brutus
08-16-2008, 05:45 PM
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LAS VEGAS – Johny Hendricks is a cocky, arrogant, you-know-what (feel free to substitute with your expletive of choice).
At least that’s the reputation that has shadowed Hendricks since his collegiate wrestling days at Oklahoma State University. The derogatory label followed him when he moved to Las Vegas and began training MMA at Xtreme Couture. His very first day in the gym none other than Phil Baroni, another guy with a reputation for being a flamboyant hothead, called him out.
“Let’s go,” Baroni said, issuing the challenge. Baroni, a former UFC fighter with one-punch knockout power, was dead serious. Perhaps Baroni was simply marking his territory, trying to impose some humility on the visitor right off the bat.
Hendricks, a former two-time NCAA wrestling champion, likely would have destroyed Baroni – if wrestling was the game. But it wasn’t. Their square-off was going to be a boxing match, a realm in which Hendricks was a novice and Baroni was a veteran.
Being the stubborn, ultra competitive dude that he is, Hendricks accepted the virtual dare without hesitation.
So each man put on a pair of 16-ounce boxing gloves and stepped into the ring.
Little by little, as other fighters gathered around to watch, Baroni upped the ante. Every time he added more zip on his punches, Hendricks followed suit by raising his own intensity level. Soon enough, Baroni was throwing everything behind his shots. Sometime around the four-minute mark, one Baroni combination dug deep into Hendricks’ body and produced a loud sound similar to that of two pieces of 4 x 4 wood colliding. Then came a head shot Hendricks never saw coming.
Hendricks’ mouthpiece went flying in one direction; his body fell in the other. He was out cold.
Hendricks doesn’t remember anything else that happened thereafter on that fateful day in June 2007. Others who witnessed the “sparring session” informed him later that he had regained consciousness and then, a few minutes later, started sparring with someone else. It became clear that Hendricks was still woozy and unfit for more training, so he was told to go home.
Before he left, bystanders recall him saying out loud that he was quitting MMA – after less than five minutes on the job.
“Man I’m way too smart for this. I’m never gonna do this again. I’m calling Coach (John) Smith, I’m going back to be a college wrestling coach.”
Hendricks doesn’t remember saying that. All he remembers is waking up the next day on his sofa at his new residence in Las Vegas. His father was sitting in a chair looking at him, as if he’d spent the whole night doing that to safeguard his son.
“What are you doing staring at me?” Johny, still hungover from his beating, said to his father.
“Oh, you’re back,” the father said.
“What do you mean I’m back?”
“You got knocked out.”
“By who?”
“Phil Baroni.”
“The New York Bad ***?”
“Yeah.”
“Really? Whew. Well at least it wasn’t to some scrub.”
“So what are you thinking right now? Are you going to be an MMA fighter? Are you still going to do it?”
“Why wouldn’t I do it?”
It wasn’t exactly music to Keven Hendricks’ ears. He had hoped his son was going to walk away from this MMA thing.
But the next day, Johny Hendricks was right back at Xtreme Couture, a rookie hungry to learn this new concoction of kicking, punching and Brazilian jiu-jitsu skills that were so foreign to him. He never doubted he could someday be an MMA champion, partly because of his own alpha wolf drive and past accomplishments, and partly because so many top wrestlers like Matt Hughes, Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture, Josh Koscheck and Jon Fitch have dominated in this the skyrocketing sport.
Today, just 14 months after embarking on his new career, Hendricks still lives in Las Vegas and trains regularly with the likes of Tyson Griffin, Mike Pyle and John Alessio, and he’s proud to say he has never been knocked out since the Baroni episode. All the hard work appears to be paying off. Hendricks is 3-0 and slated to make his WEC debut at 170 pounds next month in Florida against Alex Serdyukov (12-4).
