MMA coach Trevor Wittman had quite the showing at UFC 268, with each of his three fighters earning main card victories during the event. UFC champions Rose Namajunas and Kamaru Usman defended their belts in the final two bouts of the night, with both of them going the distance in back-and-forth wars. Wittman also coached […]
MMA coach Trevor Wittman had quite the showing at UFC 268, with each of his three fighters earning main card victories during the event.
UFC champions Rose Namajunas and Kamaru Usman defended their belts in the final two bouts of the night, with both of them going the distance in back-and-forth wars. Wittman also coached lightweight contender Justin Gaethje to a unanimous decision win over Michael Chandler in a Fight of the Year contender to kick off the main card.
Wittman is the coach and owner of ONX Sports in Colorado, which has quickly become one of the best gyms in the world. His approach to striking is regarded as revolutionary by many athletes in the UFC and beyond.
Coach Trevor Wittman Had a Memorable Night at UFC 268
Gaethje could get the next lightweight title shot to face the winner of Charles Oliveira vs. Dustin Poirier which will take place at UFC 269 next month. Wittman could quickly get another opportunity to coach one of his fighters in a UFC title bout just months after his wild night at UFC 268.
Wittman has also changed the way that gloves are approached in the UFC. The gloves that he developed were infamously featured on an episode of The Joe Rogan Experience and allegedly help eliminate eye pokes and other hand-related injuries.
Wittman’s gym in Colorado is one of many MMA hotspots in the state, which features other top talents such as TJ Dillashaw and Cory Sandhagen.
Wittman continues to develop some of the most exciting fights in the UFC today, and his cornering and his ability to transition quickly in between bouts at UFC 268 is a testament to his hard work and prestige as a coach.
Where do you think Trevor Wittman ranks with some of the best coaches in MMA today?
“You think that’s funny? This motherfucker on my left THINKS HE’S A WELTERWEIGHT!”
Finding someone who still gets excited about The Ultimate Fighter is a lot like watching a guy wearing a gi or a Luchador mask in a cage fight: It’s a throwback to the days when our sport was arguably more pure and definitely more innocent. It’s oddly refreshing, incredibly confusing and somewhat disturbing, all at the same time. It’s the type of encounter that you’ll look back on a few months from now and say something like “Remember when we went to that event in the middle of nowhere and they let a guy compete wearing a Psicosis mask?” (Come on, stranger things have happened) or “Remember that night at The Korova when we met that guy who was all about TUF Live?”
That being said, TUF 16 actually looks like it has some promise. At the very least, head coaches Roy Nelson and Shane Carwin should provide some entertaining antics and some original trash talk. The fact that the two were originally set to fight each other at UFC 125 is a nice touch, too. And earlier today, Shane Carwin told MMAJunkie.com that UFC Heavyweight and one of MMA’s most recognizable personalities Pat Barry will be a part of his TUF 16 coaching staff.
If anything else, Carwin and company should be able to revolutionize the TUF coaches ribbing, which, let’s face it, has become pretty stale, predictable and disturbing throughout the history of the show. Looking over the rest of his coaching staff, his fighters will have one hell of a coaching staff to learn from. They’re listed for you after the jump.
“You think that’s funny? This motherfucker on my left THINKS HE’S A WELTERWEIGHT!”
Finding someone who still gets excited about The Ultimate Fighter is a lot like watching a guy wearing a gi or a Luchador mask in a cage fight: It’s a throwback to the days when our sport was arguably more pure and definitely more innocent. It’s oddly refreshing, incredibly confusing and somewhat disturbing, all at the same time. It’s the type of encounter that you’ll look back on a few months from now and say something like “Remember when we went to that event in the middle of nowhere and they let a guy compete wearing a Psicosis mask?” (Come on, stranger things have happened) or “Remember that night at The Korova when we met that guy who was all about TUF Live?”
That being said, TUF 16 actually looks like it has some promise. At the very least, head coaches Roy Nelson and Shane Carwin should provide some entertaining antics and some original trash talk. The fact that the two were originally set to fight each other at UFC 125 is a nice touch, too. And earlier today, Shane Carwin told MMAJunkie.com that UFC Heavyweight and one of MMA’s most recognizable personalities Pat Barry will be a part of his TUF 16 coaching staff.
