Interview
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(Either on his way to corner a fighter or commit a break-in. You just never know.)
All day long I’ve been waiting to hear details on exactly what combination of prescription drugs, nachos, and crippling depression was responsible for Paulo Filho showing up seven pounds overweight and then fighting like a bored schizophrenic at last night’s WEC. Judging by his remarks to Tatame, however, it sounds as if Filho is going to try and play this one off as nothing more than a bad night after a bad training camp:
“What can I do, it’s sad… The fact is that I have no excuses, he (Sonnen) went there and did his job to neutralize me and that’s what happened, he did the right job and he has all merits… It was good to give me a new spirit.”
A new spirit? I guess that’s a start. The old one looked pretty worn out, if not non-existent. As far as how he’s planning to turn things around, Filho seems to think the answer consists of moving to Los Angeles and eventually going up a weight class.
“Here will be good, everybody is coming here and that’s because it works. At Brazil we hadn’t a good training camp, and here I believe we’ll have a high level training. The loss isn’t good, but that’s good to learn. We need more focus, responsibility, and the weight is a problem… What happened yesterday we’ll forget and start all over again. We’ll train here and get our rematch with Sonnen, and then go to light-heavyweight division.”
Oh great, a rematch. That’s just what we all want to see after last night’s odd snoozer of a fight. Going up to light heavyweight might be a decent idea, but at 5′9″ Filho is far from your typical 205-pounder. The better approach might be to stay at middleweight and simply become more disciplined with his diet and training.
Or just moving to L.A. and calling it good. I’m sure that will fix things.
Written by admin on November 6th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on General and fight and Interview and Chael Sonnen and Paulo Filho and UFC and WEC and News and MMA.
(Just another day in the organization for Jared Shaw.)
The Kimbo Slice fairy tale is over now. At least it ought to be. The “street certified” brawler got himself knocked out in fourteen seconds by a guy who calls himself a “part-time fighter.” A guy who isn’t in the same weight class and isn’t thought of as anything more than a mediocre also-ran in the weight class he normally calls home. To call this a worst case scenario for Elite XC is putting it too mildly. This is an absolute disaster. Which means, of course, that they will now try to convince us that it is not.
Announcer Mauro Ranallo got that ball rolling almost immediately after the fight by suggesting that this should be considered a “mulligan” for Kimbo, since he didn’t plan on fighting Petruzelli. Do we dare mention that Petruzelli also didn’t plan on fighting Kimbo, a heavyweight, in the main event? Apparently not. Instead we start playing up the predictable Rocky Balboa angle, forgetting for the moment that Rocky fought Apollo Creed, the world champion. Unlike Kimbo, the fictional Apollo was both style and substance, and he didn’t go down to a tentative jab.
This is the point where Elite XC makes excuses for Kimbo and tells us that a star is born in Petruzelli. Just watch Jared Shaw working from this script in his interview with Ariel Helwani and see if you don’t find yourself feeling a little sorry for him. His cringe-worthy performance includes transparent lies such as, “it’s just another day in the organization,” and “(Pertruzelli) is a very promotable guy; everybody in this sport is promotable,” and my personal favorite, “we’re gathering all our other nuts.”
This, from the same guy who could be seen having a total meltdown at cageside while Kimbo was getting pounded out on live network TV.
The person who seemed least bothered by last night’s events was Kimbo Slice himself. He hyped his after-party in the post-fight interview and showed up forty-five minutes late to the press conference, where he interrupted Elite XC Head of Operations Jeremy Lappen and made a very brief statement, laughing about his swollen eye, and then disappeared again.
Lappen came to his defense, saying,
“I think Kimbo’s a huge star. Again he’s been thrust onto the scene. People are interested in watching him. And I think people will continue to be interested in watching him. …He showed heart. And stepped up on an hour notice and backed up anyone, anyplace, anytime.”
It’s interesting that Lappen uses the passive voice there. Kimbo has “been thrust onto the scene.” That’s true. Lappen conveniently ignores who did the thrusting, though.