Many who tracked Hendricks’ storied wrestling career might suspect he is second-guessing his career choice, especially since when he turns on the television these days the Olympic Games are all over the tube. But while Hendricks’ father and his college wrestling coach, John Smith, had hoped he might pursue a spot on the U.S. Olympic Wrestling Team, Hendricks has no regrets about forgoing a shot on the squad. He feels no envy inside his heart when the Olympic Games in China are being broadcast.
“There’s a time and a place for everything,” the 24-year-old said. “What does wrestling get from the Olympics? They’re covering swimming more than they do wrestling. I think that’s sad because wrestling is what started the Olympics. What they’re going to have to do is start putting some money back into wrestling. These guys are going to have to get paid more.
“I’m a wrestler at heart. If the money was there in wrestling, yeah I’d be wrestling. But the money is not there.”
Hendricks, a native Oklahoman who has wrestled since he was five years old, does not disguise the fact that money shaped his decision to flee wrestling for MMA. He reportedly inked a six-figure deal to sign with Team Takedown, a collection of former college wrestling stars turned MMA fighters. Hendricks made the decision before graduating Oklahoma State University with a degree in secondary education. The hardest part was not making the decision, but breaking it to his father and Coach Smith, a former Olympic gold medalist.
“No, you’re wrestling,” Smith told Hendricks.
“Coach, you’re an awesome person. But I’m not wrestling.” Hendricks said.
“Yes you are.”
“Coach, I don’t want to wrestle any more.”
Coach Smith and Keven Hendricks had taught the lightning quick athlete nearly everything he knew about winning in a combat sport. Johny Hendricks believes those lessons and accomplishments will translate into big success at the MMA level.
“Coach Smith is all about mental and physical toughness,” Hendricks said. “That was one of our main strengths. He teaches great techniques but also mental toughness. He pushed us to the limits in practice to see where you can break. He’s constantly trying to take you to the brink, to the limit, to see how far he could take you before you would break. I never broke. Now I do it on my own. I want to push a little bit more beyond my own limit each time in training. I believe the only person that can beat me is me. You have to believe that, especially in this game.”
In fact, Hendricks – echoing the sentiments of many converted wrestlers – maintains that wrestling practices tended to be more gruesome and torturous than MMA practices.
If Hendricks’ MMA personality is anything at all like his wrestling demeanor, fans could be in for a treat. During his wrestling days, Hendricks was widely reviled and painted as a villain of sorts, sort of like the Terrell Owens of collegiate wrestling. Hendricks was perceived as the wild guy who, when an opponent got to the edge of the mat, might give him an extra shove out of bounds. He just seemed to have a hostile attitude and huge chip on his shoulder, and readily concedes that he would go into the other guy’s gym thinking, “This is my gym. This is my house.” A lot of bystanders accused him of poor sportsmanship because, if he won, he might overdo it on the celebration and rub it in on the other team. Hendricks said part of his fiery and flashy nature is just him being himself in the heat of battle, but there is also a method to the madness.
“Coach got mad at me a couple times, but he knew he wasn’t going to change me,” Hendricks said. “I’m not going to change that. I tried to change it my senior year and I didn’t like it. Whenever the lights go down, and I step into that ring or circle, I become a different person. I want to win no matter what. I want everybody’s best shot. I don’t want a guy that comes out there and half-asses it. Let’s put on a show here, that’s what it’s about. I love to show emotion. I think one of the most important things is to get the crowd involved with what I’m doing. Fans want to see a good show. Yeah, of course you’ve got to back it up, too.
“But there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Any time you can get your name out there, you should. If you go out there and win, people might tell a few of their friends. But if you play the bad guy role and people hate you, what are they going to do: They’re going to tell all of their friends about you. Fans get involved in my matches. One time, in Oklahoma City at the nationals, there were 17,500 people there. The crowd went crazy when I competed, they wanted me to lose so bad. When I won, you couldn’t hear the Oklahoma State fans’ cheers because everybody was booing so loud.”
