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By Chris Park, MMATorch UK Specialist
After a great interview with Brad Pickett last week, I made the trip into central London to meet leading UK MMA journalist and recent "MMA: Live" guest, Gareth A Davies.
CHRIS: Hi Gareth. Thank you for speaking to MMATorch. The first thing I wanted us to talk about is The Ultimate Fighter. To have a whole team like that, well, it's a dream come true really and now we have quite a few genuine contenders coming through off the back of it, don't you think.
GARETH: I do, I agree the obvious ones are Pearson and Wilks. They came through very strongly. Wilks was always a dark horse. A very experienced Jui Jitsui fighter, and also he showed mental toughness all the way through against the bravado of Demarques Johnson during the whole event. Obviously Pearson and Winner, a very difficult final for both of them being friends. That's just one of the dilemmas that training camps and friendships in fight sports throw up. Fighters need people close to them to train with but if you are the same weight like Swick, Koscheck and Fitch, do you have to punch your friend in the face to prove something ? It's very difficult. Anderson Silva and Lyoto Machida, Rashad and Keith Jardine all have the same problem.
CHRIS: Anderson has said he will never face Machida as he is his "brother." What about our boys?
GARETH: Like Daley and Hardy? They won't fight. Maybe for a couple of million quid but fighters don't earn that much yet.
CHRIS: I am a little mixed on the whole friends fighting thing. I could understand why you wouldn't just want to fight your friend for the sake of a fight on a card somewhere. However if one of you holds the title and the other has worked his way to be number one contender are you just going to give up your dream of the last however many years?
GARETH: I think the decisions will rest with the UFC. People will either relinquish or step aside. That pressure lies with the UFC and it's up to them. I thought the TUF idea was a good idea and right now I reckon there is some 11 year old whose dad is into MMA and in the holidays, Chris, they probably go to California and do Jui Jitsui and they go to Florida for wrestling and there will be someone now who's mad about the UFC, or his dad is mad about the UFC, and they will be spending their holidays training and in eight years' time they will be the next GSP, because they will be so well-rounded. Bound to happen.
CHRIS: As we speak there is a fourteen year old Australian kid training at the Wolfslair, doing exactly what you just said. His dad has brought him over from Australia to see what it's all about.
GARETH: Well that's what that series will have spawned. It's a phenomenon anyway. We have seen it in other walks of life if someone is a star, as a personality, then they become a real star if they go into say Big Brother, and get public exposure, and the same applies with TUF. Pearson is the perfect example; a hod carrier, a brickie. He wants to keep the prints on his fingers. On work ethic alone I think he will work his way up that 155 division.
CHRIS: He could do very well, if you take BJ Penn away then that is a very competitive division and we now have several guys in that division who could be fighting for the strap in a few years.
GARETH: At the minute I'd put Terry Etim above the rest of the UK lightweights .
CHRIS: He has way more experience
GARETH: Yes he has, I think he's seven fights in with two losses to Rich Clementi and...
CHRIS: Gleison Tibau...
GARETH: Gleison Tibau. They were both points losses and they were in America. He doesn't travel well and he's grown up a lot. He's 6 ft 1 and doesn't put on weight. Dan Hardy is going up on March 27 for a title shot, but if I was to pick one lightweight I thought could win the title, I'd pick Terry. But I do think Ross and Andre are potentially great fighters.
CHRIS: Also they are only now training full time.
GARETH: Yes both of them had great performances at UFC 105 in Manchester. Winner had an early knock out over a guy who Paul Kelly struggled with and Pearson really delivered.
CHRIS: I thought he made a really experienced fighter in Aaron Riley look average
GARETH: Well it just showed his whole game. What won him the fight was timing, precision and by the second round he was just able to show all his skills.
CHRIS: It wasn't a debut level of performance was it?
GARETH: Exactly. It wasn't. It marked the level of improvement over that time since the show.
CHRIS: What I love is even at the finale of these shows the difference in standard of performances....
GARETH: Because its six months later.
CHRIS: Exactly... and they have all that time training at a much higher level. His game plan and maturity in that fight was exceptional. He is also local to where I am from and for him to go through and win the whole series was just incredible to watch.
GARETH: I thought I recognised your accent.
CHRIS: Only ten miles apart: Were you sceptical when you first heard we were having a full team? I was unsure we would even be able to match them never mind dominate the season.
GARETH: I always thought it was a great idea. I like to razz up the Americans as well and say they underrate us and I think they do. Most of their stand up skills in the U.S tend not be boxing based. I don't think their stand up skills are as good as European stand up skills, in general.