As for the “anyone, anytime” rhetoric, it flies in the face of rumors that Elite XC had to sweeten the financial pot just to get a reluctant Kimbo to accept the fight against the 205-pounder Petruzelli. The backstage CBS interview alone revealed a very unhappy fighter who exuded anything but confidence and enthusiasm before the fight.
Kimbo was exposed on Saturday night, sure. But he wasn’t exposed as anything other than what most of us already thought he was: an amateur fighter rushed into the spotlight by desperate, unscrupulous promoters. It was Elite XC who was truly exposed. They built their reputation on Kimbo’s curious brand of celebrity, and fate conspired to grind their cash cow into hamburger.
Their strategy was to only make fights that Kimbo could win, then shout his name from the rooftops when he did. Last night they got a lesson in the unpredictability of MMA. Now they’re left shouting excuses. They found out the hard way that you can only play the squash match shell game for so long before a former karate champ comes along and ruins it.
They can call it a mulligan for Kimbo and they can try and turn it into a big push for the very average Petruzelli. But the best thing they can do is learn from this catastrophe. Where they go from here, with respect to both Kimbo and Petruzelli, should tell us whether they have.
(-Ben Fowlkes)
Written by admin on October 5th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on CBS and Interview and Jared Shaw and Jeremy Lappen and Seth Petruzelli and Elite XC and fight and Kimbo Slice and Commentary and knockout and press conference and MMA.
(Props: MMA Scraps)
Things that you have to love about this Ken Shamrock video:
1) He doesn’t blame you for thinking he’s washed up based on his last few fights.
2) He continually refers to the sport as “the MMA,” just like your father might.
3) He apparently trains exclusively in slow motion with a piano tinkling in the background.
All kidding aside, this video makes me both excited and sad for Shamrock’s fight with Kimbo Slice on Saturday. The man’s will is still there but the flesh is, well, not. He’s doing a great job of crafting a narrative (around the 11:00 mark he starts talking about Kimbo, and at 14:15 he explains that Kimbo “is walking into my sport, and he hasn’t earned the right to be there.”), which has always been one of the things Shamrock does well.
But after what we’ve seen from him in recent years there’s just no reason to think he’s going to go out there and beat Kimbo. There is every reason to think that one of the sport’s pioneers is going to go out there and lose badly and it’s going to be a damn shame to see.
Who knows, though. He seems acutely aware of why Elite XC brought him in, and maybe he will indeed “completely blow up their party” on Saturday night. If he does I hope the CBS cameramen have the good sense to pan to Jared Shaw immediately afterwards. That look on his face? It will be the ‘That son of a bitch just blew up my party,’ look.
Written by admin on September 30th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Elite XC and Interview and CBS and Saturday night and fight and video and Videos and Kimbo Slice and Ken Shamrock and MMA.
(They say that shoe is his, but it barely even resembles him.)
Quinton “Rampage†Jackson is one of MMA’s most charismatic stars, but the UFC light heavyweight champ has also become one of the world’s best fighters since moving from Pride to the UFC. In this exclusive interview, “Rampage†discusses his evolution as an athlete, his upcoming title fight against Forrest Griffin, and what he hates most about life as an MMA fighter.
CagePotato.com: Hey, “Rampage.†Thanks for taking the time to talk with me. How is your training camp going? I hear that you really don’t like training.
“Rampage†Jackson: That’s true. I hate training. I don’t know why. I guess because I’m lazy. I do it anyway and I train really hard, but I hate every minute of it.
If you hate it so much, how do you get through weeks of it without losing your mind before every fight?
I joke around and have fun in the gym. I like to have fun people around me. It helps me get through it. I also think about what I’m going to do to my opponent, how I’m going to take it out on him for making me do all this training.
How have you been preparing specifically for Forrest? What are you expecting out of him?
I’ve just been training to whip his ass. Other than that I don’t really know. I think he’s probably going to try and use those leg kicks and keep moving. He’s pretty good with leg kicks. But I’m pretty sure that after I hit him a couple of times he’ll forget about all that.
