Last week my SBG team mate Chris Fields got married to his girlfriend (now wife) Laura. It was a great day, and a group of the SBG fighters and coaches were there to celebrate the occasion.
Chris has mentioned numerous times before that Laura is his best friend and his biggest supporter. He also reminded everybody of this during his speech at the reception. After his speech, that message was stuck in my head and it got me thinking… I realised how fortunate, not just Chris was to have somebody so supportive of what he does, but how fortunate all my team mates are to have people around them that support them so much.
Being a professional MMA fighter is very different to being a professional athlete in most other conventional sports. The path to becoming a successful professional MMA fighter is not laid out for aspiring up-and-comers. It is unlike other sports such as football, rugby, tennis, etc. where there are youth academies designed to develop and invest in young fledging athletes, supporting, directing and nurturing them to become the elite of their particular sport.
Fighters must make and choose their own path, with no financial investment from any academies or sporting councils. The money made at the beginning of a professional fighter’s career is so minimal that it barely covers the cost of training, never mind living expenses. Not only this, but to become a successful fighter there are so many sacrifices that have to be made that living a “normal” lifestyle is not possible.
By training twice a day, sticking to a very strict diet, not being able to drink alcohol, training late in the evenings and then subsequently being tired when you’re not training, this ensures you have little to no social life. So with this and the lack of financial reward until you’ve really ‘made it’, it is extremely difficult to become a successful professional fighter. Only the strong-willed and most determined people will graduate from becoming an up-and-coming fighter to a successful one for these reasons. And in most cases, those who are strong-willed and determined enough to do it, it’s because they have the support of their closest friends, family and loved ones.
Living a life where you can’t participate in a lot of things that most young people do is hard. In doing all the training that is required, you can become distant from your friends. When I have a fight coming up, I find I almost become reclusive because I can’t do things like go for pints or hang out and order a take away. So I generally try to avoid these situations. The life of a fighter can become almost lonely at these times and having people around you that support you and believe in what you’re doing makes such a difference. Even gestures as small as someone in your family offering reassurance that all the hard work and sacrifice will pay off in the end, or a friend calling you to touch base and see how the training is going, are so important.
Another factor about being a fighter that is very different to other sports is that we don’t compete as often as other athletes do. We can train for months for one particular fight. I find that this makes the elation you get when you win far greater than if you were to win (for example) a football match if you’re playing one every week. That winning feeling is great! There is honestly no feeling like training hard for a fight for three months and then getting your hand raised.
However there is the other side of it, in a fight there is only one winner. There is also one loser. Losing a fight is a much more horrible feeling than losing in other sports. This is for a few reasons. Firstly, as you don’t compete as part of team, you have to take a loss all on your own shoulders Excuses like the team didn’t work together or saying that a few guys didn’t play particularly well aren’t possible. Secondly, there is also a lot of pride involved in fighting, and losing a fight is just downright embarrassing. Finally, what I feel is the worst part about losing a fight, is how long you have to sit on a loss as a fighter.
When a fighter looses a fight, it might take 3 or 4 months for them to get the chance to compete again. So a fighter might have to sit on that loss for months before they win again so that they can forget about that loss.
So being a professional fighter is really a rollercoaster of emotion; you’re either riding really high or if you’re coming off the back of a loss, you are riding very low. When a fighter experiences a loss, this is the point where having support from people around them is essential. It is needed to spur the fighter on, to convince them to get back on the horse and keep chasing their dream despite the small step back.
Lastly, I’m just going to mention something my sports psychologist David Mullins said to me after my last fight about having a good support network around you. It highlighted that you don’t just need to have these people around when you are struggling to make it. He told me that now things were going well for me, that my reputation was growing and I was becoming recognised as a world class fighter, that I needed the people that have supported me from the beginning of my career around more than ever.
A fighter can suddenly become a star overnight. All it takes is one big win and suddenly everybody wants a piece of them. Everybody wants to be their friend, everybody wants to be seen with them. This is when it’s most important to make sure you have the right people around you, people who care about you. All you have to do is look at someone like Mike Tyson to see the ill effects of surrounding yourself with people who don’t actually care about you. Tyson was surrounded by people who just took advantage him, and because of this, one of the best heavyweight boxers of all time ended up being financially broke while he was still in his prime.
In my post-fight mental training session with Dave after my last fight, he reminded me how lucky I was to have a family, friends and a girlfriend that were so supportive of me. He told me that now that I was starting to become very successful that I had to remember who these people were and that I should continue to surround myself with this great support network.
I just want to take this opportunity to congratulate Chris and Laura on getting married. I’d also like to congratulate my other team mate Brian Moore who recently got married to Noreen. Finally I would like to say a big thank you to not only all the people who have supported me in chasing my dreams, but all the people that have supported my team mates in the unforgiving journey of becoming a successful professional MMA fighter.