CHRIS: They have their advantages with Wrestling all through their school education,
GARETH: Yes they have Wrestling and Jui Jitsui which overall is way above what young fighters learn here at the moment . GSP said to me over New Year: "I would never write off Dan Hardy as the guys in Europe have such good stand up. They always have done."
CHRIS: I mean if you look back at the Swick fight he showed such a high level of technical striking. He literally picked Swick apart and had him rocked a few times. He did everything except knock him out. With Paul Daley knocking everyone's heads off, he hasn't been able to show anything else...YET! I'm not saying he can't but in the Jake Shields fight he was doing great. Until it hit the ground. Is that something he is developing?
GARETH: He's never been stopped; he's a vastly improved fighter over the last 2 years.
CHRIS: Well with GSP seemingly on another planet to the rest of the division, while I think Dan would probably have a better chance than Paul of defeating Koscheck, Fitch, Alves or anyone in the division, Paul possesses such devastating one punch power, wouldn't he have a better chance against GSP? Of catching him cold, catching him early?
GARETH: I don't know. I think there are two things here. I think Daley has a better sprawl than people give him credit for we just haven't seen it as he's been so devastating with his left hook. What we saw was Kampmann receive seven or eight unanswered left hooks. Some people say he was stopped prematurely but I think he was going to get hurt.
Let me say something about MMA...It is still growing in acceptance in the mainstream. The last thing this sport needs is a death. I have been writing about boxing for 17 years. I have been following martial arts all my life. I did Judo as a kid, I did something called Wu Shu when I lived in China which is fighting with a six foot wooden stick. I have started Wing Chung classes...
Martial arts have so much for society. So does MMA. But the growth and acceptance into the mainstream will be hard-earned...and its path, because of its phenomenal growth, is likely to weave its own course...we don't know yet, but it needs careful nurture.
If I can draw this parallel - sixteen years ago I started covering the Paralympics when no one was interested in it. I helped grow the sport and now everyone knows what it is. Not everyone likes it but there is a duality about it which is that it is about disability, and about sport, and it helps millions of people. The important thing here is the awareness of the public towards inspirational people with disabilities doing inspirational sporting things. I put the ground work in early on and won a quite a few awards and I feel I know how to cover the sport.
It's the same with MMA . It needs defined representation. It's unusual for it to be covered in a broadsheet way, and it needs to be looked at it in a responsible manner. It's such a safe sport - MMA - but one of the great dangers is at some point there is going to be some serious injury in the Octagon and that will be a telling time for the sport. It wil be telling in as much as how people will react when it happens because visually it is a violent looking sport even though when you're on the inside you realise that fights are stopped quickly, and that there aren't prolonged punches to the head, ten counts, and getting hit in the head over and over again. In MMA, you can take someone down to nullify their punches, for example.
CHRIS: Let's hope that day doesn't come anytime soon. With Michael Bisping, he won the battle but Henderson most defiantly won the war. They say a fighter shows his true worth in the way he comes back from a defeat. How he responds to adversity. I would say he responded very well against Kang.
GARETH: I agree it was a fantastic performance, the calmness he showed from the bottom in the first round. What's always great with a Mixed Martial Artist, I've learned, is that in boxing, when someone goes down you automatically think they are very badly hurt. Whereas in MMA you can go down but it's how you react when they go down. Cain Velasquez was knocked down several times in Cologne by Kongo yet won a dominant fight.
CHRIS: But when he went down each time he took the fight to his game.
GARETH: Every time he took it to his game and he hammered and dominated Kongo in the end and with Bisping, he is a very clever, rounded fighter. Because of the knockout you worry about Wanderlei catching him with one of those big looping rights or a hook but I think he's got to get in the pocket with him and clinch, wrestle, out move and out box him and win on points, or by ground and pound stoppage.
CHRIS: I agree get back to being the old Michael Bisping.
GARETH: The old Bisping. From a distance - I can see two outcomes. Bisping could get caught; anyone could get caught by Wanderlei. Powerful hands but I think the weight cut may affect him. Bisping has got to take him into the second and third rounds and then the cut could come into it.
CHRIS: The first round a bit more cautious and as the fight gets deeper pick up the pace and start to impose his fight on him....
GARETH: He will be more cautious... I imagine that's the game plan. I saw Wanderlei at New Year and he's had his scars removed, he looked great. This is a milestone fight. At this level it's like a game of snakes and ladders
CHRIS: Blink of an eye it can go like that (clicks fingers)
GARETH: I was around Michael at UFC 100 he was very emotionally pent up before that fight. He almost wore himself out he was so fired up.
CHRIS: Like Ricky Hatton was against Mayweather.