It seems like you’ve become a much different fighter in the last couple of years, ever since coming to the UFC. You look more polished and more technical. What do you think has made the difference?
Well, now I’m more mature. I’ve got better trainers and better sparring partners. I’m training harder and my hands are a lot better. I’ve been training my boxing a lot more. Back in the day I had amateur guys training me and now I’ve got a professional training me. That makes a big difference.
On “The Ultimate Fighter†they made it seem like you weren’t really interested in being a coach. They showed you sleeping on the mat, stuff like that. Was that an accurate portrayal of your time on the show?
I fell asleep on the mat. It happened. They showed it.
I did my best. You know, I was in it. I did my best. But I’m not a coach. I’m a fighter.
What do you think Forrest Griffin does well as a fighter?
That’s a hard question. Let me think. I think he puts together kicks pretty good. I’ll give him that. He kicks better than me. He’s got better leg kicks, but that’s it.
Is there a lot of extra pressure now that you’re the champ? The only place to go is down. How do you deal with that?
I don’t even worry about pressure. Not at all. My job’s to fight. I don’t even think about being champion. Somebody beats me and takes my belt, okay, that’d be a sad day for me, but then I just start working to get the belt back.
What’s the hardest part about being an MMA fighter?
The hardest part of being an MMA fighter is when you fight and then the government takes half your money for taxes. Some of the fights it’s like you go out there and almost didn’t even get paid for it.
Uncle Sam didn’t do a damn thing for you, but then takes half your money. They ain’t taking no punches. They ain’t doing none of that. I know the government calls it taxes, but I call it pimping. I don’t mind helping out, doing my part. I don’t mind that. But don’t take half my damn money.
What’s the most memorable fight of your career so far?
My most memorable fight is always the fight that I had last. That’s the one that’s the clearest for me. I don’t really think about all those other fights too much.
I look at it like my job. When you’re working in a grocery store bagging groceries, what’s the most memorable bag of groceries that you bagged? This is a job for me.
What are the chances that we’ll see you and Wanderlei Silva fight again in the UFC? Would you like a chance to avenge your losses against him?
I don’t know. If Wanderlei keeps winning and if I keep winning, we might get to do it again. I don’t know, I’m not psychic. But yeah, I would love to fight Wanderlei. I’d love to fight all of them. I don’t care who.
Written by admin on June 27th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Rampage Jackson and UFC 86 and Interview and Forrest Griffin and UFC and MMA.
(CBD, reppin’ the MTX Audio Fight Team.)
Pretty much everyone had CB Dollaway as a lock to get into the Ultimate Fighter 7 finale, and the former All-American wrestler from Arizona State seemed to have it clinched on last night’s episode, kicking Amir Sadollah’s ass all over the Octagon. And then it happened — an armbar in the third round put a shocking end to the fight, and seemed to derail Dollaway’s dreams of making it into the UFC. Good thing Jesse Taylor can’t handle his liquor, because now the Team Rampage standout has a chance to battle Amir again, this time for all the marbles. Talk about drama. In this exclusive Q+A, Dollaway chats with CagePotato about his rematch with Sadollah, the drawbacks of having Rampage as a coach, Jesse Taylor, and the bullshit one has to endure when living in the TUF house.
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CAGEPOTATO.COM: What do you think went wrong at the end of your semi-final match with Amir?
CB DOLLAWAY: I think conditioning came into play. We’d been fighting two-round fights previously, and it kind of slipped my mind that it was gonna be a three-round fight. Towards the end of the third round I was just exhausted, and I got sloppy. I wasn’t doing things right, and he was. He kept his composure and caught me in that armbar. I definitely think I was controlling the whole fight, and I believe I was ahead on the scorecards, but you have that mental lapse for a minute and the other guy capitalizes on it.
How confident are you that you’ll have him figured out when you fight him again?
Pretty confident. I believe I took care of the mistakes I made in the first match. I think it should be a similar fight, but with me winning at the end. He’s a hard competitor to finish — I already know that from fighting him once — so I’ve taken measures to make sure I’ll be in great condition.
