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ERICH KRAUSS
Part 3
The Muay Thai Trekker’s Guide to Thailand
© Marc Wickert We’re staring down Christmas Eve in Las Vegas and Erich Krauss has just arrived home from Thailand, when Knucklepit intercepts the Victory Belt publisher before he shuffles suitcases and heads back out the door to celebrate Christmas in Death Valley. The Tom Waits hit Anywhere I Lay My Head could easily have been written about Erich, who has travelled the planet – both as a professional Muay Thai kickboxer and as a world-renowned author – working like some martial arts archeologist to unearth the secrets of the globe’s greatest fighters. Although there’s no time for moss to grow on Erich, it seems hard to believe it was just over a decade ago that he made his maiden journey to Thailand. “I think the first time I went to Thailand was around ’98 and that was when I originally started training in Muay Thai. I’d already been training in kung fu and karate here, and then I trained a little Muay Thai in Santa Barbara at a kung fu school, thought it was a pretty cool art, and went to Thailand to start training.” “The funny thing was, now all the gyms cater to foreigners, but at the time there were no gyms that had foreigners and I almost got my butt kicked walking into a gym in Bangkok back in the day. They wanted to spar with me and obviously that wouldn’t have gone too good on my first day. Now I go back every year, or every other year, it depends.” Erich, how long were you there for? “November and December. I lived there for a year in 2004, but this time just two months.” Do you own your own place in Thailand? “No. No. I thought about building a house over there, but prices have skyrocketed, and I like to travel around when I’m in Thailand. It’s hard to find one place I like more than another. Until I find that one place, I’ll keep traveling to different parts.” Prices are pretty good in Tweed Heads (Australia) at the moment. “[Laughs] I’ve always wanted to go there… It sounds like an awesome place.” We’ll hold you to that one, Erich. “Alright, I’ll definitely do it.” Do you still compete in Muay Thai? “I was going to try it last time, but I was over there with a girlfriend, so I ended up not training as much as I wanted to.”
The Dutch also have an impressive reputation for their kickboxing. How does their standard compare with Thailand’s Muay Thai? “Well, it depends… like the top guys in both are pretty much… It depends on which rules they’re fighting under. If they’re fighting K-1 rules, the Dutch seem to have a really good style because they use a lot of hands and their kicks aren’t as circular and they tend not to have as much aspect put on the clinch. But in K-1 they don’t allow the clinch, so they do really good in K-1, and there are also a few guys with the Dutch style who do good in Thailand. Thailand focuses a lot more on the clinch and little bit less on hands. “In K-1, they don’t allow you to pull your opponent’s head down into your knees, as in the Muay Thai clinch. You’re allowed to pull the head down with one hand but not two, and they break up the clinch really fast in K-1; they don’t let you stay in the clinch for several minutes. And the throws don’t count in K-1, whereas in Muay Thai they do.” Is Phuket the main place to go to for Thai boxing over there? “No, I would say the best place you’re going to get training is Bangkok. But it’s a big city and that’s where all the fighters around the country are training to make it to – Bangkok. That’s where the Lumpinee and Ratchadamnoen stadiums are as well as the Channel Seven Stadium which hosts all the televised fights. In Bangkok you’re going to get the best fighters and the best gyms; however it’s expensive and you’re going to be in a big, nasty city. “Then you have training up in the Chang Mai area and that’s better training. You probably get the worst training as far as traditional Thai in Phuket, but it’s on the beach and it’s a nice place to be, so that’s where a lot of people tend to gravitate to. When you’re first learning you may as well go to Phuket because you’re learning the basics and anyone can teach you the basics. Once you get really good and need to know all the tricks and the advanced clinch throws, you might want to go to Bangkok or up into the Chang Mai area.” Is Thailand a bit of a cultural shock for first timers? “Not really. If you go up north to the really poor areas then it probably is, but at the island of Phuket they have everything you could really want. It’s not much of a cultural shock at all, but that’s coming from somebody who has lived in the country most of his life, and I think of Nicaragua and other parts of South America as being more of a cultural shock.”