If anything else, Carwin and company should be able to revolutionize the TUF coaches ribbing, which, let’s face it, has become pretty stale, predictable and disturbing throughout the history of the show. Looking over the rest of his coaching staff, his fighters will have one hell of a coaching staff to learn from. They’re listed for you after the jump.
Trevor Wittman: One of MMA’s most respected striking coaches, Wittman is the head coach at Grudge Training Center, which is located just outside of Denver, Colorado. Some of his pupils include Brendan Schaub, Duane Ludwig, Nate Marquardt and, of course, Shane Carwin. While he’s one of the most cheerful guys in MMA, he won’t hesitate to call out one of his fighters over their bitchassness.
Nate Marquardt: Former UFC middleweight contender, current Strikeforce Welterweight Champion. He’s coming off of a dominant performance over Tyron Woodley that won him the gold at Strikeforce: Rockhold vs. Kennedy earlier this month.
Pat Barry: Come on, like you don’t know…
Leister Bowling: Wrestling coach at Grudge Training Center, extremely decorated amateur wrestler. His accomplishments include 3x Colorado state wrestling champion, Colorado career/season record holder for most wins (154), pins (131) and takedowns (785), 3x NAIA All-American, 4x Central Regional Champion, 4x Great Plains Athletic Conference Champion, 2005 National Runner-Up, and the 2004 Central Regional Outstanding Wrestler.
Loren Landow: Sports performance coach. Has worked with 400 professional athletes, including athletes in the NFL, NHL, MLB, UFC, WNBA and Olympic medalists.
That’s an impressive list of coaches. While we don’t have any word on who Roy Nelson’s coaches will be, we have to imagine he’ll bring in a killer jiu-jitsu specialist. And we won’t hold our breathe on Mike Dolche.
So, does this raise your interest levels for the next season of TUF?
Filed under: UFCWhen Trevor Wittman heard the news, all he wanted was to disappear. For years he’s worked with Nate Marquardt, honing his striking in Denver’s Grudge Training Center, and he went to Pittsburgh with his fighter last week expecting to com…
When Trevor Wittman heard the news, all he wanted was to disappear. For years he’s worked with Nate Marquardt, honing his striking in Denver’s Grudge Training Center, and he went to Pittsburgh with his fighter last week expecting to come home a winner in yet another big UFC fight.
Then on the day of the weigh-ins he found out that Marquardt had been pulled from the fight and fired from the UFC for the elevated testosterone levels that were a result of his hormone replacement therapy, and suddenly Wittman felt like he could barely stand to show his face around colleagues and competitors he’s known for years.
“When it hit — and I know Nate feels the same way — but I can’t tell you the feeling I had at the weigh-ins when this was happening,” Wittman said. “I really felt like I wanted to go and put a hood over my head and walk out of there. There were spots where I was pushing myself to go back in the room and not answer calls from the press. I had to hide in the bushes, basically, all out of respect for Nate.”
To Wittman, the issue of testosterone replacement isn’t as complex as it is to some others. He sees it in terms of right and wrong, black and white. Either everyone should be allowed to see a doctor sanctioned by the UFC and the athletic commissions to address these issues, he said, or no one should be allowed to do it at all.
But using testosterone injections to artificially raise hormone levels from whatever point they’re at in a person’s body? That, Wittman said, is something he can’t support even when the levels are dropping naturally and legitimately.
“To me, if your testosterone levels are getting lower over the years, that’s normal. You’re getting older. As you get older in this sport, it’s common sense you’re not going to have the same testosterone levels as a 21-year-old man. But the big disadvantage a 21-year-old has when he comes into this is the knowledge and experience.
“If you have a 21-year-old come into this with those naturally high testosterone levels, and then you’ve got an older fighter — I’ll just pick an age, say, 35 — who has lower testosterone levels, the advantages of the older man are knowledge, experience. He’s seen it in all different aspects. He’s a veteran. To me, that’s a huge disadvantage for the younger man. Yeah, he’s going to be able to go, go, go. But that’s his advantage. Let him have it. And let’s outwork him. Let’s beat him with our experience. But if we make a 35 or 40-year-old fighter as strong as a 21-year-old, to me, that’s cutting corners.”
In the case of Marquardt, Wittman knew his fighter was undergoing testosterone treatments. He didn’t agree with it, he said, but he also didn’t feel like it was his place to tell a veteran fighter how to conduct his career.