What did you miss the most while you were trapped in the Ultimate Fighter house?
The freedom, I guess. We were told what to do and when to do it, and we didn’t have access to anything. You can’t call anyone, you can’t get on the Internet and browse around, you can’t go to the mall — you’re just there. In a sense, it’s like being in jail.
We’ve heard a lot about how some of the castmembers were made to look a certain way on the show through editing. Jeremy May says he wasn’t really that much of an asshole. Amir told us the “confessional†scenes involved very leading questions. How accurately do you think you were portrayed on the show?
It seemed like they portrayed me to be a cocky asshole, and I’m not really like that. I just want to be confident and I don’t want to put negative thoughts in my head before I fight. They basically edit out everything you say except for the parts where you’re being confident…
Or when you’re referring to yourself in third-person.
Yeah, I did that twice the whole time I was there, probably, and they put ‘em back to back. And they kind of set you up for that too, they’re like “What does CB Dollaway want right now?†They lead you into things, and you don’t really notice it at the time. They’ll ask you the same question ten different ways to get ten different responses.
Is Jeremy May a monumental asshole in real life?
Yeah. I was one of the guys who kind of held out on thinking he was a prick — he was still on my team so I thought I’d give the guy a chance. But some of things he said and did would blow your mind, and there’s certain things he did that they didn’t even show. One time, he told Dante he was tooling me in sparring — the only time we ever sparred, I kicked him in the leg a few times and he never practiced again, the whole show. So he tells Dante that, and then they asked me about it in the confessional, and I went off. He gets called in there, and then he comes up and he’s like “Did I get drunk and say I was kicking your ass in sparring? Because that never happened.†And I was like “Yeah, I fuckin’ know.â€
How would you rate Rampage as a coach?
I think he’s still got a lot of learning to do as a coach. I don’t know if he was taking it as seriously as Forrest was. Forrest had been there before. His experience on The Ultimate Fighter helped out a lot, and he brought in a much larger coaching staff, which helped give guys more individual time with coaches. We just had Rampage, Juanito [Ibarra] and Zach [Light], and Forrest had like six coaches on his team. Rampage is definitely a successful fighter, but it’s just something that was new to him.
Do you still hang out with anybody from the show?
Yeah, Matt Riddle moved to Arizona, so I see him on a daily basis. Gerald Harris is moving down there, and he’ll be training out of our gym too. And I also keep in touch with Pat Schultz. He’s a cool guy, and I get along with him good.
If you beat Amir, who would you like your next UFC fight to be against?
I’d actually like to fight Jesse Taylor. No matter if I win or if Amir wins, there’s gonna be a lot of people saying neither one of us should have won and Jesse should have. So I think whoever wins needs to take that fight, if Dana wants to make it happen.
Since it’s still so early in your career, have you had to work another job on the side to make ends meet?
I haven’t had to work even before I went on the show, because I’m on the MTX Audio MMA Fight Team. They sponsor us on a monthly basis, and they pay me enough so that I don’t have to work. They’re looking to make fighters better, and they know you have to train twice a day to get to the elite level; they’re providing me with all the tools I need. I can’t do it for this fight, but for every other fight I strictly have MTX on my banner and all my trainers and cornermen will have MTX stuff on. They’re a great company for mixed martial arts.
What do you do for a good time when you’re not training?
I like to go out to Lake Pleasant and Lake Havasu for holidays and stuff. I just picked up a new Honda Waverunner, though I haven’t been able to use it as much as I’d like — I don’t want to risk getting hurt on it right before the fight.
Well, that’s all I have. Is there anything or anybody you want to shout-out before we sign off?
I’d just like to plug LG Sports Marketing, Arizona Combat Sports, and MTX Audio one more time.
(Ben Goldstein)
Written by admin on June 19th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on TUF7 and CB Dollaway and Amir Sadollah and Interview and Features and The Ultimate Fighter and UFC and MMA.