For anybody wishing to train in Thailand, which gyms would you recommend? “If you’re a beginner, Phuket is going to be more expensive, but it’s going to have a beach and some fun things to do besides Muay Thai. If you’re going there just to train Muay Thai and you’re trying to live on a budget, you might want to go up to Chang Mai, or to Bangkok if you want to be in a city with nightlife. Pretty much anywhere you go they’ll be able to teach you the basics; however just make sure you go to the right school because some don’t give you personal attention and others give you a lot of personal attention. “We’re coming out with a (Victory Belt) DVD that’s going to profile 60 gyms in Thailand and you’ll be able to watch it and get an idea of where you want to train.” Is it okay for novices to train there, or would they be beaten up like sacrificial lambs? “Most Thai gyms now make money from foreigners going there to train, it’s a lucrative business, and just going there to train you’ll be totally fine. They’re not going to pit you against anybody. If you want to fight, they’ll most likely pit you against a washed-up Thai or a foreigner who’s not in shape. But in any contact sport you can get hurt.” How do visitors avoid food poisoning? “I guess it just depends on your stomach, I mean the food’s really good, but they cook with a lot of grease… It just depends on your stomach. You want to avoid eating street food because that’s been sitting around in the hot sun all day. It’s hard to tell… You always end up getting the shits for a period of time.” What about the water? Do you buy bottled water? “Even they drink bottled water.” Any other travel tips you’d like to share with readers? “Let me think… I would just suggest studying the prices before you go because on things like taxi rides they definitely give foreigners a different rate to locals, so research what the costs for general things are, and before you travel in a taxi, make sure you settle on a price.” Erich, in Part Two of this interview, can we talk about the projects you and Glen Cordoza were involved in during your recent trip to Thailand, please? “Sure, I’d love to.”
For more on Victory Belt books and DVDs: www.victorybelt.com.
ERICH KRAUSS Part
2 The Ultimate Mixed Martial Artist
Forrest Griffin and Stitch ©
Marc Wickert special
thanks to Linda Krauss
Erich
Krauss has just returned from a few months in the Philippines and is now
in Las Vegas, chatting with Knucklepit. “I’ve been
meeting with Forrest Griffin all day, working on his new book: It’s
crazy,” says Krauss.
Erich
lives the life of a compulsive working nomad, who pulls up camp at a
moment’s notice, but takes his work with him, then wonders why he
comes back feeling weary. “The break was good R’n’R, but I
ended up working a ton. Surprisingly, people noticed me over there
for my books. A lot of people now train MMA in the Philippines, so
they came up and asked for my books and got some autographs… It was
really just a good time.”
Krauss
is also a professional Muay Thai kickboxer who likes to work on his
mixed martial arts, but he was unable to cram fighting into his busy
schedule on this vacation. “I ended up not competing. I
did a little training with them – a little Muay Thai and some boxing,
but in the Philippines they’re really just getting into MMA, so
they’re only learning jiu jitsu and Muay Thai. It’s all pretty
new to them. Sure there are people who have been doing it a long
time, but as far as the mainstream goes, it’s a new style for them.
They’ve been doing stick fighting and knife fighting for hundreds of
years, but as far as MMA goes, it’s still a new sport.”
The
big news for Erich at the moment is that his manual, The Ultimate
Mixed Martial Artist, has met with widespread public approval, and
as mentioned in Knucklepit’s review of the publication, this
book is a bible of MMA. And the author agrees; one could almost
base his whole fighting system on the manual.
“Yeah,
definitely that was the game plan going into it. Of course, this
is a book for stand-up, striking, defense, takedown, takedown defense,
shooting into takedown, the clinch… You could base your entire
stand-up game on this book. And what we try to do is pick and
choose the best techniques from the world’s best fighters.”
Erich,
dynamics are a huge part of any aspect of fighting, and an area of
training that can be overlooked. Were you specifically targeting
dynamics when you began this project? “Dynamics vary from fighter to fighter, and everyone uses different dynamics for a certain strike or technique, so what we were looking for was a guy who has had extreme success in a particular area, such as a Shawn Yarborough or Shawn Tompkins for kicks, and we’ll demonstrate the dynamics they use in those kicks. And that’s what we did throughout the book, from the clinch to takedowns, to striking and defending takedowns.”