GARETH: Exactly. Almost too excited and Henderson is a dangerous customer. He's one of the guys who gives the least away but in the Octagon he is a very dangerous man for anyone, and he has the great combination of Olympic Wrestling. Greco Roman Wrestling and great hands. Look at what he did in Pride. With Michael, I love it when he proves his doubters wrong I hope we get something special from him in this fight.
CHRIS: A real classic brawl I'm hoping. The thing with his ground game against Kang, people say English fighters can't win a fight on the ground. You don't need to be black belt to defend yourself and he proved that against Kang.
GARETH: He was the guy that after Ian Freeman, put UK MMA on the map. He went to America (TUF 3), he beat the Americans in their own back yard. There was a moment in there that he switched. It was over Matt Hamill being Tito Ortiz's little pet. Then in training he threw Hamill across the Octagon and hurt him and everyone stood up and noticed and that won it for him. It was another three years before all the guys from today came along. All these guys, Winner, Pearson they have all had the path paved for them. Michael put the work in. He was available day and night for TV, for interviews. He did it single handed up and down the country. Doing interviews, magazines and he became the poster boy and he has a great story. He's fearless. He came up against drug dealers and gangsters when he was a DJ and growing up and sometimes I think the fact he's fearless counts against him. He has had alot of bad press in America.
CHRIS: He was portrayed as being really arrogant on the TUF series.
GARETH: He isn't really like that. What I like is that he's sensitive as well and he shows it.
CHRIS: If it wasn't for the way he acted things up then that show would have been a bore. Let's be real here TUF is as much a reality TV show as it is about competing and Dan Henderson was not going to contribute anything toward the entertainment side of that, it's not in his character. So it was left to Mike. If he hadn't done some of the things he did the whole thing would have been pretty boring.
GARETH: It's very easy to make Michael Bisping the bad guy but he will always go down in the UK as one of the founding fathers, founding fighters, for MMA over here.
CHRIS: Dan obviously has his title shot but by Mike doing what he has done for the sport has helped all UK fighters coming through.
GARETH: He has and I have written so many times as well that I am desperate and I mean desperate for the UFC to sign Fedor.
CHRIS: Join the club mate.
GARETH: Because the UFC have, say, 90 percent of the top fighters they can put together the best contests quickly.
CHRIS: Yeah and Penn and Koscheck and Alves and he destroyed them all so I am still waiting for everyone who tells me Hardy doesn't deserve it to come up with someone who deserves the title shot more? Fitch has won three decisions since his loss, Koscheck was last beaten in London and Alves hasn't even made his comeback since GSP.
GARETH: He has beaten them all - and the UFC are able to put all those top fights together. I like the fact you don't have to wait for them.
CHRIS: So ESPN: UK. Are we going see another Ultimate Talk?
GARETH: I did four shows on MMA LIVE over New Year as part of the ESPN team and they introduced me as their international correspondent. Ultimate Talk, on Setanta, was in the middle of a rolling news channel, and it was far more relaxed, a different style to ESPN. Just as Setanta went under we were starting to get going we were getting between 33,000 and 50,000 viewers and it was repeated 6 times and we used to get alot of feedback from fans. There is a need for a show, there is a gap for a weekly update.
I remember when I went to the (UFC) 89 show in Birmingham sitting working in the central square by the N.I.A. I sat working in a coffee shop and seven or eight people must have approached me. A Danish guy came up and said "Thanks for doing what you're doing in Europe we watch it online."
CHRIS: Ultimate Talk provided a route for fans where they would only really need to watch that one weekly show in order to know what was going on around the world of MMA. Now it almost feels a little bit back to square one
GARETH: I think ESPN would be well advised to do it sooner rather than later because the fans need that. You can only get so much from reading on line. You want to be able to react. Sport is about debate. We are thinking of doing a Boxing and MMA podcast here at The Telegraph. A proper weekly or even a fortnightly 15 minute to half hour programme which would do a service for the sport.
CHRIS: Right. Is Dan going to do it?
GARETH: I hate predicting this far away from a fight.
CHRIS: Ok let me word it differently. Will Dan do better than the last five opponents?
GARETH: I think he will do better than anyone is expecting him to.
CHRIS: No one is really giving him a shot
GARETH: Well GSP is.
CHRIS: Well then shouldn't everyone else be?
GARETH: I do think he's got a chance. I really do.
CHRIS: I do
GARETH: You do?
CHRIS: Yeah I really do. I think he is being looked past by a lot of people and history has proven that in combat sports that can be one of the biggest mistakes a fighter can make. You say GSP is not taking him lightly and he is the only one who matters. I think at the very least he will make the fight competitive and do better than any of the last five challengers.
GARETH: The first round is going to be really important.
