UFC’s Gurgel: If I had to corner myself, I would have a heart attack.
Posted by Jason F. Hatcher on November 12th, 2008
Fighters.com phoned UFC lightweight Jorge Gurgel (12-4) to check-in on his preparation for his fight against Aaron Riley (26-10-1) at UFC 91 Las Vegas 15 November and our talk went places we never expected.
FIghters.com: Jorge, your scheduled to fight at UFC 91. This event is being hyped by the industry insiders as a UFC card with potential to set record pay-per-view sales. What’s your thoughts on being part of this event?
Jorge Gurgel: To be honest. It’s a huge honor to be part of the UFC. Period. My dream in life has always been to be part of the UFC and fight in the UFC. As far as the event being the highest pay-per-view event ever, for me it’s just another fight. You know, there’s so much on the line for fighters now days. Every performance counts. The next fight is the most important fight every time. My job is always on the line. I am very focused on my fight and my teammate’s fights: Dustin Hazelett and Kenny Florian. I am worried about our performances and how the three of us are going to do and then everything else will take care of itself.
FIghters.com: Your opponent, Aaron Riley, is coming off two straight wins; but, it’s his first fight in the UFC since 2006. Do you think Riley’s time away from the Octagon plays to your advantage?
Jorge Gurgel: No, I do not. I think Aaron Riley is a very, very tough opponent. I think Aaron Riley is a very seasoned fighter. He has fought Robbie Lawler at 170 pounds. He has fought Spencer Fisher. So, Aaron Riley returning to the UFC because he has so much experience makes absolutely no difference in the way he is going to perform. You know, he’s got almost forty fights. Wherever Aaron fights it really makes no difference. It’s not like he is going to have first fight jitters returning to the UFC. If anything it’s going to make him fight harder and better.
FIghters.com: Several months ago it was revealed within a UFC blog that you wanted to change training routines and start a new camp under Mark DellaGrotte. Is Mark DellaGrotte part of your training for the upcoming fight at UFC 91?
Jorge Gurgel: Yes, I am here in Boston right now. I’ve been training here in Boston for a while. It’s been one of my goals to accomplish. I have such a good strength and conditioning coach now too. Kevin Kerns trains me and he also trains Nate Quarry, Kenny Florian, and Kurt Pellegrino. I’m in good hands, man.
I live here in Boston in the gym right now. I am living totally Rocky Balboa style. [laughing] You know, with Mark Dellegrotte, I’ve got great training partners now. I’ve got Kenny Florian here. And Kevin goes out of his way to come get me because I don’t have a car here and he trains me three days per week at Studio Sityodtong. And, I also work with Mark Dellegrotte and the entire Studio Sityodtong team at night. So, I really feel this is the best camp I’ve ever had. I am really happy to be here.
FIghters.com: You have been deemed a warrior following the epic fight at UFC 73 against Diego Saraiva (12-18-1) where you won following a broken jaw and, of course, you were later hospitalized due to injuries. As a professional mixed martial artist, do you believe in the concept of heart carrying a wounded fighter through to victory?
Jorge Gurgel: You know what, I do believe in heart, but if I say it in front of my trainers they will yell at me. Marcus Davis is one of my best friends; and, he and Mark Dellegrotte have been trying to beat it into my head that everyone already knows I have heart. And, Kenny Florian as well.
You know, Kenny is in my weight class but he’s also a great friend. And, he says, “Jorge, nobody questions whether you have heart. Everybody knows you are one of the toughest guys out there. You’re tough and you fight with a lot of heart. Now it’s time for you to show them you can fight smart.”
It’s my biggest challenge. I understand my heart and my desire to win. I understand my will to get out there and trade blow for blow to prove who’s got the biggest heart. To win fights this way has earned me victories and fans, but it doesn’t carry me or give me longevity in the sport. Let’s put it this way. If I had to corner myself, I would have a heart attack. [laughing] I corner a lot of people properly. I corner eight or nine UFC fighters. You’ll see me in people’s corners all the time. But, if I had to corner Jorge Gurgel, I would probably walk out in the middle of the fight and say, “You, I am done with you. I am not calling you any more because you are as dumb as it gets.” [laughing]
I am a very emotional fighter and I have too much fun and I tend to amend gameplans and then go to slug it out and fight with my heart only. And, I am really trying to change this and learn from DelleGrotte and Kevin and the entire camp here. You know, to fight smart and implement a gameplan so I can have longevity in my career. Everybody knows I have heart and I fight hard; but, now I want to prove to them that I can follow a gameplan, be a coachable fighter and to fight smart.
