May 2014
by Evan South
Me: How did you get your nickname “The Punisher”?
Jason: The first instructor I had was Mike
Markanson, and he was driving down to Torrance to train with Royce. We were training in his (Mike’s) garage, I
had trained with him for 2 years. It was
all just garage. He had the Punisher
comic book posters in his garage, and some of the training partners, one of my
good friends Nick Moritas said “That’s you, you’re the Punisher”. Because of just the way that I would roll was
kind of relentless. So, that’s what they
ended up calling me. I tried to shake it
and it stuck. That’s how that came about,
was just way back in the early, early days of me taking jiu-jitsu in the garage
of my first instructor.
Me: So you had that nickname all along?
Jason: Yeah, before I even fought, before I had even
entertained MMA it was just jiu-jitsu and that was what they would jokingly
call me.
Me: Are you currently with Alliance fight team?
Jason: No, I am with Blackline. That is in Carlsbad, we had our old team,
which was NCFC, North County Fight Club, and that kind of disbanded, like
several other teams have over the history of MMA. We’re trying to rebuild a new one, and
Blackline’s been there for 5 years, but it’s mainly been jiu-jitsu and MMA, but
not so much pro guys. I’ve trained there
since they opened but it was never a lot of high caliber guys there, it was
more like the public classes and things like that.
Me: Diving right into the beginning of your pro
career, your fifth pro fight was Marco Ruas.
What was the timing like
when you’re entering your fifth pro fight and you’re like “Marco Ruas, what the
hell, I’ll give it a try.” To jump into
a name like that very, very early, what was the thought process with a name
like that that early on?
Jason: There wasn’t much back then, there were
managers that weren’t looking out for the best interests of so called careers
in fighting, and it just came up and it was a good opportunity, and obviously
every fighter thinks they can beat any other fighter, so of course I took the
fight.
It didn’t go well, but it
wasn’t about that, it was a great opportunity at the time and so we took it.
Me: So, much like this interview it was “I’ll
probably bomb miserably but I’ll go down swinging”…
Jason: Exactly.
(laughs)
Me: Something I think was a very pivotal moment
in your career which was after you were working your way up in Gladiator
Challenge and King of the Cage was Superbrawl.
The big 2 day tournament, all heavyweights. If you remember that huge heavyweight
tournament around 1999 that produced all those big names like Barnett,
Rodriguez, Marsh, Hoffman, etc, all these huge names in that tournament and the
winner, even the runner-ups, were already in the sky. So to get, at that point in your career, to
Superbrawl… First I want to ask how did
you get involved in that tournament?
Were you invited, did Terry (Trebilcock of KOTC) or someone have connections
and say “hey let’s try and get you in this Superbrawl tournament?” How did you
get there to begin with?
Jason: I just remember my manager saying “we got you
in, we’re going to Hawaii, 16-man tournament”, and I said “all right, let’s
go”. Tournament format is rough, really
rough.
Me: Especially with 2 days…
Jason: Yeah.
Me: On a lighter side, it must have been nice to
say “First of all, I’m getting an all-expenses paid trip to Hawaii”. Is that one good thing?
Jason: Yeah, when you’re young, a trip to Hawaii
doesn’t sound bad at all, no matter what you’re doing. We beat each other up in the gym, so why not
go to Hawaii for free and get paid to go fight some guys.
Me: How was the overall experience? Again, it was 2 days, you came out of it
2-1. Was it really instrumental at that
point for your career, was it a big turning point being part of that
tournament?
Jason: Yeah, it felt good. It’s a point where, it’s like ok, I fought
really tough guys… Like you said, the tournament before, there were tons of
names. The one that I was in had Travis
Wiuff, Cabbage, Tim Sylvia who I fought, and there were some other really tough
guys, Brian Stromberg who I fought… They didn’t really end up going on with
their career so to speak, but they were really tough guys at the time.
Me: And again you had Rothwell, Whitehead…
Jason: Exactly. Those guys are monsters. It was a really tough tournament. And to go and do, I think from my personal
point of view I did pretty well. Sylvia
blew through everybody, and I was the only one… they stopped the fight because
my ear was bleeding so bad. But I would
have been the only one that went the distance with Sylvia in the tournament,
but they stopped it with like 15 seconds left in the fight or something. But, like you said, to me it was a good
turning point because it was like I can compete with these high level guys and
fight 3 fights in a matter of a day and a half and still feel solid about my
abilities.
