Fighter's Mind, A (27 page)

“But what about going for the kill, knowing when to finish?” I asked him. Certainly some fighters are great finishers and some struggle to do it. It’s almost an art form in itself. You see certain fighters, when they get an opponent hurt, know how to overwhelm to get the finish. Other fighters who struggle with the concept can attack and attack—but ineffectively, and the round ends. Now they’ve “punched themselves out,” meaning they worked so hard in their excitement that they have exhausted themselves. They built up a huge oxygen deficit in their bloodstream by attacking on a wave of adrenaline. But the opponent survived and now he’s coming back.

Greg frowned a little. “You can develop it, and you need it, but basically you have to do your job. Like Clausewitz [the Prussian military officer who wrote
On War,
a book on strategy that defined military thought for the twentieth century] said, ‘War is a continuation of policy by other means.’ Your policy is to win, and killer instinct to finish when a guy is hurt can be a part of that. But just wanting to finish somebody can bite you in the ass. When Joey Villasenor lost to Ninja Rua, he had too much killer instinct. He saw Ninja hurt and blew his gas tank trying to finish him.

“Killer instinct has to be trained—you have to understand how to stay on a guy who’s hurt, but without blowing your gas tank. Joey did it beautifully in the last Baroni fight. He just kept applying high-intensity pressure, but he was calm and controlled. That needs to be taught, developed. It’s not just about jumping on a guy and finishing him. That’s a myth that fighters who aren’t sure about themselves perpetuate, this holy grail of ‘killer instinct.’ If you go into a fight to knock a guy out, chances are you won’t. But when you see a guy hurt, pick up the pressure and the knockout comes. Stay calm. Pick your shots. Just apply your pressure.”

It’s what Josh Waitzkin said about increasing the pressure, the tension, the cat and mouse.

“People fall in love with the idea of
when he’s hurt I’ll finish him
and it makes it too big a deal. As soon as anything becomes a big deal you’ll have problems with it.

“There’s always a point at which people will break. That’s why you train mental toughness. Everyone will break—there’s not a man alive that can’t be broke. Your job, with all that mental training, that suffering, is just to push your own line of mental breaking so far back your opponent can’t find it. Then you take your opponent and get
him
to cross his line, because once he starts breaking he accepts your dominance, and once he accepts your dominance, you can finish him off.

“It’s a skill to see if people are hurt, so I train guys not to show as much as you can—not to look tired or hurt. It adds layers of protection, because you can come back, too, if you break, but your opponent can’t capitalize, that’s strong for you. He had you, but you’re still okay! And it’s bad for him, because he’s thinking,
Oh man, I can’t finish this guy
.”

“So you watch his eyes?” I asked.

This was a matter of some debate. My friend Javier, the boxer/ filmmaker in L.A., and I often discussed this very point. Javier had been in training camp with Pernell Whittaker, Arturo Gatti, Hector Camacho Sr., Vanes Martirosyian—all legendary, world-class fighters. Javier sparred regularly at Wild Card with the best in the world. He and I had been friends for a while and we sparred together and did drills. He taught me a tremendous amount and was extremely thoughtful about boxing. He had forced me to start looking in his eyes as we sparred. I had never done that, but Javier maintained that
that
was the big shock at the high level, with the top fighters in the world. They locked eyes.

“For the good guys, it’s all in the eyes. I can’t remember anyone, any top guy, without constant vigilant eye contact.”

Javier told me, “You learn to
see through the veil
.” His point was that before you make any physical movement, whether its conscious or subconscious, the maneuver first manifests in the brain and you can see it in his eyes. The eyes are windows on the brain. You can feel what he’s thinking. Once you get sufficiently sensitive—you develop “pugilistic sensitivity”—you begin to pick up on visual indications that the eyes give you as to what punch is coming. You can feel what they’re thinking. Jav would laugh and say, “It is microcosmically subtle. The eyes do different things, and you can’t really say what they are. But you can see them. You discern that paradigm.”