FIghters.com: Jorge, you were upset recently by Cole Miller (14-3) of American Top Team at UFC 86. But you were highly favored going into that fight. What did you learn from this loss?
Jorge Gurgel: Hey, I really won that fight. But, I messed up. I am not sure who it was or which philosopher said it originally, but you know the one who said, “Shit happens?”
The only thing that came out of that fight for me is that I believe shit does happen. Because I was ahead on the scorecards. But it took me one split second of losing focus to lose the fight. I don’t know what happened to me. I was dominating the fight. I was 100% confident that I was the best mentally and physically that I’d ever been walking into a fight before. Many say it was my best performance to date in the UFC.
But, with fourteen seconds left in the fight, I got caught in a triangle and I never get caught in triangles. Not even in practice do I get caught in triangles. It’s just one of those things where people say, “tough break.” It was all I heard all night from the UFC and the fans: “Tough break man, tough break. Shit happens, shit happens.”
I tried to get up and I slipped off of my right foot and made the triangle tighter and I remember thinking the whole time, ‘This is not happening, this is not happening. I am going to get out of here. This is not happening.’
But, then the triangle started getting tighter and tighter. And, my family was there. You know, it was the first time in my life I have ever become depressed. I really felt depressed afterward. It was really hard for me. The best person to put things in perspective was my stepfather. He’s a huge fan and it was the first time my parents had ever come to see me fight. So this made the loss extra hard on me.
My stepfather walked up to me after the fight, looked me in the eyes, and said, “Jorge, this is the first time in my life I have seen a fighter win and lose a fight in the same fight.”
I couldn’t say anything back for a minute. I looked down at the ground and then I said, “You’re right Dad, you’re right. I am sorry. I don’t know what to say. You know, I don’t know how that happened.”
Rich Franklin came up to me and said, “Jorge the whole time until the last second I was saying you were going to get out. Jorge never gets caught.”
But, I did get caught. I simply got caught. I had one second of losing focus and I got caught in a triangle. More power to Cole Miller; but, up until that moment, I had control of the fight. I think it doesn’t matter. Shit happens and I am over it now. I am ready to move on to bigger and tougher challenges and to see how I do. To see how much better and smarter I have gotten.
FIghters.com: Speaking of Fighters.com’s second-ranked middleweight “Ace” Rich Franklin (25-3) and being an Ohio resident yourself and one of Rich’s training partners, what did you think of the fight between Franklin and “Hammer” Matt Hamill (4-2) at UFC 88?
Jorge Gurgel: That was great. I like Matt. You know, obviously Rich is my best friend. I am always happy to see Rich perform and Rich win. For some reason when I talked to Matt’s camp they were very upset that Matt Hamill didn’t perform. They kept saying, ”Matt Hamill did not fight the Matt Hamill fight.” But, what can we say? Matt tried to do his thing; but, it’s very hard against Rich.
People underestimate Rich’s ground game tremendously. It may be easy to take him down sometimes, but it is very hard to keep him there. And, Rich keeps them going. He’s a cardio machine. He hit Matt Hamill with the right body shot. Rich was like a robot. I was very impressed how Matt Hume was calling the shots; and, Rich was very smart hearing everything Matt [Hume] was saying. Rich implemented a gameplan perfectly, like Matt Hume said, and was able to put Matt Hamill away. I was very happy. There is nothing I’ll take away from that fight. I think Rich fought a very, very good fight and came out with a good victory.
FIghters.com: What’s your assessment of Franklin’s upcoming fight against fifth-ranked “Hollywood” Dan Henderson (23-7) at UFC 93 in Dublin 17 January?
Jorge Gurgel: I have a lot of respect for Dan Henderson. So does Rich. I’m sure he will say the same. Rich has a bit more size because the fight will be taking place at 205 pounds. Dan Henderson is always extremely dangerous. But, we know his weapons. We know he’s a great wrestler and he has a great overhand right. It’s no secret to anybody. All I can say is that Rich is going to be ready. We’ll all be together in Ireland hopefully witnessing another Rich Franklin victory.