Me: So you continued on the Gladiator
Challenge/King of the Cage circuit and I want to go to the Gladiator Challenge
fight with Chael Sonnen. Did you only
find out you were fighting him the same day? (info from old Full Contact
Fighter interview with Jason from 2006)
Jason: It wasn’t that, but it was like a few days,
it wasn’t much. I was supposed to be
fighting Allan Goes, which is obviously the complete opposite of a Chael
Sonnen.
Me: Pure BJJ versus pure
wrestler.
Jason: Yeah, exactly. And what I was told was he was a wrestler,
but to me a wrestler and an Olympic alternate caliber wrestler is obviously 2
different animals. To get an opponent
change like that, that short notice, it is what it is.
Me: And it still went to a decision.
Jason: Yeah.
Me: Another guy I wanted to bring up, the only
gentleman you’ve fought twice, Matt Horwich.
One win, one defeat. Matt’s a really unorthodox fighter, and being
the only guy you fought twice, I don’t know if you were interested in doing a
rubber match. The first fight you won by
TKO, second fight was a decision loss.
Tell me about fighting a guy like Matt.
Jason: Matt is a really cool guy, we’ve hung out
several times. No ill will against
him. When I fought him the second time
it was more of I was having a harder time finding fights because of where I was
at in my career. No one really wanted to
fight me… Not that no one really wanted to fight me, but it was “where do I go,
what’s going to be a good step for me opponent wise”.
They threw that fight my
way, and I had no business being at 185.
We fought originally at 205 and then the second fight was my flirting
with 185 which was a really foolish move, I actually didn’t even make weight
when I fought Horwich, I was a pound over.
I should never have even agreed to that fight. I thought that I could make a run at 185, but
it was not for me.
Me: When did you originally drop to 205? Once again, I wonder if the Superbrawl HW
tournament was a good gauge…You could clearly hang with some of the big guys,
but at the same time they were huge!
There’s big, and then there’s huge, the new breed of heavyweight.
Jason: Yeah, that was definitely… it was like that
was a good run, I fought some monsters, literally monsters, in that
tournament. Build-wise, I was fighting
at 235, so I definitely wasn’t the slimmest trimmest, so I could definitely cut
back and get down to 205 and we just thought that was a much better move. I
don’t remember the year or when that was, but it just felt a lot better to get
down, I was a lot faster and a lot meaner.
Me: Style-wise how were
your 2 fights with Horwich?
Jason: The first fight I completely dominated him,
he didn’t have any answers, he was trying to take me down and I stuffed them
all.
Me: That was at 205?
Jason: That was at 205, that was for WEC. I just felt really dominant in that
fight. The second fight I really
struggled to make weight and I gassed. I
dominated him I believe in the first round, the second was a tossup, and the
third I was spent, because I didn’t have anything left.
Me: And it was a split decision, too, so he just
eked it out either way. So you continue
on, you have a couple high profile fights, Marvin Eastman in King of the Cage
and Travis Wiuff in FFC, and as you probably thought you were getting to the
entry point of the UFC and those 2 big names/wins pretty much put you over the
top. What was it like when you got that
call from the UFC? Not necessarily
emotion wise, but were you expecting it, were you ready to roll, where were you
at (mentally) at that time?
Jason: I had already had quite a few fights and I
was kind of wondering if it ever was going to happen. And then I finally did get that call and
parlaying all those wins I was on a pretty good tear. I felt the Marvin Eastman fight was a grind,
and then I stopped Wiuff early, so I just had a ton of momentum and so it was
perfect timing for me to roll right into my first UFC fight. It just felt right, it felt good, and we just
went for it.
Me: You were probably the most unknown,
undefeated fighter in the UFC after your first 3 fights. Your first 3 UFC fights were pretty straightforward. Your first fight against Rob Macdonald was
total domination, once you got him down…
Jason: Yeah, big tough
guy, he obviously posed his own threats, but I think game plan wise we executed
well and he didn’t have the answers jiu-jitsu wise. It was a good night, ended it quick in the
first round.
Me: I think a quote you
had from that fight was something like you had that Kimura so tight you could
have broken it off and taken it home with you, something like that, it was
funny…
Jason: I had never taken anybody’s shoulder that
far, I actually thought his shoulder was going to tear, because obviously my
first UFC fight so I’m not going to just let him go, but at the same time I
kept going, he wasn’t tapping, and I was kind like “is this guy gonna let me
rip his shoulder out”? And then he
finally tapped, but it had gone pretty far, and most big guys don’t have too
much shoulder flexibility anyway, I had taken it pretty far and I was expecting
it to tear.