Amir Sadollah came into season seven of “The Ultimate Fighter” without a single professional MMA bout to his credit, and yet with the show winding down he finds himself in the semifinals and (though he can’t say in what capacity just yet) fighting on the Spike TV season finale card on June 21. Though he’s been portrayed as the lovable, self-deprecating underdog on the show, Sadollah now has his shot at a UFC career thanks to reality stardom.
In this exclusive interview, Sadollah talks to Cage Potato about being the man people want to fight, leaving his job to pursue his passion, and what he learned from his time on the show.
CagePotato.com: Thanks for taking the time to talk with me, Amir. What’s it like now to sit down and watch the show and see it all edited together? Does it seem accurate to you?
It’s kind of crazy. We were there and we lived it so on some level it’s familiar, but seeing it on TV just sort of reinforces for you that it really happened. It’s strange though, to see something you lived through on TV.
For the most part it’s pretty accurate. So much is left out just because they don’t have time to show it all, I guess. Obviously, they didn’t show anything that didn’t happen, but they definitely did show the things they wanted to in order to help them make people look a certain way. If they wanted to cast you a certain way, they made sure to show the stuff that helped them do that.
I’ve talked to some TUF contestants who said that a lot of the footage has been taken out of order. Stuff that happened in week six was shown in week one, that kind of thing. Is that true?
A lot of the stuff is out of order, and some things they purposely left out to make certain points. But I think everything they did was for a reason. At least I hope so. I don’t know, I’m not a TV editor or anything.
They’re really good at getting you to believe what they want you to believe as you’re watching it. It makes me think twice now whenever I watch another reality show. I know now that it isn’t necessarily really how things were, but how they made what happened into what they wanted it to be.
Can you give me an example of that?
Now you’re going to make me back up my statements? Aw, man. Well, okay, definitely in the confessionals is where they did a lot of the scripting of the show. Not that they told you what to say or anything, but they would ask these very leading questions, like, ‘do you think this guy is scared?’ And you don’t get to hear the questions when you watch the show, just the answers. It gives it a different feel when you think someone is just saying something, rather than answering a specific question.
Obviously, you saw previous season of the show before you went on it. What did you think about it then, and what made you decide that you wanted to be on the show?
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Written by admin on June 11th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Interview and General and MMA.
UFC welterweight Marcus “The Irish Hand Grenade” Davis is known for a few different things. Wearing a kilt to the Octagon is one, and being one of the few ex-pro boxers to make a successful transition to MMA is another. On Saturday he takes on Mike Swick at UFC 85, his fourth consecutive bout in the U.K. In this exclusive Cage Potato interview, the Bangor, Maine native talks about his future with the UFC, his relationship with U.K. MMA fans, and his transition from boxing to MMA.
CagePotato: Hey Marcus. Thanks for taking the time to talk with me. First off, tell me how training has been going. Have you done anything differently to prepare for Mike Swick?
Training’s been going great. I spent the last twenty-four days at Sityongdong training camp, working on some stuff there. I just got back to Maine, and I’m kind of tapering off now. The only thing I would say that might be different for this camp is that about twelve weeks out I started eating like a pig, gaining weight. I got myself up to 193 pounds.
I went into training camp benching over 400 pounds and squatting somewhere in the high 400’s. I was the strongest I’ve ever been in my whole MMA career going into training camp. I wanted to make sure I was big and strong and able to deal with Swick’s weight. Then I rekindled my relationship with my old boxing coach, Joe Lake, and had him take a look at my hands to make sure that small things were right, like my hands were up, my chin was down, that I was punching on the move and doing the right things. But I only spent a couple weeks doing that, and Mark DellaGrotte was always with me making sure that I stuck to being an MMA fighter and not a boxer.
Swick has a reputation for being a pretty good stand-up fighter, but do you feel like you’ve got a clear advantage when it comes to striking? Is that where you’d like to see the fight decided?
Oh yeah. I would love for him to come in and think, ‘You know what, I’m going to make a statement. I’m going to stand with him and knock him out.’ I would love for that to happen.
Do you really think he’ll come in with that attitude?
