Ontario, Canada’s Terry Riggs has been the owner and operator of the Warrior Mixed Martial Arts gym for the past 10 years. He is also coach and manager of such MMA stars as Carlos Newton, Brent Beauparlant, Claude Patrick, Wojtek Kaszowski, Wagnney Fabiano and Gideon Ray.

Apart from being a key player in the engine room for many MMA fighters, Riggs has his own fighting history as the American Full Contact Champion and also the Canadian Jiu Jitsu Champion in the early ’90s.

But at the time of this interview with Knucklepit.com, Terry is in Newmarket, Ontario, and is busily planning strategies for battle of a different kind. “I just bought the Tom Clancy shooter, Rainbow Six Vegas 2, and my son is waiting to play it,” says Riggs.

Born in Windsor, Ontario, which is a stone’s throw from Detroit, Terry grew up in Toronto and he knew at an early age that he was destined to take up a martial art. “I was from a humble family and there was just my mother, my brother and myself. I couldn’t afford karate – basically the bottom line. Then they started a judo program at my childhood parish, and I thought, ‘Gosh, 15 bucks a month: I’m in.’ So it was good for my mom, because she would send me off to church on Sunday with my judo gi; I’d meet my friends, and we’d go to church and then to judo right afterwards. I was probably about eight years old at the time.”

Riggs stayed with the judo until he was about 16, then he took up amateur boxing for the next three years. “My father was a Golden Gloves Champion in Montreal and he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, which was mostly attributed to boxing. And Mom was like, ‘That’s it; you’re out of boxing.’ That was probably when I was around 18 years.

“Then at 19, I was like, ‘Well, how about kickboxing? I hear that hardly has any contact to the head.’ I did kickboxing from that time on.”

So your mom fell for that line?

“Yes, she did. She came out a few times, and it was a nice place where they allowed me to do kickboxing and jiu jitsu at the same place. So as soon as she saw me in the gi again, like in judo, it was like, ‘Oh. Thank goodness he’s back into martial arts.’ As a result, I’ve done jiu jitsu and kickboxing simultaneously until this day.”

It would have been an easy transformation from judo to jiu jitsu.

“Right. That was the perfect thing: I had amateur boxing and the judo background, and I went to a club in downtown Toronto where a gentleman was teaching both, and I thought that was perfect because I could transfer my skills and keep going.”

Why did you open the Warrior Mixed Martial Arts gym?

“It was around the time of UFC 2 in 1994 and I was considering opening a gym or fighting in professional MMA, and unfortunately at that time, it started to be the ‘dark ages’ of UFC, where I had signed on to fight an event, but it got canceled because it was to be held in Detroit and the governor stepped in or something and canceled it.

“So I kinda went, ‘Well, I’m 34’, and Randy Couture hadn’t come along yet. People didn’t realize how long you could stay in the sport. Even when I was competing in my early thirties, guys used to say they were fighting ‘that old guy’. I was 34 and I loved the sport, so I decided to open my own school.”

This time of year, pretty well all training there would have to be indoors. What do your pro athletes do for cardio?

“I have a gym that’s 60 feet by almost 100 feet, and we have a workout for the pros that’s unbelievably taxing on the legs. My belief is that the legs, being the largest part of the body, really burn up your cardio, so if you can condition your thighs, that’s what really helps you become a cardio machine. So we have a super burnout workout in the gym for the thighs. Other than that, without going into specific routines, I have the guys do tons of wind sprints (interval-training sprints). If they’re preparing for a fight, we’ll find an indoor track and the guys will do between three and five miles of wind sprints.”

How did you come to link up with Carlos Newton?

“Carlos was probably 17 at the time and I was 29. Without getting too boastful, I was doing pretty well whenever I’d compete, and through a friend of a friend, she introduced us at a tournament and I invited him to train in the club I was at. He would also come and train in my basement and that’s what really started him off in the jiu jitsu thing. And then he just trained with me full time at the club, supplemented by more training at lunchtime.”

Was Brent Beauparlant coming to you before the IFL Dragons’ team formed?

“Yes, I met Brent briefly the night he fought Wojtek (Kaszowski). After that Alex Caporicci from Apex asked me if I could help manage Brent to get fights at the international level. Around the same time, Carlos had mentioned to me about the IFL maybe coming, and he said it would be great if he could pick from a lot of the guys I already represented.  I was already helping Claude Patrick, and Wojtek at that time.  Next, Wojtek and Brent turned up fighting on the same Apex card; Wojtek had a kickboxing match and Brent was fighting MMA. Brent came over that night and asked me if I’d mind wrapping his hands. While I was wrapping, we got to chatting about international fights, promoters, where he could go, and as coincidence would have it, I told him there may be a thing coming up called the IFL with team fighting. He thought I was nuts. A few months later the IFL was a reality and I called Brent and that was that.

“Afterwards, we had a chance to roll together, and I guess Brent saw the level of skill that Carlos and I had, and that I could teach kickboxing – not just jiu jitsu. After the first match he would come down every couple of weeks and I would help him.

“I know after his fight with Fabio Leopoldo, Brent was very proud because he out-kickboxed Leopoldo. Fabio is of course a jiu jitsu expert, but that was the first time Brent had finished anybody off through stand-up. And at the time Fabio was 7-0. He was a huge favorite over Brent.”

Will you be in attendance for Brent’s match at HCF: Crow’s Nest on March 29?

“Yeah, I’ll have a pretty good spot: I’ll be the guy in the corner. I’ve got Brent and Gideon Ray on the same card now.”

How do you see Brent’s fight panning out?

“Well, he’s fighting Amir Rahnavardi, who I consider to be Bas Rutten’s protégé, so it’s really going to come down to Amir’s kickboxing versus Brent’s wrestling. If it’s on the ground, he’ll try to submit Brent and if it’s stand-up, he’ll try to beat him. I’m looking forward to the match because I want to see how Brent handles the pressure of the stand-up aspects.”

Brent has said his stand-up has gone ahead in leaps and bounds.

“It has, but at the same time I don’t think you should leave your forte: Do your kickboxing when he’s forcing you to. Amir is nowhere near the wrestler that Brent is, so Brent’s objective for this fight is to get mount and pound.”