Me: On to the second fight with Terry Martin,
which you joked you were finally fighting someone shorter than you… Again, once
you got past the first round, it was pretty much total domination in the second.
Jason: Yeah, that’s what we… we just wanted to make
the work rate really high, because he does have such heavy hands, just make him
work really hard in the first round and see where the fight went. And obviously in the second round he just
didn’t have any answers because I made him work so hard in the first.
Me: Third fight, next to Chael, possibly the best
wrestler you faced with Brandon Lee Hinkle.
Coming out of Hammer House, with training partners like Mark Coleman and
Kevin Randleman, someone like that is probably going through a pretty rigorous
or hard pace. But again, like the Martin
fight, he couldn’t handle the pace again.
Jason: Yeah.
That is what I like to do is just make people work at a really high rate
and see if they could hang. If they
couldn’t hang, then obviously the fight would end. If they could, then we’d go to the second or
possibly the third. But usually a lot of
the guys I would go really heavy on their arms with the cage work, and they
couldn’t hang.
Me: Again you go from 3-0 with somewhat low
visibility fights to a high profile fight with Rashad Evans, did that
transition affect anything at all or your performance?
Jason: No, there was some training issues right
before the fight, everything went well up until 2 weeks and then I ended up
hurting something but I still chose to fight. I’m not a big excuse guy, we
chose to fight and the fight went the way it went.
Me: I’m wondering another thing that might have
contributed, and this isn’t for excuse wise, but those first 4 fights all
occurred within 6 months. That is a furious
pace for very high-level fights like that.
Most guys now can get 4 fights in 18 months if they’re lucky. How was that pace for you?
Jason: It was good.
That’s how I started, way back.
That’s what we did, we lived in the gym, we fought, we trained, we
fought… There was a lot more work ethic,
not that the newer guys don’t work hard, but it was just get your butt in the
gym. Every day isn’t a great stroll in
the park, you just get in the gym and work.
It was a perfect fit for me, I was just used to it. So it was just go,
go, go, we were on a good run, and of course let’s just keep fighting.
Me: Referring back to the Superbrawl HW
tournament you were fighting 3 times in 2 days…
Jason: Exactly.
Me: It would have almost like another day in the
gym. So after the Rashad fight there is
a small break and you are then matched up with Babalu, another long time
veteran. He’s hungry like you are
because he was coming off that second Liddell loss. So you have two really hungry guys in there
in a fairly high profile fight. What
were your thoughts on that situation of being matched up with Babalu with both
of you coming off losses, what was your mindset at that time?
Jason: I was upset that I had lost to Rashad. Like you said, I was on a good tear, 3-0,
then I lose to Rashad. I just wanted to
get back in there and make a statement that I wasn’t just going to be pushed
around. I was in great shape and I came
to fight hard! Obviously I knew I was a
huge underdog because Babalu had just fought for the belt, and so I’m basically
a tune up fight for Babalu to get back in the running to go back for another
title shot. So I didn’t obviously like
that storyline. I was training my ass
off and I wanted to get back in there and make a statement.
Me: Which you did in the second round with a left
hook. I couldn’t tell what he (Babalu)
was doing, if he was trying a front push kick or…
Jason: He threw a knee, I think he was expecting me
to change levels, which the knee would have been a huge success if I shot, but
I didn’t, he just came out with a huge knee and I just hit him with the left
hook and he wasn’t ready for it.
Me: That fight also got you fight of the night
and knockout of the night. Without going
into specifics, was that your best one night payday ever?
Jason: Yeah, it was great.
Me: Not only do you make a comeback after a loss,
but you also get the bonuses.
Jason: Bonuses, biggest win of my career…
Me: Another highlight…
Jason: Huge highlight. And especially if you look back at the timing
of it, like I said he had just fought for the belt, Babalu was on a tear
destroying everybody, which got him the title shot. So he had just destroyed everybody up until
he fought Chuck. He was just pretty much
owning everybody that he fought. He
loses to Chuck, then he fights me, and like I said I was basically served up to
him to be a tough guy, a tune up fight to get him back in the running and it
didn’t work out that way.