Randy Couture
Can
you tell readers about the athletes involved in the book, please?
“Okay,
we have Anderson Silva who came out with a whole striking book with us (Anderson
Silva: Mixed Martial Arts Striking), so we wanted to use him in some
different areas in this book, such as takedown defense off the kick.
If you are a really good striker, how do you avoid the takedown?
That’s exactly what Anderson shows you: numerous ways to avoid the
takedown, how to turn takedown attempts to your advantage and actually
take your opponent down. So we focused on that area with Anderson
Silva.
“Randy
Couture obviously is a master in the clinch and a master at takedowns,
which is what we show him doing: numerous takedowns from the clinch and
clinch defense.
“Forrest
Griffin has very unorthodox strikes and leg kicks, so we used him in the
combination section to show some of his most effective techniques and
how to cut angles off to acquire a dominant angle of attack on your
opponent.
“For
Jon Fitch we showed a lot of striking to the takedowns, and once you do
take your opponent down, how to alter your position to assume more
dominant control.
“Greg
Jackson put a few of his most crafty techniques into the book, and
he’s going to feature a lot more heavily in the second book which is
on grappling.
“Shawn
Tompkins is a really good Muay Thai fighter and he is a master at
developing striking combinations – his fighters have extreme success
with combinations he calls out from ringside. He game-plans
certain combinations to suit specific opponents. He’s heavily
involved in the striker-combination section.
“Dave
Camarillo plays a minor role in this book, but will play a much larger
role in the next book on grappling; however in this book he does show
one of his more elaborate flying attacks.
“Karo
Parisyan, of course, is excellent at throws and is probably the only
judo practitioner competing in mixed martial arts who can use his judo
effectively – big, huge throws that damage his opponents in the
Octagon.
“Shawn
Yarborough, is a Muay Thai striker and coach to MMA fighters, who knows
how his skills can be adapted to the sport of MMA, and who we focused on
primarily for combinations that utilized Muay Thai kicks and round
kicks.
“Anuwat
Kaewsamrit is a Muay Thai kickboxer in Thailand who we have showing
several of his most effective punch-kick-knee-elbow combinations. “And we have Erin Toughill, who is one of the original pioneers of women’s MMA, and in the book does several different combinations that she has had great success with.”
Jon Fitch
Sam
Stout did very well with Shawn Tompkins in his corner against Joe Lauzon
– particularly the way Shawn called for Sam to target Joe’s liver
with strikes.
“I
could definitely see that coming because I sat down with Shawn for a
great period of time. He was a major contributor to this book –
the intros, the striking section, the fodder came from Shawn; so I
understand how he builds these combinations based upon the opponent.
“We
talk a lot about that in The Ultimate Mixed Martial Artist where
you study your adversary’s weaknesses, his strengths, and then you
build specific combinations that are going to attack his weaknesses and
strengths. And I know just from talking with Shawn that he creates
numbers that correspond to specific combinations, and when he shouts
them out at the ring his fighter can pull them out instantly. He
also engrains them into his fighters’ minds so that when he says
something to them it’s already been done a thousand times in practice
and they can pull it right out there in the ring.
“The
big thing there is to get a fighter who’s willing to take those
directions and put aside emotions in the ring and listen to his coach in
the corner to make a flawless execution of that strategy work.”
And
that’s what Cus D’Amato used with his fighters, including Mike
Tyson.
“Exactly.
You have to look at it outside the ring: Your trainer can see things
that you can’t see inside the ring, but in order to do that you have
to develop a strong trust and a lot of history with the trainer, because
it is your ass on the line. You have to trust your trainer and
know he’s not just shouting out stuff to appear big and tough. I
think Shawn and Sam Stout had that trust in the fight and that led to
victory.”
Shawn
illustrates the liver shots in one of the lessons he presents called
“Slip Cross – Lead Hook to Body-Cross”.
It’s a
very debilitating blow, isn’t it?
“Yeah,
when you pound on somebody’s liver it zaps all their power and makes
them not want to fight; it slows them down and makes their hands drop…
A lot of people use liver punches, but what many don’t realize is that
with Thai kicks you can aim them at the ribs, but you can also aim them
at the liver. If you crash your shin into the liver at 60 miles an
hour, it’s got to do some damage. And that damage is
accumulative over the fight.”