Javier was something of a counterpuncher (he waits for you to punch, makes you miss, and then counters with his own punch). For him, proper eye contact is useful for allowing the read, but useful also because keeping proper eye contact facilitates the overall body posture that is necessary to counter. Locking gaze with the opponent keeps your head, neck, everything set properly, to see the openings. So you can take advantage of windows that are open for only fractions of a second.

To me, when I started sparring, looking at the opponent’s eyes, I found it disconcertingly personal. But fighting
is
personal. For someone who started boxing in a college environment, it’s okay that boxing is a kind of athletic endeavor; you look for openings, try to score points. But fighting in a real gym, at the professional level, you have to be aware of what you’re about, which is hurting and getting hurt, hitting and being hit. Dominating someone on a personal, intimate level is the goal. Smashing.

Javier would take it even further. “Locked into eye contact, you get a ton of information about the individual you’re engaged with. Not just what maneuvers and feints, but emotions: shyness, aggression, confidence—and it can be really disconcerting. For instance, the guy I was sparring the other day has got a lot of pro fights, a ton of professional experience. But I was walking him down. He was good enough to maintain eye contact, he made good maneuvers, but I could feel a difference in the level of maturity. He’s doing well but not enjoying himself.”

I’ve had this same experience sparring with Javier, ‘winning’ rounds due to the fact I outweigh him by thirty pounds and am four inches taller, but both of us knowing I’m getting tired, that I’m worried about getting hit in the ribs. I barely have enough power to keep him off me, and he’s fighting at about 60 percent, slowly coming on, and by the third or fourth round he’ll nail me with a few hard shots, just to show me he can.

Javier continued his story, “There’s a power differential and a maturity differential we can both feel. He was very good, came from a great school with wonderful sparring partners, but he wasn’t as experienced as them. I could feel that he was fearful even though he was good and effective. Not only could I sense that but I can sense that he
knows
I can sense it.”

For Greg, as for many MMA trainers (such as Miletich, for one), eye contact wasn’t the way. Maybe the addition of all the weapons—kicks and knees and the threat of the takedown—forced you to be more focused on the man’s body. But I remember even Virgil saying, “He don’t hit you with his eyes, man!”

Greg’s opinion was that “the eyes don’t attack, but you check them to see if he’s hurt. Keep your eyes on his chest, his body, to see what weapons are coming at you, when it comes time to throw. If I hit him twice with a body shot, I’ll glance up and see the reaction. If he’s good, I won’t see anything. If he smiles, I know I hurt him, and he might even be rocked. Then I add pressure. It goes back to my fighting days. I hit like a sissy and always had to check,” he chuckled.

We took time out to commiserate over the horror of body shots. Greg, like me, would rather take ten to the head than one to the body.

We started talking about the problems in training fighters. “The big one is motivation. If they’re motivated, it’s just a matter of time before they break through,” Greg said. “Each problem is unique, just like the fighter. Training fighters is like jazz—each unique piece has to be pushed sometimes, pulled others. It’s improvisational. You’re responding to situations, and there are so many factors. At the core of everything is respect. If they don’t have it, they’re unhappy. Keep that principle in mind.

“Sometimes, when they get too big-headed, they start thinking they know everything.” This is one I’ve seen before. We used to call it “champ-itis” at Pat Miletich’s place.

“Now they’re not giving respect, and they’re demanding too much. I usually have a talk with them. I say, ‘I’ve seen other guys do exactly what you’re doing and it always ends bad. If you want me to keep coaching you, you have to abide and respect these principles, and if not there are a lot of other good coaches out there.’ If it’s in my house, it’s gotta be done my way.”

We started in on fighters and ego.

“You don’t make it far if you have a big ego. The guys that come in here with huge egos get smashed until they learn. Verbal reasoning won’t work, that’s where those guys live . . . you just gotta smash them until they get humble. And build them back up, if they can stand it.”

Greg also has thoughts on the reverse side of that coin—those without enough ego or belief in themselves.

“For the fighters without enough ego I try to talk to them about idealism and believing in yourself. It’s simple. Either start believing in yourself and you win—even if you lose, you’re on the path to winning for the rest of your life—or you don’t, and sit where you are. It’s not just about learning the moves, it’s about learning to believe in yourself. If you don’t win, you should feel like you did.”