So does Hendricks plan to tone down his antics in the cage, especially in light of his MMA baptism with Baroni?
Not a chance.
“I’m going to be the same Johny,” he said. “I’m going to smile when I get hit, I’m going to smile when I’m out there. You have to be marketable, you have to put on a show for the fans. I prepare myself the same way I would before an NCAA wrestling match. I’m out there, I have a target on my back and this guy is trying to take food off my table. I get more excited now, because I get to use my wrestling and now I get to see that blood and I turn into a different person. My dad always told me whenever you see blood, turn it up a notch.”
Yet, away from a wrestling mat or cage, Hendricks seems another person altogether. The willing villain becomes a perfect gentleman, packing his vocabulary with lots of “yes sirs” and “no ma’ams,” and displaying an easygoing and agreeable disposition. Plenty of people meet him and are surprised at how respectful he is, how dramatically his private persona differs from his public face. And, for the record, he believes his teammates at Xtreme Couture have also figured out that he is nothing at all like the spotty reputation that preceded him.
“My name wasn’t the best name coming in there,” he said. “They thought I was arrogant, cocky, a p***k -- all these things were said about me. And every wrestler who has heard of me has thought that. They didn’t know me as a person. Off the mat I’m really laid back and humble. I’m easygoing, I laugh everything off, and I try to be in a great mood. But nobody knew that.”
He says that, even if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn’t change a thing about the way his first day in an MMA gym played out.
“I wasn’t going to back down, even if I did get knocked out, just to prove to him that I’m here for the long haul,” he said. “That was my initiation and I don’t blame him at all. I would do the same thing if somebody came to my gym.”
While the hangover of the beating long ago faded away, the lessons of that session linger in his mind. The tango with Baroni embedded in Hendricks his most important lesson to date in his new sport.
“I learned to keep my hands up and my chin down,” he said with a laugh.
I laughed pretty hard at the dialog between him and his father. At least Baroni didn't get KO'd by this guy.
LAS VEGAS – Johny Hendricks is a cocky, arrogant, you-know-what (feel free to substitute with your expletive of choice).
At least that’s the reputation that has shadowed Hendricks since his collegiate wrestling days at Oklahoma State University. The derogatory label followed him when he moved to Las Vegas and began training MMA at Xtreme Couture. His very first day in the gym none other than Phil Baroni, another guy with a reputation for being a flamboyant hothead, called him out.
“Let’s go,” Baroni said, issuing the challenge. Baroni, a former UFC fighter with one-punch knockout power, was dead serious. Perhaps Baroni was simply marking his territory, trying to impose some humility on the visitor right off the bat.
Hendricks, a former two-time NCAA wrestling champion, likely would have destroyed Baroni – if wrestling was the game. But it wasn’t. Their square-off was going to be a boxing match, a realm in which Hendricks was a novice and Baroni was a veteran.
Being the stubborn, ultra competitive dude that he is, Hendricks accepted the virtual dare without hesitation.
So each man put on a pair of 16-ounce boxing gloves and stepped into the ring.
Little by little, as other fighters gathered around to watch, Baroni upped the ante. Every time he added more zip on his punches, Hendricks followed suit by raising his own intensity level. Soon enough, Baroni was throwing everything behind his shots. Sometime around the four-minute mark, one Baroni combination dug deep into Hendricks’ body and produced a loud sound similar to that of two pieces of 4 x 4 wood colliding. Then came a head shot Hendricks never saw coming.
Hendricks’ mouthpiece went flying in one direction; his body fell in the other. He was out cold.
Hendricks doesn’t remember anything else that happened thereafter on that fateful day in June 2007. Others who witnessed the “sparring session” informed him later that he had regained consciousness and then, a few minutes later, started sparring with someone else. It became clear that Hendricks was still woozy and unfit for more training, so he was told to go home.
Before he left, bystanders recall him saying out loud that he was quitting MMA – after less than five minutes on the job.