Randy
Couture is another contributor to the book. When do we get to see
the book,
“Xtreme Training by Randy”? “That is almost done. We’re finalizing it in the next few weeks, and it will probably be in print for another five weeks, and then it’s going to be on shelves. We expect it to be a really big release, it’s a flawless book, and it’s basically all the exercises Randy does, all the drills he does when preparing for a fight – both off-season and on-season.
Anderson Silva
You’ve
brought together some of the most influential names in MMA for the book.
Greg Jackson is another trainer who had great success at UFC 108 when
Rashad Evans defeated Thiago Silva in the main event. What did you
ask of Greg?
“Well,
Greg Jackson is another one like Shawn Tompkins: He’s just been so
influential in the sport on creating these fighters who go all the way
to the finish line, climbing to the top of the MMA mountain. And
when you have one fighter who does that, that’s one thing, but when
you have a whole stable of fighters who do the same thing and are the
best in the business, that says something about the coach.
“We
wanted to get a lot of Greg Jackson’s striking and grappling strategy,
so he comes in more heavily in the grappling book, but we also wanted to
include some of the striking techniques that he employs with his
fighters.”
And
Forrest Griffin assists with the publication. When does his next
book come out?
“That
one is done through HarperCollins. It’s a follow-up to his New
York Times bestseller: Got Fight: The Fifty Zen Principles of
Hand-to-Face Combat and this book is called Forrest Griffin’s
Survival Guide to the Apocalypse, which is basically a comedy/humor
book, just as the last one, but we’re taking things a little further
this time.”
All
the contributors to the book are people who are currently playing a
major role in MMA, and the techniques they demonstrate are the latest
available. Is that what you were looking for?
“Well,
I wasn’t necessarily looking for the new ‘hot’ technique; what I
was looking for was techniques that actually work – techniques that
are considered bread-and-butter applications for these fighters.
You can always put out a book on the flashiest move of the day, but when
it hasn’t been proven in the ring, time and again, you don’t know
that it’s applicable to all fights. Really, what I wanted were
practical techniques that someone can build their system – off of core
methods that are going to serve as a foundation; like every fighter
should have every single technique in this book.
“We
added a few fluffy ones, such as Dave Camarillo’s flying arm bar –
it’s definitely a good technique to use, but not everyone can pull it
off. The vast majority of moves we wanted to be ones that
everybody can use, and should be a foundation from which they build the
rest of their fighting system.”
Jon
Fitch is another fighter you’ve employed who recently had success,
chalking up a victory over Mike Pierce at UFC 107. How did he help
out with the book?
“We
knew what we wanted from Jon: takedown, takedown defense and some
clinch. We knew that was his forte and he didn’t let us down.
He came out with the techniques that he uses in every one of his fights;
he showed us how he set up double- and single-leg takedowns, and how he
defended against them. Fitch really stepped up and showed his
A-game, and that’s what we wanted from him.”
Erich,
what else can fight fans look forward to from Victory Belt?
“We
have Lyoto Machida’s first book – and it should be out in about five
weeks – which is on MMA. It’s 280 pages and includes all the
striking, set-ups, elusive tactics, the way to use feints to set up more
powerful attacks… He also has a follow-up book coming out, strictly on
karate.
“Then
we have a book by Andre Galvao, one of the world’s best jiu jitsu
practitioners, coming out; Randy’s fitness book; Greg Jackson’s
second book, which is on grappling; Cung Lee’s Sanshou book, and one
by Leo Viera – another world-famous grappler; and the third DVD by
Anderson Silva, which is strictly on striking combinations.”
When
do we get to see a DVD on catching rattlesnakes by Siegfried Krauss?
(Laughs)
“Oh, that’s going to be down the road when we get all these other
copies finished. My dad is a tough guy who lives up in the
mountains and goes hiking for days at a time. He’s tougher than
I am, for sure.”
Linda
said that rather than hurting the snakes around the yard, he’ll catch
them and release them into the wild.