I asked about all the top guys in his camp who were facing such massive pressure because of the explosive surge in popularity of MMA in the last few years. The media scrutiny had become inescapable.

“The way things have grown, every fight is always the biggest fight. Every week here it’s the
biggest fight ever
. It’s ridiculous. I do my best to remind them it’s just another fight. The media, the fans, will all fall in love with the fight, and they’ll convince fighters that ‘if you win, everything will change, and if you lose, your life is over.’”

Greg ruminates on his early days, and all his problems in school. I get the sense of how it molded him. Greg versus the world from kindergarten on.

“The thing about being young, it’s all so relative. You’re in school and you’ve got to fight this guy tomorrow who’s enormous. He beat up two friends, and the whole school will be watching. As a kid you have no perspective—it feels like the end of the world. Fighters do the same thing. They make a fight into a huge mountain, and then they’ve already lost.

“You just have to let it all go. Accept that it sucks and do the job. I know you’re nervous and you’ll be scared, but when the cage closes none of that matters anymore. All that matters is him.

“I don’t always read the pressure that a fighter is feeling. I’ll see him fight and realize that he had too much pressure on him, because he’s not relaxed, he’s tight, he’s not performing well. After the first thirty seconds I’ll go ‘aww, fuck, I should have seen that, why didn’t I read that in him?’”

I asked Greg what he would have said if he had read the tension properly. How would he deal with it?

“You remind people why they’re doing what they’re doing. Tell him the sun will rise tomorrow, even if you get knocked out in thirty seconds—the same is true for all your teammates. You got to let it all go and do what you love and fuck the rest.”

 

One of the key elements of any successful trainer is the ability to create game plans for specific fighters and successfully implement them. It’s not just about seeing a weakness but getting a fighter to exploit it. Greg has an individualistic approach—just like all the best guys I spoke with.

“Game plans vary in complexity. Some guys I get superspecific with—when he does this, you do that, your foot goes here. Other people it’s more situational—stay out of this situation, try and get him into that situation. And then we train it—here’s how we do it.

“I try to train my fighters to be as versatile as possible so the game plans can be as versatile as humanly possible. Being a standup guy who’s decent on the ground isn’t good enough—you got to be great on the ground and great on the feet. They’re all in the process. Everyone has a personal development plan so when they get to the top level they’re all like George [St. Pierre]. Game planning is fighter specific.

“Once you’re a pro fighter you have an individual growth plan, so every time you train with me or on your own, you know what you need to be doing.

“For specific things, we drill it over and over. If you’re fighting somebody at a high level, you worry about tiny technical details—they drop the jab, they pass to the left. At the lower level it’s bigger stuff. Training partners fight like the opponent might. Often it doesn’t go exactly as you want, and then it’s up to the fighter to improvise.

“The ideal length of a training camp varies, but I like six weeks. Too long and you get burned out. Not long enough and you can’t peak well. Most of my guys are in shape year-round. But if you work out eight hours a day your intensity is shit.” Greg means that if you actually train for eight hours during the day, you can’t train hard. A lot of fighters will claim that they do—with technique, sparring, and conditioning all separate workouts—but usually they train for six hours total a day, maximum. Or less. In Thailand we trained twice a day, but usually only for an hour and a half or two hours, tops, plus a long run in the morning. And that was governed by intensity—it’s better to go harder than longer. You’re only fighting for twenty-five minutes or less, right? Fighters might be at the gym for eight hours, maybe, but there’s a lot of downtime, stretching, wrapping hands, watching, goofing.

Training camp is a specific term. A fighter “goes into camp” to prepare for a fight—and the bigger the fight, the longer the camp. An eight-week camp is considered normal by professional MMA standards. It’s a ramping up of all training, moving away from technique and focusing on conditioning, getting the fighter in peak physical condition. You might learn a trick or two but you won’t become a massively different fighter, so now let’s just get you in top shape and get you sparring hard so the timing is right.