Me: After Babalu, you had a couple more light
heavyweight fights, both were losses, what was going on at that point?
Jason: Like I said, I’m not an excuse guy, Gouveia was
a hell of a fight. I felt like I was
owning him and he caught me with a good punch.
Cane, really tough guy, I didn’t press my game plan like I should
have. The light heavyweight class you
can’t mess around. If you make a couple
bad movements, whether they’re grappling or striking or whatever they are, a
lot of times that’s it, you don’t get a chance to have a do over or come back
from those mistakes, so you make a couple adjustment mistakes and that’s it.
Me: After that you attempted to drop to 185
against Jason Macdonald.
Jason: It was just… I felt like crap. I should have known that it was a bad call to even go to 185. I felt like crap, it was a terrible cut and that fight didn’t go well either.
(Jason later clarified by
email that even though his first attempt to cut to 185 went badly, he did it
again for the second Horwich fight because there weren’t a lot of offers on the
table at that time for decent money.)
Me: Did you realize that your first and last
fights in the UFC were against Macdonalds (Rob and Jason)? I don’t know if it was a Canadian conspiracy…
(laughs)
Jason: Yeah, I did know that.
Me: After the Macdonald loss, you were let
go? You were actually cut at that point?
Jason: Yes.
Me: What is the process when the UFC does
that? How formal or informal is it?
Jason: They just let your manager know that you’ve
been released. Manager comes as the
bearer of bad news. You just pick up and
go from there.
Me: After the 3 losses in the UFC you had 2 more
fights outside the UFC, both decision losses to Matyushenko and Horwich. Together that was 5 losses in a row. For some fighters, 2, 3, or 4 losses in a row
can mean the end. What was your mindset
with a 5 fight skid?
Jason: It wasn’t good. To be quite frank, it was pretty
devastating. It was a lot of
depression. It was terrible, because you
have super highs and super lows, and then when you have a lot of lows strung all
together, it gets really tough to even show up to the gym. It’s just working through it, and that’s what
kind of makes or breaks people.
Me: You continued in a couple small promotions…
Also in later 2009 you attended The Ultimate Fighter 11 tryouts. What was the experience like of trying out
for a job you’d already had? How was the
whole experience and how/when did you know they weren’t going to bring you
back?
Jason: They didn’t really let me know, that kind of
process, they just don’t call you. It
was just me trying to ignite a fire, trying to pursue any avenue, obviously I’m
looking for work. I was a pro fighter,
you’re trying to find work, which are fights.
So if I could be on a tv show that’s going to let me fight, that’s just
more work, so that’s what I was trying to do, just get myself back out there.
Me: Did it feel odd that you’re auditioning for a
position you’d already had?
Jason: I think that a lot of people wouldn’t do it because
they let their pride or their ego get in the way of that, and to me that’s why
I just simplify it as work, like I’m just trying to get back out there and
work. If I don’t try, if I don’t ever
apply for a job how could I ever get it?
So that’s the way I saw
it. And obviously it was humbling, you
got these guys that have fought 4 times, and they’re trying out for this show,
and I’ve fought 20 something time… I don’t even know how many times I’ve
fought, I don’t even remember…
Me: Did you have an idea
why you weren’t selected?
Jason: Yeah, to me it wasn’t anything personal, they
were trying to find new talent, not guys that had been there, done that. So I was pretty sure that it was a longshot
that I’d be picked, but I still wanted to try, what does it hurt to try?
Me: You had 3 fights in 2010, you went 2-1. After your last fight in War on the Mainland…
Jason: Yeah, it was a one-off show.
Me: At that point after that fight you had about
a two and half year break before you went to Bellator. What was going on in that two and a half year
gap?
Jason: A lot of it was just getting back to being
me. It had gotten to a point where the gym wasn’t fun anymore, training wasn’t
fun anymore, there was just so much pressure and so much “what are you gonna do
with your career”, that I just kind of put it on hold. More inadvertently, just kind of got back… It took a while, but it slowly got back to
having fun, to where it used to be way back in the early days, when you enjoyed
showing up to the gym.
Because it does get to a
point where it is work, and just like any job it gets tough. So it took a long time to get back to where I
felt comfortable, I felt motivated and hungry again.
Me: Was there any particular trigger? Or do you just think after all those years
and all those fights you just needed some physical or mental break?