FIghters.com: SInce 2005, we have seen the rise and stardom of numerous alumni from Spike TV’s The Ultimate Fighter reality show. At UFC 92, two former winners of the show will fight for the UFC and Fighters.com light heavyweight championship. What’s your personal take on the show where you also once starred yourself and it’s impact on the sport of mixed martial arts?
Jorge Gurgel: I will tell you the truth here and I might really shoot myself in the foot. I thought the show was great up until maybe the third season or so. But, now I don’t like to watch it at all. I was always under the impression that being a professional martial artist is a full-time job. And, every time some ignorant person comes in off the street and says, “Well, I got out of high school and I got a scholarship to wrestle in college; and, after that, it was either get a regular job or fight for the UFC.” That makes me sick. It’s ridiculous.
I think fighting is a full-time job. I think we should be seen as professionals too. You know, people that give up a lot and sacrifice to make this a full-time job to be able to support their families. But, lately I think the show has really watered down the values and everything that martial arts is all about. We train hard. But now on the show, there’s no Kenny Florian, no Forrest Griffin, and no me.
You know, there was no breaking furniture and spray painting walls and throwing barbecue sets into the swimming pool when I was on the show. Where I come from, that stuff costs money. Where I come from, people have to work for food. But, now I see a bunch of wannabes. People that want to fight for the wrong reasons. People that are on television to get a free Tapout shirt and some airtime. They are not fighters. You know, people that really want to become fighters will collect the dividends of hard work in the long run. People that experience success too early will not.
Many of the people on the show now don’t deserve to be there or don’t belong to be there and they are giving the UFC the very name that the UFC is trying to avoid. You know, a bad reputation of punks, for lack of a better word, or uneducated people that don’t have the opportunity or the ability to get a good regular job and then decide to fight in the cage or Octagon instead. The show does not portray a true and honest image of mixed martial artists. The show does not do that at all.
Now days there’s always an episode where somebody quits. Then there’s the episode where the contestants talk badly to one another in the house. There’s always episodes where they play pranks on each other too. There’s the episode where everyone gets in a fight in the backyard because they’re all drunk. Then there was that episode once, of course, where the guy left the show because of his girlfriend. [laughing] There’s always the episode where the coaches argue with each other. And, there is always an episode where a guy cannot make weight!
So, everything is already pretty much staged. Every season there’s episodes where we already know what is going to happen. It’s just a different set of people in the same episode happening over and over and over.
Originally, I started martial arts in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu to do two things only: to test myself as a person in one-on-one combat against another person and to honor my school and my teacher. To honor the school, where I came from, was important. Now, the UFC has been going overboard in great, great lengths and in big places; but, the marketing that the reality show is putting out there and the way this show is being portrayed disgusts me. It makes us professional fighters look like schmucks. It makes the guys who really want to be “ultimate fighters” look stupid. And, like I said, besides the first three seasons of the show, I think show has gone down tremendously and I do not care for it at all.
FIghters.com: Some people say that there’s a bit of irony in the fact that UFC President Dana White predicts that by 2012 the sport of MMA will be a contemporary to organized sports such as football, baseball, and soccer. While at the same time there are organizations such as EliteXC involved in questionable practices and equally questionable marketing campaigns. Do you also find it ironic when Dana White criticizes EliteXC while similar controversies occur on The Ultimate Fighter television show?
Jorge Gurgel: Yeah, but there’s a big difference between the two. And, I do not want to be misquoted here. EliteXC is literally doing wrong and shady things in the sport of mixed martial arts on live television. But, the TUF show is just a TV show. Just a reality television show. They are two different things completely.
On a reality show, regardless of whether it’s associated with mixed martial arts, it’s a situation where anything can happen and will probably happen. Those TUF guys are going to do some crazy things eventually when put in front of a camera all day. Those guys are going to fight at some point.
You know, “Hey, let’s put itching powder in each other’s beds because we are thirty-years old and we have nothing better to do. Yay!” [laughing] “Let’s go ahead and freeze each other’s underwear and open cans of sardines and put the juice on everyone’s beds. Let’s throw somebody in the pool and fight and get drunk all night. Yay!”