No, I don’t think so. I think he’s going to try to use his reach, he’s going to try to stay away from me, and the second I get in there to try and throw punches he’s going to shoot for a takedown and try and get me to the ground.
Let’s talk about your relationship with the UFC fans in the U.K. It seems like you’ve become a staple for any fight card over there now. I know you’re very proud of your Irish heritage, but how much of your popularity in the U.K. is attributable to that and how much is their response to what they’ve seen of you in the Octagon?
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Written by admin on June 3rd, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on Fighters and Interview and General and MMA.
(”I’m not a little girl by any means.”)
The hordes of screaming Gina “Crush” Carano fans who tune into the premiere of CBS’s “Saturday Night Fights” this weekend to see EliteXC’s poster girl kick some ass might be in for a seriously rude awakening. Carano’s opponent for the co-featured bout is Kaitlin Young, a 21-year-old Minnesota Martial Arts Academy product who famously knocked out three women in a one-night HOOKnSHOOT tournament last November; the combined fight time was just one minute and 45 seconds. We gave Kaitlin a call last night to ask her about rolling with dudes, the advantages she’ll have in her fight against Carano, and her shitty ‘91 Honda Accord.
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CAGEPOTATO: We recently posted the video of your “Caveman Training†at Athletic Performance Incorporated. Be honest — they took they engine out of that pickup truck you were pulling, right?
KAITLIN YOUNG: No, everything was as-is, just as it came from the factory. Honestly, it’s not as hard as it looks. The wheelbarrow is the real killer.
When did you know you wanted to be a competitive fighter?
It’s really all I ever wanted to do. I did Olympic-style Tae Kwon Do starting when I was 14, and I’ve enjoyed the fighting arts ever since then.
Are there enough women at Minnesota Martial Arts Academy to spar and roll with, or do you usually have to train with the guys?
There are a couple of other girls, but it’s mostly guys that I’m training with at this point. Greg Nelson and Tom Schmitz help me a lot. My boyfriend Ryan Murray is a big heavyweight pro Thai boxer, so he helps me with striking and pads, and some of the wrestlers from the University of Minnesota have been working with me too.
What else do you do when you’re not training for a fight?
This semester I was a full-time student at the University of Minnesota, studying kinesiology — exercise science, which kinda fits in — and I also do a bit of strength and conditioning coaching on the side at API.
You took your first pro loss in February, against Sara Schneider at a BodogFight event. What do you think went wrong?
She did a good job executing her game plan, so I don’t want to take anything away from her, but I think I made the mistake of following a good grappler to the ground when I’m a striker. I was winning pretty decisively on the feet, and I tried to pound her out and got caught in an armbar.
How do you think you’ll apply that lesson to Gina Carano? She comes from a Muay Thai background, but she’s at least serviceable on the ground.
(more…)
Written by admin on May 28th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on CBS and Saturday Night Fights and Kaitlin Young and Interview and Features and EliteXC and Gina Carano and MMA.
(Photo courtesy of MySpace.com/triggonomics.)
Frank Trigg is a one-man industry. How many other fighters can claim to train in a gym they own, show up to fight in a shirt they designed, then talk about it the next day on their own radio show? In this exclusive interview, the man behind Triggonomics, TAGG Radio, the R1 Training Center, a handful of truly bizarre TV appearances — as well as some legendary beatdowns in the UFC, PRIDE and Icon Sport — gives us the “Twinkle Toes” perspective on fighter branding, reality television, and why he would kick Robbie Lawler’s ass in a rematch.
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CAGEPOTATO.COM: Let’s get this out of the way first: Who, where, and when are you fighting next?
FRANK TRIGG: I don’t know yet. I thought I was going to have something set up and ready to announce this week, but we don’t have anything finalized.
But you are still actively pursuing your fight career, right? It’s not like your five other jobs are getting in the way…
Absolutely, I’m trying to get as many fights as I can. I was trying to be in the DREAM middleweight tournament, but it didn’t work out.