“Man I’m way too smart for this. I’m never gonna do this again. I’m calling Coach (John) Smith, I’m going back to be a college wrestling coach.”
Hendricks doesn’t remember saying that. All he remembers is waking up the next day on his sofa at his new residence in Las Vegas. His father was sitting in a chair looking at him, as if he’d spent the whole night doing that to safeguard his son.
“What are you doing staring at me?” Johny, still hungover from his beating, said to his father.
“Oh, you’re back,” the father said.
“What do you mean I’m back?”
“You got knocked out.”
“By who?”
“Phil Baroni.”
“The New York Bad ***?”
“Yeah.”
“Really? Whew. Well at least it wasn’t to some scrub.”
“So what are you thinking right now? Are you going to be an MMA fighter? Are you still going to do it?”
“Why wouldn’t I do it?”
It wasn’t exactly music to Keven Hendricks’ ears. He had hoped his son was going to walk away from this MMA thing.
But the next day, Johny Hendricks was right back at Xtreme Couture, a rookie hungry to learn this new concoction of kicking, punching and Brazilian jiu-jitsu skills that were so foreign to him. He never doubted he could someday be an MMA champion, partly because of his own alpha wolf drive and past accomplishments, and partly because so many top wrestlers like Matt Hughes, Chuck Liddell, Randy Couture, Josh Koscheck and Jon Fitch have dominated in this the skyrocketing sport.
Today, just 14 months after embarking on his new career, Hendricks still lives in Las Vegas and trains regularly with the likes of Tyson Griffin, Mike Pyle and John Alessio, and he’s proud to say he has never been knocked out since the Baroni episode. All the hard work appears to be paying off. Hendricks is 3-0 and slated to make his WEC debut at 170 pounds next month in Florida against Alex Serdyukov (12-4).
Many who tracked Hendricks’ storied wrestling career might suspect he is second-guessing his career choice, especially since when he turns on the television these days the Olympic Games are all over the tube. But while Hendricks’ father and his college wrestling coach, John Smith, had hoped he might pursue a spot on the U.S. Olympic Wrestling Team, Hendricks has no regrets about forgoing a shot on the squad. He feels no envy inside his heart when the Olympic Games in China are being broadcast.
“There’s a time and a place for everything,” the 24-year-old said. “What does wrestling get from the Olympics? They’re covering swimming more than they do wrestling. I think that’s sad because wrestling is what started the Olympics. What they’re going to have to do is start putting some money back into wrestling. These guys are going to have to get paid more.
“I’m a wrestler at heart. If the money was there in wrestling, yeah I’d be wrestling. But the money is not there.”
Hendricks, a native Oklahoman who has wrestled since he was five years old, does not disguise the fact that money shaped his decision to flee wrestling for MMA. He reportedly inked a six-figure deal to sign with Team Takedown, a collection of former college wrestling stars turned MMA fighters. Hendricks made the decision before graduating Oklahoma State University with a degree in secondary education. The hardest part was not making the decision, but breaking it to his father and Coach Smith, a former Olympic gold medalist.
“No, you’re wrestling,” Smith told Hendricks.
“Coach, you’re an awesome person. But I’m not wrestling.” Hendricks said.
“Yes you are.”
“Coach, I don’t want to wrestle any more.”
Coach Smith and Keven Hendricks had taught the lightning quick athlete nearly everything he knew about winning in a combat sport. Johny Hendricks believes those lessons and accomplishments will translate into big success at the MMA level.
“Coach Smith is all about mental and physical toughness,” Hendricks said. “That was one of our main strengths. He teaches great techniques but also mental toughness. He pushed us to the limits in practice to see where you can break. He’s constantly trying to take you to the brink, to the limit, to see how far he could take you before you would break. I never broke. Now I do it on my own. I want to push a little bit more beyond my own limit each time in training. I believe the only person that can beat me is me. You have to believe that, especially in this game.”