Now, that’s reality television. And, for the average American or whatever, that appeals to them, I guess. But, at EliteXC there’s nothing worse than the joke of Kimbo Slice“. A guy that got famous fighting in the streets of Miami for money, beating up people on the Internet, and he becomes huge, huge MMA figure. A figure of mixed martial arts? A representative of our sport? Selling fights and making sponsorship money from Tapout and getting paid $500,000 to fight? And, with no real training? Come on, I have been fighting for fifteen years.
FIghters.com: What about the rumors of EliteXC’s fight-rigging and those sort of controversies?
Jorge Gurgel: Yeah, well, if you knew me better you’d know that I am the least educated person when it comes to the Internet. I don’t read the forums. I do not read my interviews. I mean, I give interviews, but I usually don’t read them afterward and often forget what I’ve said. [laughing]
But, I do know that Seth Petruzelli opened his mouth and said EliteXC were offering him bonuses to keep the fight standing. I do not doubt this for one second. EliteXC was living off of the myth of Kimbo Slice. Did you see the fight when Seth hit Kimbo close to the back of the head with one punch and that guy, whatever his name is, I think Shaw or whatever it is, the guy in charge of EliteXC, he was screaming, “In the back of the head ref, the back of the head!”
FIghters.com: Yes, it was Jared Shaw who is the son of Gary Shaw and a vice-president at EliteXC.
Jorge Gurgel: Yeah, it became a joke. Do you remember the next day? On the front page of Yahoo it said something like: “Kimbo Slice has been exposed” or something like that. “The big lie has been exposed” or whatever it was.
I think we both agree here. I’m an advocate for martial arts. I try to represent the sport as well as I can. I have thirteen schools. I have over 400 students. I try to lead by example. I hate with a passion anyone who takes mixed martial arts for granted or approaches this sport in a manner that’s not professional.
So again, long story short, EliteXC and the TUF show, I do not care for whatsoever. Of course, there are some exceptions. There are some fighters there that absolutely want to be there and deserve to be there. You can see the fighters that want to make it and want to do something for themselves. And, then there’s the other majority of fighters that do not belong there. They are only there to get a free t-shirt and some air time.
The EliteXC situation and what’s coming out and what they are doing is totally unethical and unprofessional. I disagree with it completely. I just want the sport of mixed martial arts — which is the career that I chose for myself — to be a sincere and honest as I dreamt it was going to be when I was a kid. So, a lot of this stuff frustrates me. A lot of this hurts me tremendously. But, I am just one person. I can’t change everything. And, I cannot make things change and make my opinions count. I have to worry about my fights and my students and then carry on.
FIghters.com: Earlier you mentioned the old honor of the martial arts school and martial arts teachers. Do you think that old spirit or those sort of ethics will ever become status quo in modern mixed martial arts?
Jorge Gurgel: It will never come back. I tell everybody that the next person I will actually spend my time teaching those values to will be my children when I have my own children. I do have people like Dustin Hazelett, which is pretty much like my own son. He’s my blackbelt and a UFC standout. And, I have my other students that give it a try and train hard and that they believe in what I say. When I speak they are there to listen to me. And they are there to understand that I have been doing this for many years. That I was born and raised in the art of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, honoring my school and my teacher. And also being respectful and being loyal. Loyalty is everything. But, now many people just want to sign up one day the the very next day they want to fight.
“When can I fight? When can I fight? Can I fight now, Jorge?”
This is not how things are supposed to be. Things have really changed. The sport of mixed martial arts has given me the opportunity to live a very good lifestyle. I own a school. I have a great house, a good car, and food on my table. It’s given me the opportunity to fight for a living and get paid accordingly for my hard work. But at the same time, the values have been extremely watered down. And that hurts my heart tremendously because I remember how things used to be. But now they are far, far, far from what they once were and I don’t think it’ll ever be back like it used to be again. Ever.
Frank said:
Good read!
Tony said:
I thought the Jorge Gurgel interview was one of the best interviews i’ve ever read, though I might not see eye to eye on all his views, I appreciate his honesty and his hard work as a UFC fighter.
Jason Cable said:
Jorge is my teacher i run a school under him. Jorge is one of the best guys i know and he is right people have lost a lot of respect for the sport and the loyalty to there teachers and teammates. All Jorge’s schools are well ran and very respectful cause he wouldn’t want it any other way.
MaxPower said:
Really cool article. What Gurgel said about the TUF reality show is right on the mark.