What’s more, even though he felt like the testosterone use shouldn’t have been allowed, technically — at least if Marquardt could provide proof of his need for it and get his levels down to within a range acceptable by the commissions before each fight — it was. Marquardt was attempting to follow the rules laid out by the commissions, Wittman said. That’s why, in Marquardt’s mind, it wasn’t cheating at all.
“Nate Marquardt is a guy who’s never been untruthful with me. Everything that he tells me, and everything he told me going into this fight and back before New Jersey, it’s something that he truly believes in. He went and had his testosterone checked. And when I spoke to him about it, I could tell he really believes he’d done the right thing, because the doctors are telling him, ‘Your levels are low. You need this. This is why you’re tired. We’ll give you this and you’ll perform like you’re young again.’ Man, you start telling a guy that, he’s going to believe you.
“His honesty from the beginning — doing these tests, asking for permission to do this — that’s what hurt him. His honesty got him put in this situation. It’s so hard to watch one of the most honest guys I’ve ever trained — the biggest family man, the guy who signs every autograph — get scolded and cut and lose his career and get this brand on him, all because he felt like he was doing the right thing.”
Now Wittman’s fear is that the “brand” is not just on Marquardt, but also on his gym. He’s never advocated use of hormone replacement therapy, he said, but by not doing more to dissuade his fighters from it, he can’t help but wonder if he’s not complicit in it.
“I didn’t get into it. I kind of put my earplugs in,” Wittman said. “I look at it as white and black, like you’re still doing an enhancing kind of thing. But if the doctor okays it, does that make it right? I don’t know. That’s something I can’t explain, but I’ll tell you what I’m doing now, and that’s sit down with every fighter I deal with and find out if they’re seeing a doctor and for what reason. If it’s anything that has to do with enhancing, then I’m going to step away.”
Maybe the worst part, according to Wittman, is that as far as he can tell, the hormones and injections don’t make that much of a difference on fight night. He thinks it’s more of a mental aid than a physical one, he said, and when he sees fighters trying to become experts at it, he can’t help but think back to boxer Verno Phillips, who used to drop weight by eating two mangoes a day.
At the end of the day, Wittman said, you still have to fight the fight, and a few nanograms per deciliter of testosterone rarely has the final say on the outcome.
“I don’t care what you put in your system. I don’t care who you hire to do your nutrition. It comes down to, you got two men in the ring. You might break your hand in there. Well, you’ve got to overcome the broken hand. You might have a bad weight cut and you still have to get the last five pounds off, even if it’s unhealthy. I don’t care. Those are excuses that go out the window the moment the close the cage door. You might have the flu a week and a half before. Fine. This is the fight game. This is what you deal with. You deal with injuries. You deal with illness. You deal with getting older. That’s the game.”
(Shane may have had heart, balls, guts, and a chin, but they were no match for Junior’s elite-level anatomical-metaphor defense.)
We’re almost a week removed from the magnificent beatdown that Junior dos Santos laid on Shane Carwin, and it’s probably safe to assume that all of the post-fight articles have been written about the main event at UFC 131. Well, all but one.
This article is not specifically about UFC 131 or Shane Carwin — it’s about a certain phrase that has been tied to Carwin’s performance following his three-round beating, and that phrase is “He showed a lot of heart.”
Do a Google search on MMA “showed heart” and look at the names associated with the term: Shane Carwin, Paul Daley, Roy Nelson, and Andrei Arlovski, just to name a few. Any fighter that stood in there and took a beating, yup, he “showed a lot of heart.”
It’s time to retire that phrase, and here’s why…
(Shane may have had heart, balls, guts, and a chin, but they were no match for Junior’s elite-level anatomical-metaphor defense.)
We’re almost a week removed from the magnificent beatdown that Junior dos Santos laid on Shane Carwin, and it’s probably safe to assume that all of the post-fight articles have been written about the main event at UFC 131. Well, all but one.
This article is not specifically about UFC 131 or Shane Carwin — it’s about a certain phrase that has been tied to Carwin’s performance following his three-round beating, and that phrase is “He showed a lot of heart.”
Do a Google search on MMA “showed heart” and look at the names associated with the term: Shane Carwin, Paul Daley, Roy Nelson, and Andrei Arlovski, just to name a few. Any fighter that stood in there and took a beating, yup, he “showed a lot of heart.”