You told MMAJunkie that doing that tournament wouldn’t benefit your brand. What exactly did you mean by that?
That’s really what all of us are trying to do — Chuck Liddell, Roger Huerta, Georges St. Pierre — all of us are trying to brand ourselves to a big enough name that we can make money outside of the fight world, and I have to make choices on what’s going to help me accomplish that. Doing commentating for TNA Wrestling helps me as a brand — it pushes me forward, it gets me in front of a different demographic and increases the size of my network. And when you’re with an organization that’s not going to do that for you, whatever level you’re at, it doesn’t help.
DREAM was waiting and screwing around, and I was trying to figure out whether or not the tournament was going to be shown in America on HDNet. They finally agreed to a deal like three days before the event, and I thought “that’s just stupid, they should have had this stuff done a long time ago.†The way that they’re running the organization, it just wasn’t going to be any good for me in trying to get my brand out there.
Do you think you’ll still try to deal with DREAM? Their fight-booking process seems disorganized at times, to say the least.
I would have gone back to them, but somebody sent me a link to a story in the Japanese press where they said I was a liar and that I agreed to do the tournament but backed out. I’m not going to work with someone who’s going to call me a liar. It’s not gonna happen.
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Written by admin on May 20th, 2008 with comments disabled.
Read more articles on TAGG Radio and TNA Wrestling and Triggonomics and Interview and DREAM and UFC and Frank Trigg and Features and MMA.
Sean Sherk isn’t what most would call a fan favorite. Sure, he has his hardcore contingent of supporters, but even when he reigned as the UFC lightweight champ he faced criticism from detractors who found his style of fighting less than enthralling to watch. That criticism reached a fever pitch after a positive steroid test following his title defense against Hermes Franca last summer, which resulted in Sherk being stripped of the title.
“The Muscle Shark†has repeatedly professed his innocence on the steroid charge, filing an appeal with the CSAC and taking repeated polygraph tests to try and clear his name. Now the former UFC lightweight champion talks with Cage Potato about the steroid accusations, his attempts to prove his innocence, and the war of words with current title-holder B.J. Penn, as they prepare to meet in the Octagon at UFC 84.
CagePotato.com: So how’s training going? As we near the fight, are you backing off the really hard training?
Sean Sherk: No, I’m still training hard up until two days before the fight. Still doing everything I normally do, all the cardio, all the hard workouts. That’s the way I’ve always done it for over thirty fights. That’s the way we did it in wrestling and so that’s the way I’m used to doing it.
I imagine by this point you’re pretty sick of being asked about the positive steroid test.
No, I’m used to it. I kind of expect it now.
In that case, let’s get right into it. You’ve maintained your innocence throughout this whole thing. If you didn’t take steroids, what do you think caused the positive test?
I can’t say exactly why it came up positive, but I know that there were definitely some problems with the testing procedures at Quest Laboratories. The way they did their testing, there was some carryover in the machine from previous tests before they tested my sample.
That seems like a pretty big problem to me right there. If there’s carryover in the machine, should you use that machine to do that test? I wouldn’t think so. Their chain of custody was completely shot. They had no chain of custody. Those were the two main issues.
I tested all the supplements I was taking and I did find contamination in one of them, a testosterone booster. I don’t know if that caused it or not, but I was surprised to find contamination in a supplement like that.
Has that made you paranoid about taking supplements in general?
Oh yeah, for sure. I cut the amount of supplements I was taking in half. I was taking about 25 different supplements and I cut that in half. I still feel the same, so I didn’t really need to be taking all those supplements to begin with. I’m just hoping that by cutting my supplements I can decrease the risk of this happening again.
I didn’t know you could go into a store like a GNC and buy something that would have illegal stuff in it, but I guess you can. I was stunned. I didn’t know that. I’ve also started doing my own pre-testing, which I’ll do before every fight now just to be sure.
Even as you maintain your innocence, the court of public opinion in MMA seems to be largely against you. What do you think you could do to clear your name that would satisfy your detractors?
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Written by admin on May 13th, 2008 with comments disabled.
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