“Yeah,
that’s my dad: He doesn’t kill anything.” That’s the way it should be.
For
more on Victory Belt’s publications: www.victorybelt.com Knucklepit’s review
of The Ultimate Mixed Martial Artist: http://www.knucklepit.com/mixed-martial-arts-knucklepit%20book%20&%20dvd%20reviews.htm
ERICH
KRAUSS From Tsunami to Fedor Emelianenko
©
Marc Wickert
It’s
2pm in Las Vegas, and Erich Krauss has just gotten off the phone to
Forrest Griffin after the pair worked on their weekly column for Revolver
magazine. Knucklepit.com is fortunate to catch up with
Erich (pronounced “Arish”) before he heads out to Georgia to attend
Forrest’s wedding on the weekend.
Krauss
and his partner Glen Cordozo have led mixed martial arts fans into the
golden age of ultimate fighting by revolutionizing the way MMA books and
DVDs are published. Not only do their Victory Belt instructional
books and DVDs provide customers with access to the training routines of
the world’s greatest fighters, but all publications are elaborately
illustrated, with every move shown clearly through multi-angled shots so
nothing is left to the reader’s interpretation.
Born
in the Bay Area of California, Erich graduated from college before
spending the next 10 years traveling the world. “I lived in the
Amazon rainforest, all over Central and South America… I was basically
traveling as a bum – I never had any money, and I was always moving from
city to city, living in 10 states in the US and 19 countries around the
world,” says Krauss. “When I returned to the US and started this company, I was still pretty mobile. I don’t have a lot of material possessions, so I decided to come to Las Vegas as it’s the epicenter of MMA activity, and that’s really what my publishing house is focusing on.”
As
well as running Victory Belt, Erich has made a name for himself as a very
competitive Muay Thai kickboxer, but it was through the more mainstream
disciplines that Krauss originally became involved in the martial arts.
“When
I was young I started karate – I kinda followed the same evolution that
most fighters did; then I did kung fu and earned my black sash before I
saw the first UFC and realized what I was doing was probably not as
effective as it should be, so I started taking Brazilian Jiu Jitsu out of
Salt Lake City, then moved to Thailand to learn Muay Thai.
“This
was back before there were foreigners going to Thailand, so I had a tough
time finding a gym. I went into a gym in Bangkok and it looked like
they were all going to beat the living hell out of me because they
didn’t want me there. Luckily, I found a gym in Pattaya, a
miserable port town that caters to sailors and has about 2000 prostitute
bars. But that was about the only place at the time that would train
foreigners. Now, everywhere takes foreigners for training in Muay
Thai.”
Erich,
do you still compete in Muay Thai?
“Yeah,
I went back there four months ago, but I ended up breaking my foot in
training, so I had to back out of the fight. But I’m leaving for
the Philippines in a couple of weeks and I‘ll probably go back to
Thailand. I’m in the best shape of my life right now, so we’ll
see if I have what it takes to fight one or two more times.”
Victory
Belt books and DVDs stand alone as the top-shelf publications of
instructional MMA products. You must be very proud of what you’ve
achieved so far?
“I
think a lot of it has to do with who I’m working with, too. Glen
Cordozo is my coauthor and he’s a phenom in the martial arts and will be
in the UFC before too long. But I base a lot on him that we pick the
right guys to do books and DVDs on. He’s meticulous and as much of
a workaholic as I am, and we want to make these publications perfect, so
we spend an immense amount of time breaking down each fighter’s system.
“We don’t want to duplicate the same information on each fighter, because a lot of martial arts books put out the same group of moves by different guys, with the result being that you don’t learn anything new. We really want to put the essence of each of these fighters into their books and DVDs, and a large part of it is what Glen is helping me to do.”
My
next question is how did you and Glen Cordozo link up – through Muay
Thai?
“Yeah,
I was teaching Muay Thai in Chico, California, and it had always been my
home base before Las Vegas, and Glen was going to college there and came
to the gym to start training. He was just so darn good he became my
main student, and now, actually, he’s better than I am and will beat me
up on a daily basis. But we became really good friends through that
and he moved to Thailand with me for a year, where he fought
professionally and won all his fights by knockout, and now he’s back
there fighting MMA.”