It’s time to retire that phrase, and here’s why…
It’s lazy. I’ve been guilty of using the phrase myself, but I will no longer use it and I encourage anyone covering MMA to do the same. We see a fighter get beaten bloody, but he doesn’t tap, he doesn’t get KO’d and he doesn’t quit, so we attribute his performance to this mythical thing called “heart.” It’s an easy way out, and too often replaces actual analysis of the losing fighter’s performance.
It’s essentially meaningless. How do you measure heart, guts, and chutzpah? You can’t; it’s all perception. One man’s version of heart is another man’s version of sheer stupidity. Not to pick on Carwin – God knows he was beaten enough on Saturday night — but did he hang in there out of “heart” or out of the never-quit attitude that is pounded into wrestlers and other combat sport participants from a very young age? Do these fighters show this “heart” out of fear of looking soft? (As BJ Penn once said, “You tap from strikes, you’re a little bitch, that’s what I think.”) Besides, these are professional fighters we’re talking about. We don’t really expect them to run out of the cage screaming when things get tough.
It masks the truth. If I were going to write a story about UFC 131 using simple, everyday language and avoid any type of euphemism, the lede would read something like this: “On Saturday, Shane Carwin took a 15 minute beating at the hands of Junior dos Santos. At the end of the fight Carwin’s face was bloody and swollen, he was cut under both eyes and appeared to have a broken nose. Carwin was ineffective during the fight, landing 22 strikes compared to dos Santos’ 104. Carwin was never in the fight, but he showed that he can stand in there and take a beating.” No mention of heart, and you know why? Because it doesn’t exist, outside of the realm of metaphor. The truth is that Carwin can take a punch and he elected to take many of them over the course of the fight. That’s more a deficiency of strategy than anything else.
It leads to things like this. Carwin’s trainer, Trevor Wittman, who by all accounts is one of the best in the business, had the following to say to MMAMania after the fight, “To me, that was like watching a Rocky Balboa movie. Movies are made about stuff like that. As a trainer, I felt we won. We didn’t win the fight but we won as a person and as a team. He did not get beat mentally.”
I understand where Wittman is coming from in this – he has to take something positive away from the loss for his fighter – but to state that Carwin’s beating is the stuff “movies are made about.” Well, that’s a stretch. To say he won as a person and a team? How is that the case? Your fighter gets a loss on his record and he also received a trip to the ER. That’s a loss. The “moral victory,” like heart, is just a weak consolation. While Carwin may not have been beaten mentally he sure as hell was beaten physically and in a sport where you are judged with a W or an L, that’s what counts. There are no asterisks after a loss that say, “He showed a lot of heart.”
Filed under: UFC, FanHouse ExclusiveShane Carwin can pinpoint the exact moment he lost his UFC heavyweight title fight against Brock Lesnar. His record says submission via arm triangle, second round, but forget that. That’s just when the fighting offic…
Shane Carwin can pinpoint the exact moment he lost his UFC heavyweight title fight against Brock Lesnar. His record says submission via arm triangle, second round, but forget that. That’s just when the fighting officially stopped. Really, he lost it in the first, when his body began to fail him.
“First time it’s ever happened to me in my life,” Carwin says in his soft, low voice that forces you to lean in just to catch what he’s saying. “It was terrible.”
It started with a strange feeling that flooded over him right as he was at his most dominant point in the fight. One minute he was focused entirely on pounding Lesnar into an early stoppage, and then the next thing he knew he was all too aware of his surroundings, and in all the wrong ways.
Filed under: UFCBy the time UFC heavyweight Shane Carwin got the news it was already well on its way to becoming the top story of the day: former UFC champion Brock Lesnar was forced out of his UFC 131 bout with Junior dos Santos due to a recurring cas…
And as Carwin found out when he finished up his conditioning workout and started returning a slew of missed calls, that same number one contender fight was now his.
“Junior is a serious fight and not the type of fight that you would normally take on a 30 day notice but I have a dream to chase and I do not have a lot of time to chase it,” Carwin wrote on his blog Thursday afternoon. “This is an opportunity to put myself in contention for the title. I know my Coaches will have me ready so I have everything to gain.”
Perhaps no one is more excited than head Grudge Training Center coach Trevor Wittman, who got the call from the UFC when Carwin was too busy working out to hear the good news, and who has spent the last few weeks dropping hints to Carwin that he should be prepared for just such an opportunity.
When 
Shane Carwin
By the time UFC heavyweight 
