Johny Hendricks
By Jenni Carlson
Staff Writer
Willie Gunter wants to be a mixed martial arts fighter when he grows up.
He already has a nickname picked out ” “The Beast.”
He has a way to reach his dream, too.
Wrestling.
Already a winner of two state wrestling titles at Midwest City High, Gunter would hardly be the first wrestler to transition into the combat sport that has taken the country by storm. Fact is, mixed martial arts and its major league, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, have former wrestlers to thank for the surge in popularity.
And with college greats like Johny Hendricks and Jake Rosholt joining the ranks, wrestling might just supply mixed martial arts’ next generation of stars.
Today’s NCAA champs could be tomorrow’s MMA celebrities.
“It’s like the NBA is to college basketball. It’s like the NFL is to college football,” said Ted Ehrhardt, who manages Hendricks and Rosholt, both multiple national champions at Oklahoma State. “This is going to be what it is for college wrestling.”
The Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC as it’s known by millions, is the pro league that wrestlers have never had.
Granted, mixed martial arts is different than wrestling. It’s a boxing-judo-kickboxing-karate-wrestling hybrid. The mat is caged in, and the objective is submission. It looks like a street fight, except no one’s drunk.
No one inside the cage, anyway.
Just like kids when someone yells “Fight!” on a playground, millions are lured to UFC. Last spring, more young men watched a UFC fight on Spike TV than an NBA playoff game broadcast at the same time. The pay-per-view audience for UFC 76: Knockout on Saturday night could help the league eclipse last year’s PPV revenues of $223 million, a bigger take than boxing’s $177 million and WWE’s $200 million.
Something about hand-to-hand combat is oddly irresistible.
Boys are watching and dreaming.
“These kids grow up saying, ‘I want to do that,’ “ OSU wrestling associate head coach Mark Branch said. “I would think their easiest and first road to travel down would be the world of wrestling.
“It’s going to draw a lot of interest.”
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Johny Hendricks started watching the UFC even before he became a high school hotshot at Edmond Memorial.
Still, he thought it could be his future. Former wrestlers such as Randy Couture, Dan Severn and Ken Shamrock were among UFC’s biggest stars. Hendricks watched them and could see himself in the matches one day.
“You know, I could really do this,” he thought.
He never imagined that almost a decade later Ehrhardt and his Dallas-based Team Takedown would come to him with an offer. They wanted to represent him in MMA, hook him up with a gym and launch his pro career.
Hendricks jumped at the offer but did so with a healthy dose of remorse, not about choosing MMA but about having to leave wrestling.
“That’s what’s sad,” said Hendricks, who will debut Sept. 28 at Masters of the Cage XVI at the Coca-Cola Bricktown Events Center. “Wrestling is this great sport, but people have to go somewhere else to make the money that they want.
“That’s why I didn’t follow the Olympic dream. I know I could’ve had a great shot, but there’s a point in time where you’ve got to do something for your family.”
Hendricks is married. Had he tried to make an Olympic team or break into coaching, money would’ve been tight for years.
Team Takedown’s fighters sign multi-year, incentive-based contracts that pay six figures annually and could be worth as much as a million dollars.
“Every wrestler sees this as an opportunity to make money,” Hendricks said.
Dr. Ron Tripp, who founded the Norman-based management group C3 Fights, said, “American wrestlers are now actually planning their post-NCAA careers on moving immediately to MMA. As long as wrestlers are a major force at the championship level with large payday opportunities, upcoming wrestlers will continue to look for the chance to be professional athletes under MMA companies.”
Elite-level UFC fighters make millions per fight. Even though the money is far less in the smaller leagues ” none of which are sanctioned or supported by UFC ” fighters can build their records and their reputations there. Then, they might be discovered.
The chances of that improve with a wrestling background.
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Joe Stevenson knew from a young age that he wanted to be a UFC fighter.
His first step: start wrestling.
“You have to be able to dictate where the fight goes, and your wrestling capabilities are what’s going to give you that,” the man now known in UFC as “Daddy” said. “Wrestling’s the best base for fighting.
“You’ve gotta build your house on a rock.”
Unlike fighters who specialize in jiu-jitsu, kickboxing or boxing, wrestlers often have an advantage in MMA. They can dictate where the fight will happen, able to either take down their opponent or fend off takedown attempts.
Three of the five reigning UFC champions are former college wrestlers as are about 75 percent of the top 10 fighters at each of the five weight classes.
Such skills have added legitimacy to a sport that was floundering less than a decade ago. When the UFC began in 1993, the fights were no-holds-barred affairs with only biting, eye-gouging and fish-hooking forbidden. There were no weight classes and no time limits. Early press releases even bragged, “There are no rules!”
Fights would continue until “knockout, submission, doctor’s intervention or death.”
Gulp.
By the late ’90s, the lack of rules nearly knocked out the sport. Politicians crusaded against it, tagging it “human cockfighting,” urging states to bar it and TV to ban it. Pay-per-view audiences plunged to 15,000 viewers per show.
Now the live audiences are bigger than that. More than 17,000 are expected for this weekend’s UFC 76: Knockout in Anaheim, Calif.
Even though the UFC has added more rules and regulations since its early days, it is still a bare-bones league. The fighters must wear gloves, though the padding is only a few ounces, and there are 32 fouls, including groin kicking and head butting.
The sport’s violence isn’t for everyone. Hendricks’ wife, Leah, wasn’t much of a fan, especially when Johny told her that he wanted to get involved.
“I don’t know about this,” she told him. “I don’t know about this.”
He insisted.
Together, they moved to Las Vegas where Johny now trains alongside Rosholt at Randy Couture’s Xtreme Gym.
“One of these days, I want to get back into coaching,” Hendricks said, “but now, I just need something that’s more my style. I feel like this is more my style right now.”
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How the relationship between wrestling and mixed martial arts evolves remains to be seen.
Will Olympic wrestling and maybe even college wrestling suffer as top amateurs opt for MMA?
Or will wrestling boom?
“MMA is going to help wrestling much more than vice versa,” said Team Takedown’s Ehrhardt, whose first love is wrestling. “Wrestling has been a struggling sport for years. I think this is going to be the turnaround.”
Shane Roller has seen evidence. The Cowboy wrestler turned MMA fighter has worked summer wrestling camps and talked to kids who started wrestling because they want to be good UFC fighters.
“You see all these little kids rolling around doing jiu-jitsu during wrestling camps,” said Roller, who will also make his MMA debut Sept. 28. “Used to be, you never saw anything like that. You know it’s really taken off.”
Willie Gunter knows the feeling.
When he started high school and joined Midwest City’s wrestling team, UFC and MMA were just alphabet soup combinations to him. Already a two-time state champion, Gunter has college wrestling options galore. He could be a future Olympian. Or a future wrestling coach.
Or a future MMA fighter.
“I’m not really a fan of getting hit a lot,” he admitted. “It gives you something you can actually work towards that people will actually watch. You have other options out there. It means a lot.”
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