxe octagon in the sky. After a pair of unsuccessful title bids at 155, Penn won the welterweight title in his welterweight debut by defeating the then untouchable Hughes by first round rear-naked choke at UFC 46. Penn would vacate the UFC shortly thereafter, citing a lack of challenging fights, and would not taste UFC gold again until beating the ever-loving shit out of Joe Stevenson at UFC 80 to claim the vacant lightweight strap. He would defend the belt three times until being upended by Frankie Edgar at UFC 112.

When addressing the possibility of Tito Ortiz joining those illustrious ranks, White did not shy away from the pair’s well-documented rocky history, and in fact stated that, in retrospect, it helped make the UFC what it is today.

Hear more from The Baldfather after the jump. 


(My qualifications? HERE’S my stinking qualifications!)

It looks like we’ll have to start drafting up new t-shirts to falsely promise you guys, because according to a recent interview with MMAFighting, UFC President Dana White was rather frank about his desire for both former light heavyweight champion Tito Ortiz and former lightweight and welterweight champion B.J. Penn to be placed in the UFC Hall of Fame in the near future. Though the jury is still out on whether or not Penn will return to the octagon following his hasty retirement in the aftermath of UFC 137, DW had nothing but positives to say about “The Prodigy” when asked on the possibility of his placement in the HOF:

Definitely. The thing about B.J. Penn is that what he brought to the lightweight division, there was a point in time when we first bought this company when people thought guys in the lighter weight divisions couldn’t be stars and couldn’t see pay-per-views and couldn’t cross over. B.J. Penn was definitely that first crossover guy for us. He’ll be back. It’s tough, when there are 16,000 people in the arena chanting your name, it’s tough to walk away from that. B.J. Penn is a fighter. You hear some of these guys, and Tito was one of these guys, he said he wanted to be famous. B.J. Penn is a fighter.

So there you have it, Penn will join long-time rival Matt Hughes, as well as Randy Couture, Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn, Mark Coleman, Royce Gracie, Chuck Liddell, and Tapout co-founder Charles “Mask” Lewis in that deluxe octagon in the sky. After a pair of unsuccessful title bids at 155, Penn won the welterweight title in his welterweight debut by defeating the then untouchable Hughes by first round rear-naked choke at UFC 46. Penn would vacate the UFC shortly thereafter, citing a lack of challenging fights, and would not taste UFC gold again until beating the ever-loving shit out of Joe Stevenson at UFC 80 to claim the vacant lightweight strap. He would defend the belt three times until being upended by Frankie Edgar at UFC 112.

When addressing the possibility of Tito Ortiz joining those illustrious ranks, White did not shy away from the pair’s well-documented rocky history, and in fact stated that, in retrospect, it helped make the UFC what it is today:

Despite my personal problems with Tito, he belongs in. He was the champion when we first bought this thing. The fact that Tito is still here, Tito and I have had our moments, but it doesn’t change what he did for the company. The beef between me and Tito, Chuck and Tito, the fact is, that played a huge role in helping making this thing as big as it is.

In case you’ve all forgotten, there was a time when Tito Ortiz was more than just a punching bag for future and former world champions and the butt of endless commentary based jokes. After decisioning Wanderlei Silva and winning the light heavyweight championship at UFC 25, Ortiz defended the strap more times than any fighter in the division’s history (5), scoring victories over the likes of Evan Tanner, Yuki Kondo, and Vladimir Matyushenko. Recently, Ortiz announced that his trilogy-completion bout against Forrest Griffin at UFC 148 would be his last bout as a professional.

And even Donald Trump will tell you that Ortiz is a hell of a businessman. Aside from being one of the most consistent pay-per-view draws in the promotion’s history, Ortiz’s trilogy with Ken Shamrock as well as his epic pair of bouts with “The Iceman” have been responsible for more UFC merchandising profits than any other fighter can lay claim to.

So what do you think of these additions to the HOF, Potato Nation? And secondly, who do you think deserves a place in the Hall of Fame beside these two gents in the near future? Be advised, the first person to say Jon Jones is going to get their ass whipped.

-J. Jones