CHRIS: George has basically set the trend in the first round for all his recent fights. I think Dan has to break that mould, Don't let GSP get the early head start that ultimately leads to him dominating.
GARETH: It's the takedowns, we won't know until the enactment. What I think Dan has got to do - is that GSP punches in quite straight lines and has good hand speed. Dan needs to be wary of the hand speed - and not be stunned by it, as it may give him openings for a takedown.
CHRIS: You just need to look at the state of Alves' face after their fight.
GARETH: Exactly. He needs to be wary of that. Dan's got a much better ground game than he's given credit for. He's worked with Eddie Bravo alot. As you know Dan and Paul travelled alot before they were in the UFC they spent alot of time training in Florida at ATT. It was actually Paul Daley who introduced Dan to Eddie Bravo
CHRIS: You would think it was the other way round.
GARETH: You would do but it was Paul who made the introduction. Dan needs to be careful using the kicks early. It's hard to not see GSP going for the game plan to take it to the ground.
CHRIS: Dan said that over New Year (In Vegas) GSP had his Wrestling coach with him the whole time.
GARETH: I remember writing that.
CHRIS: Yeah it was you
GARETH: Yeah, he had him with him. He came and met him after the ESPN show.
CHRIS: In the Swick fight he just put him on the back foot from the first round and it was his for the taking.
GARETH: I always thought he would beat Swick.
CHRIS: You know what I'm going to hold my hands up here.
GARETH: Oh don't.
CHRIS: I said "Heart says Hardy, head says Swick" but then after then fight I didn't know why I ever doubted it. They were worlds apart. I don't think I expected such a big improvement from Dan in between fights.
GARETH: Because I think we have a tendency to underrate our own fighters. Hardy has a great chin.
CHRIS: Granite!
GARETH: Yeah, he's got power, speed and venom and I'll tell you what else he's got - which is one of his biggest weapons. His belief. He has great belief. There are great gym fighters who couldn't get in the Octagon because they don't have that belief. It's genuine, the same as Paul Daley. The arrogance they come across with is from deep belief in their own ability and that's why I'm happy to back those guys. David Haye is the same, and a huge MMA fan by the way.
CHRIS: He's like a real life Apollo creed.
GARETH: He is good friends with Michael Bisping.
CHRIS: The last twelve months have been so impressive for UK MMA that if you think, it was only a year ago Dan had fought just one UFC prelim. We knew Mike was going to be coaching and facing someone in TUF. Now just a year later we have Dan competing for the title. Daley, Pearson, Winner all coming through and Mike is facing Wanderlei. 2009 has been and unbelievable year for us.
GARETH: It has been a great year in the UFC for the UK Chris, and I just want to say one other thing. I've been so impressed with these athletes. I have covered a lot of sports over the years - I've covered World Cup Qualifiers at the Azadi stadium in Iran where 144,000 fanatical fans had a call to prayer at half time. I've covered Mike Tyson up close. I've been around Tour De France riders, around around many superstars of sport. I went to Africa with Michael Johnson and Marcel Desailly. I went to Morocco with Marvin Haggler and Daley Thompson. But I have to say spending time around GSP, he is a genuine superstar. I have been around Chuck Liddell - another genuine superstar. Rampage Jackson is one of the greatest characters I have ever met. His English accent when he mocked me was fantastic. What I have found with people in this sport - they are dedicated, great to work with from a media perspective, fantastic to be around and I am delighted to be a part of the sport and to be accepted in it and I can only see good things for it moving forward. I also think the passion of the fans in this sport is infectious, and I enjoy the fans of the sport so much, and that there is such a hunger for knowledge and learning. here were a few things that need changing. I don't like it being called "Cage Fighting." It's Mixed Martial Arts - and I don't like the term "Rape Choke" for one of the moves. Ridiculous. I want to be able to draw people in, not frighten them off and terminology like that can be disastrous. If it is to be accepted in the mainstream globally there are just a few things that need ironing and I am happy to be one of the journalists involved it writing about the sport as it evolves.
(Gareth A Davies was speaking exclusively to MMATorch UK Specialist Chris Park)
Award-winning sports journalist Gareth A Davies is Boxing and MMA Correspondent for The Telegraph Media Group in London (The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and telegraph.co.uk)
I hope you enjoyed my interview with Gareth and found it as insightful as I did. It was in fact my birthday when we spoke and I can think of no better way to spend it, than reflecting on 2009, with one of the pioneers of UK MMA.
Join me tomorrow for my weekly roundup of "The UK Scene."
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Chris Park is the MMATorch UK Specialist. Please email any comments to Chris at mmatorchpark@gmail.com or look us up at http://www.facebook.com/mmatorchuk, our new MMATorch Facebook home for UK fans!
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