You’ve
published some non-martial arts books, such as “On The Line: Inside the
U.S. Border Patrol” (February 2004), and a couple of natural disaster
books: “Wave of Destruction: The Stories of Four Families and
History’s Deadliest Tsunami” (December, 2005), and “Wall of Flame:
The Heroic Battle To Save Southern California”(March 2006). Were they
projects you did before you got into writing about martial arts and MMA?
“Well,
my first book was on martial arts, but I didn’t own Victory Belt at that
time: I was writing the books through New York publishing houses and at
that time I just wanted to be a writer and I could write books on just
about anything. My real goal is fiction, but at the time I was
breaking into the market with nonfiction.
“I
did a couple of books, one in particular sold really well, but I realized
the publishers screwed it up so badly, they did black and white
photographs and on the back cover put that the subject was going to show
you punches and kicks when there wasn’t a single punch or kick in the
book, so I was very disappointed at how they handled the production,
marketing and everything.
“I
said, ‘Hey, I can do better than these guys.’ That’s when I
opened Victory Belt, but in the meantime I was living in Thailand and I
did a book on the tsunami (Wave of Destruction: The Stories of Four
Families and History’s Deadliest Tsunami), and my major in college
was geomorphology, so basically I just write books on whatever I’m
interested in and whatever the public is interested in.”
What
about “Wall of Flame: The Heroic Battle To Save Southern California”?
“I
spent a year writing that book – that was a tough book to write and I
interviewed a thousand fire fighters and there were hundreds of hours of
interviews I had to transcribe. It was a brutal book to write before
honing back into the martial arts, and now I’m branching out a little
bit into biographies. I did the Forrest Griffin fight book which has
been on The New York Times bestseller list for nine weeks so
far.”
Was
“Mastering the Twister”
with Eddie Bravo an attempt to combine the
two subjects –natural disasters and MMA? “Yeah, I kinda figured I knew a lot about the natural disasters and Eddie could wreak havoc with the twisters, so there was a natural flow.”
Can
you tell readers about your journey to Stary Oskol to interview Fedor, and
how you traveled from Moscow to Stary Oskol, please?
“It
was a really unique project. First off, at that time Fedor was very
inaccessible: He was this mystical fighter who no one really knew much
about, where he lived, or how he trained. I was lucky enough to get
in touch with his US representatives and organize this book deal.
“The
goal was to fly over to Stary Oskol for two weeks and get the photo shoot
and all we needed for the book. But I got on the wrong plane flight,
and took some sleeping pills, which I never do, and passed out on the
plane before we had to change flights in New York. I passed out
again in the terminal and Glen said kids were playing on me while I was
lying on the floor. So it was a rough journey getting there.
“We
flew into Moscow and had to take an all-night train from Moscow down to
Stary Oskol, which is where Fedor lives. I think it was a 12-hour
train ride. And then there was this gorgeous six-foot-two train
attendant who felt sorry for us because we didn’t know what the hell we
were doing, and she took care of us, which was kinda nice having a tall
blonde caring for you.”
Then
the pleasure turned to pain. “We got to Stary Oskol and even though Fedor wasn’t training for a fight, he trains harder than anyone I’ve met. He trains three times a day and they were doing brutal runs. We worked out with them on several occasions and it damn near killed me, they train so hard.”
Was
the Red Devil Sport Club under construction at the time?
“Yes,
so they were training out at a summer camp and it was kind of a unique
setting because there were thousands of kids around and then you had these
world-class fighters training in their midst.”
And
you said they were doing these brutal runs?
“Yeah,
we did the run up the mountain side – it’s tough, I can tell you.”
When
do they fit the run in? “It depends: They train three times a day and go for their five-kilometer run through the forest, and then do a light workout, then they train midday and again in the afternoon. Sometimes they do the hill runs prior to their afternoon workout and that hill is straight up: They run up it and down it and it is tough. Although it isn’t that long a distance, it is just straight up and straight down, so it’s to build your cardio and get your heart up to a really high level.”
The
Red Devil Sport Club is in St. Petersburg, isn’t it?
