MMA Discussions

101st Edition of 13 Q’s with an MMA FAN vol. 26

Interviewed by Michelle of MMA Discussions

check out his UFC myspace group
http://groups.myspace.com/UltimateFightingChampionship

1) What got you into MMA?

When I was younger, I was into wrestling. WWE (back then WWF) I loved the heros and the villians, the stories they wrote would make the show like a battle of good and evil, with twists and turns playing to the crowd. Still for me when I was young, it was hard to tell what was real and what wasn’t… and all in all I was more interested in something like this but more real

then I started to see ads for other things, mostly also staged events but more of a martial arts feel. One day at the video rental place by my parents house I found a UFC tape, it was UFC 2. The first battle was Royce Gracie and he dominated with his usual style, and I was impressed that the commentator knew every move before it happened… then came Scott Moris v Pat Smith… a brutal KO I will never forget… from there on I was hooked until the sport was banned from PPV

then years later I was intorduced to Pride… and it all started again… from that moment to now I have lived and breathed MMA

2) What type of trainin do you do?

NO GI Jiu Jitsu with Eddie Bravo @ 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu formerly out of The Bomb Squad now out of Legends of MMA in Hollywood, but I’m also looking to start Muay Thai in the next year, also with Legends. Legends is Randy Couture and Bas Rutten’s new school. In addition to Eddie Bravo, also teaching at legends: Jason Miller, Karo Parisyan, Rob Kaman, Jeremy Williams and many other top notch instructors . Many fighters go in to train reularly like Jason Chambers, and Tait Fletcher from TUF (Joe Rogan is also a regular) Other fighters sometimes visit like Caol Uno, Baroni, Chuck Liddell, Ivan Salavary, and many more.

May also go over to Chute Boxe LA eventually kinda just for the bragging rights to be perfectly honest but aso to see whatsup with their USA school. Wanderlei Silva has been a favrite of mine for a while, with Shogun - Ninja - Anderson Silva - Pele and others also being fighters from that school I have been imperssed with

3) Whats your trainin schedual like?

Well, I am currently on vacation! Haha, my schedual before was 2 times a week minimum with freestyle/wrestling class on saturday usually. Its tough to keep up with it and work full time etc.

4) Tell us about your website?

My first start at MMA journalism was given to me by the late Ryan Bennett of MMAWeekly. com when he was just strating the site. I wrote a weekly column for a while there and also did reviews etc. Then went over to Sherdog for a minute and eventually ended up at MMA-Fighter.com where I wrote for years. Now I have my own site, it started as a place for me to put all my articles but with the way things have gone I mostly just use it to focus on current MMA events - news and video with a forum and a clothing line in the works

5) Tell us about your clothing line?

Currently I only have rashguards, but I have a full line of T-Shirts, Hats and the like as well as other fightwear like fightshorts and what have you.

6) What made you start your group on myspace?

Well, I noticed there was no UFC group and I had been doing work for the UFC street team so I decided it would be a good way to make the sport more popular. It didn;t go well and so I decided to just let it run it’s course… who knew it took on a life of its own and now its tough for me to keep up with the 1000’s of posts and members etc. We are the biggest MMA group on MySpace.

7) What kind of promo work do you do for UFC?

I started just simply passing out flyers and posters, still thats is mostly what they send me but I have done things like note stats and attend events fully credentialled as NEWS MEDIA (back when they catered to the MMA support from the internet)
Do you have sponsors?

Actually, I talked with Matt Lindland about becoming a sponsor for other fighters to promote my website and clothing line. Still I need to be further along with the production before I start putting the name out there.

9) What is the best part of Europe in your opinion?

Holland. Hands down IMHO. If you know me, you know my obvious reasons for that opinion but also I will say the greatest kickboxers in the world mostly come from Holland. When as a nation they start to expand their focus on the groundgame we will see some seriously talented fighters comming out of Holland. Pride currently hosts shows there with Alex Emilianenko appearing in an event this month! Also the cities are small and easy to get around without a car, in addition the people and women are fantastic. it has been voted the best place on earth to live but for me for now I simply like to vacation there when I can.

10) What do you think will be the results of the next UFC card?

I like Lytle over Serra but I think both guys are great in and out of the cage and I expect to see them fighting more in the UFC regardless of the outcome. Lutter is likely to defeat Cote but I like Cote’s fighting style better. If Lutter comes in with his head down and arms outstreched like he did against Sell later in the fight… well he will more than likely be KO’d. Odds are Lutter takes it via submission tho.

Bisping againt Red was gonna be one hell of a fight to call, but I guess since Bisping is having VISA problems we’ll have to wait to see that 1

11) What was the best fight of the year in ur opinion?

Had to be Melvin Manhoef v Cyborg but there were many great fights this year. Pride had some real barn burners, and I also like the chances of GSP v Hughes being a great fight maybe even one of the best this year

12) Who do you wanna see fight live?

Silva and Liddelll… CroCop and Fedor 2… Manhoef v any top 205er. BJ v anyone… his Jiu Jitsu is amazing… actually I would really like to see any new school Jiu Jitsu practitoner come in and start using the new NO GI styles and techniques

13) Liddle or Tito and how

Liddell I expect it will look exactly the same… more often then not rematches go the exact same way, even same positions… but simply I think Tito doesn’t have takedowns as good as Couture… who has olympic experience and STILL couldn’t take Liddell down in his last 2 fights… also Tito is too emotional and is saddly very very 1 dimentional. If Tito can get Chuck down, he’ll probably just get up anyway and doing takedowns over and over is alot more exhausting than it looks.

Thanks alot for takin the time to fill this out. If there is anything else youd like to say have at it……

Thanks for the opportunity, take care
J

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 9th, 2006 at 10:51 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.