In fact, Hendricks – echoing the sentiments of many converted wrestlers – maintains that wrestling practices tended to be more gruesome and torturous than MMA practices.
If Hendricks’ MMA personality is anything at all like his wrestling demeanor, fans could be in for a treat. During his wrestling days, Hendricks was widely reviled and painted as a villain of sorts, sort of like the Terrell Owens of collegiate wrestling. Hendricks was perceived as the wild guy who, when an opponent got to the edge of the mat, might give him an extra shove out of bounds. He just seemed to have a hostile attitude and huge chip on his shoulder, and readily concedes that he would go into the other guy’s gym thinking, “This is my gym. This is my house.” A lot of bystanders accused him of poor sportsmanship because, if he won, he might overdo it on the celebration and rub it in on the other team. Hendricks said part of his fiery and flashy nature is just him being himself in the heat of battle, but there is also a method to the madness.
“Coach got mad at me a couple times, but he knew he wasn’t going to change me,” Hendricks said. “I’m not going to change that. I tried to change it my senior year and I didn’t like it. Whenever the lights go down, and I step into that ring or circle, I become a different person. I want to win no matter what. I want everybody’s best shot. I don’t want a guy that comes out there and half-asses it. Let’s put on a show here, that’s what it’s about. I love to show emotion. I think one of the most important things is to get the crowd involved with what I’m doing. Fans want to see a good show. Yeah, of course you’ve got to back it up, too.
“But there’s no such thing as bad publicity. Any time you can get your name out there, you should. If you go out there and win, people might tell a few of their friends. But if you play the bad guy role and people hate you, what are they going to do: They’re going to tell all of their friends about you. Fans get involved in my matches. One time, in Oklahoma City at the nationals, there were 17,500 people there. The crowd went crazy when I competed, they wanted me to lose so bad. When I won, you couldn’t hear the Oklahoma State fans’ cheers because everybody was booing so loud.”
So does Hendricks plan to tone down his antics in the cage, especially in light of his MMA baptism with Baroni?
Not a chance.
“I’m going to be the same Johny,” he said. “I’m going to smile when I get hit, I’m going to smile when I’m out there. You have to be marketable, you have to put on a show for the fans. I prepare myself the same way I would before an NCAA wrestling match. I’m out there, I have a target on my back and this guy is trying to take food off my table. I get more excited now, because I get to use my wrestling and now I get to see that blood and I turn into a different person. My dad always told me whenever you see blood, turn it up a notch.”
Yet, away from a wrestling mat or cage, Hendricks seems another person altogether. The willing villain becomes a perfect gentleman, packing his vocabulary with lots of “yes sirs” and “no ma’ams,” and displaying an easygoing and agreeable disposition. Plenty of people meet him and are surprised at how respectful he is, how dramatically his private persona differs from his public face. And, for the record, he believes his teammates at Xtreme Couture have also figured out that he is nothing at all like the spotty reputation that preceded him.
“My name wasn’t the best name coming in there,” he said. “They thought I was arrogant, cocky, a p***k -- all these things were said about me. And every wrestler who has heard of me has thought that. They didn’t know me as a person. Off the mat I’m really laid back and humble. I’m easygoing, I laugh everything off, and I try to be in a great mood. But nobody knew that.”
He says that, even if he had to do it all over again, he wouldn’t change a thing about the way his first day in an MMA gym played out.
“I wasn’t going to back down, even if I did get knocked out, just to prove to him that I’m here for the long haul,” he said. “That was my initiation and I don’t blame him at all. I would do the same thing if somebody came to my gym.”
While the hangover of the beating long ago faded away, the lessons of that session linger in his mind. The tango with Baroni embedded in Hendricks his most important lesson to date in his new sport.
“I learned to keep my hands up and my chin down,” he said with a laugh.
I laughed pretty hard at the dialog between him and his father. At least Baroni didn't get KO'd by this guy.