“Fedor
has a gym in Stary Oskol – that’s where he lives full time, and then
the Red Devils team, I believe, is in St. Petersburg, but Fedor and his
guys train out of Stary Oskol. I don’t know if it’s like Team Quest
where they have multiple gyms.”
Do
you speak in Russian or did you have to go through an interpreter?
“No,
Fedor speaks better English than most people think – like we could
communicate with him in English and he doesn’t feel real comfortable
speaking in English, but when I did interviews with him about his life, I
did have an interpreter there with us.”
What
was Stary Oskol like?
“Well
it’s an old mining town, it’s not a very… If you look at Moscow, it
has more billionaires than any other city on the planet. There’s
so much wealth in Moscow, but when you get down to Stary Oskol, you can
really see it’s more like what Russia really is: a lot of middle class,
a lot of high rise, kinda dilapidated apartments... But the people were
very friendly, very kind everywhere we went, and Fedor was nothing but
hospitable to us, and his people were great.”
What
was your first impression when you met him, physically and personally?
“Physically,
he was a lot smaller than I expected. To see him devastate some of
the world’s greatest fighters, he’s not all that big of a guy. And it
makes me think he could fight at light heavyweight or even
middleweight if he dropped weight, but he’s not a physical specimen like
you’d see in Arlovski or one of the other really tuned heavyweights –
he’s just kind of a big guy, not really tall, not too muscle-bound .
He just looks like an average huskier guy, but in training he just blows
your mind.”
When
people meet Mike Tyson they also expect him to be much bigger.
“Yeah,
I saw Tyson a couple of weeks ago in Las Vegas, and the same thing
happened. Now he’s fat, but he’s just not that big of a guy.
In fighting it’s all about your legs: You look at Tyson and Fedor, their
punching power and their mobility, it’s all in their legs, and every
strike they throw starts from the ground up.
“But
I knew Fedor wasn’t that big because obviously I’d seen dozens of his
fights, and he’s just not the menacing figure that you’d expect him to
be.”
And
his personality?
“He’s
very soft spoken just like he is in his interviews… very cordial, very
respectful. It’s clear that when you ask him a question he really
thinks it through before he answers. He’s a very calculating
person just like he is in his fights, so he’s not brash or a quick
talker, he thinks everything through and it seems like he’s more of a
philosopher than he is a fighter.
“You
see him training and he does not break easily, and, like I said, he’s
very calculating. They’re two very dangerous traits to have as a
fighter because he doesn’t break, he can pull through anything – if he
gets caught in something, he doesn’t panic, he works his way out of it,
and that goes back to the cool-headed part of his personality. I
think that’s what really makes him a great fighter: He’s mentally
extremely strong and he’s really calculating so he can devise excellent
game plans on a moment’s notice.”
Fedor Emelianenko grappling with Kirill Sidelnikov
You
were saying he trains harder than anyone you’ve seen.
“I’d
never seen anyone train three times a day when they don’t have a fight
coming up.”
And
that’s all intense training?
“Yes,
that’s three times a day intense, intense training.”
Does
he do a lot of weights or mainly body-weight exercises?
“He
does a lot of Olympic lifts – clean and jerks, and a lot of dumbbell
stuff and pull-ups. He does mainly core-strengthening exercises
where it’s not for building beautiful muscles, but for developing
explosive power.”
How
do you see the Fedor vs. Brett Rogers bout going?
“Well,
probably the same as most of Fedor’s fights. I don’t see much
else happening.”
Do
you intend doing a follow-up book or DVDs with Fedor?
“It’s
in the thinking process, but right now we have so many books and DVDs
we’re backlogged on, that we need to get out. I just released the The
Ultimate Mixed Martial Artist for print today, and it has 10 fighters
in it, including Anderson, Couture, Griffin… Everyone’s in it.”
Erich,
can Knucklepit.com catch up with you soon for a background into other MMA
stars you have worked with, please?
“Of
course; that would be great.”
Fedor Emelianenko with Glen Cordozo
For
more on Victory Belt books and DVDs: www.victorybelt.com. For
more on Fedor Emelianenko: http://www.knucklepit.com/mixed-martial-arts-fedor_emelianenko.htm.
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