Jason: A lot of it was just personal things that I
had to work through. A lot of hurt and a
lot of disappointment. Like you said,
you go on a huge skid, that still lingers, it doesn’t just go away.
So those things, when you
have such limelight in being in the UFC and having these high profile fights to
going back and fighting on smaller shows is very humbling. So it’s a long time to process that and heal
yourself emotionally and physically and just kind of get back to where you have
more of a peace about yourself.
Me: Do you have a mindset between the bigger and
smaller shows? There is always that
question of do you want to be the big fish in a small pond or small fish in a
big pond? How has that been over the
years with all the different promotions you’ve fought in?
Jason: The small shows I think are a little bit more
dangerous, because some of the small shows some of the guys aren’t as known, so
you don’t have a ton of tape or you don’t really know everything that they bring
to the table. So some of those smaller
shows, those guys are super hungry, they want to get to where you’ve been, and
so they just want to walk all over your name.
So the smaller shows I think are just as dangerous as a big show.
Me: Feels like you have a big target painted on
you…
Jason: Oh definitely…
Me: Just like you were when you were young and
hungry…
Jason: Exactly.
Me: So after this break you get into
Bellator. You had a very impressive
debut with a submission you pulled off from your back when you were scrambling
with Hector (Ramirez).
Transitioned from a
triangle choke to an inverted or straight…not a typical kind of armbar.
Jason: Yeah, reverse armlock. It’s a reverse straight armlock.
Me: Not something we normally see from you, a
very rare submission off of your back.
How did that feel? You have a two
and a half year break, you’re fighting another UFC vet, so I’m sure both of you
guys are hungry, so what was your mindset?
Jason: I was just happy to be back in the cage. I was just happy to be back competing. To me it was… there was no way I could
lose. Whatever the decision was in the
fight… win, loss, draw, I had a completely different mindset that I’m getting
back to doing what I love to do.
Obviously somebody has to win and somebody has to lose but the fact that
I can actually even get in there and still compete at a high level was a win
for me. I just had a really good mindset
and I just came out and had fun. I just
fought hard and obviously it showed that I had been working on my jiu-jitsu in
that time and I just got him in a dangerous spot and he didn’t have an answer
for it, so he got put in that submission that you normally don’t see.
Me: Is it because he’s trying to fend off the
triangle and he’s not paying attention to that arm being trapped?
Jason: The minute details of that, I actually had
him in a shoulder lock. And the only way
out of that shoulder lock is to straighten your arm. So when you set up very tightly from that
position, you set up that very tight shoulder lock, the only way out is to
straighten your arm. So it’s a bent arm
lock, but it’s actually by grabbing the elbow, and as you pull up and attack
the shoulder, they have to straighten their arm to get out of it, which puts
them in the reverse straight armlock.
Me: Let me back up, did
you approach Bellator or did they approach you once you got your name out that
you were ready to fight again?
Jason: A little bit of both. It was me kind of putting the feelers out
there to see if they would even be interested in me fighting for them, and then
when I did they said “yes”. Next thing
you know they were going to be throwing some west coast shows and I actually
fought not far from the house, it was up in Irvine so it was perfect.
Me: Then you go into your second Bellator fight, another UFC vet, Tom (Deblass) fought twice in the UFC, he didn’t have a ton of fights. Again, you could sense it was two hungry guys in there, and it turned into pretty much a standup scrap for the most part, and he had those vicious left hooks. Tell me about that fight.
Jason: Just that.
Just two hungry guys. He’s a
black belt, I just recently got my black belt.
We just had a hell of a fight and he just ended up throwing a little bit
more, faster than I did, and caught me with that hook. Just a tough guy. I was a little too relaxed, I think, and he
took advantage of it.
Me: Did you have a specific game plan for that
fight? Did you want to put pressure on
him, did you think maybe I didn’t try to get this guy down enough…?
Jason: No, that’s what we
wanted to do, we wanted to stand and bang with him, and that’s what happens,
you know?
Me: You’re 1-1 with Bellator. It’s been several months, do you have another
fight left with Bellator?
Jason: Yes.
Hopefully…Nothings set. So very soon.
Me: They’re ending this current season, then they
have their summer series…
Jason: Yeah, so I might be on one of the summer
series shows.
Me: But might fight in the fall, depending…
Jason: Yeah.
Me: Do you know if it would be a “regular” fight
or if you might be in one of the tournaments?
Jason: I don’t know what their plans are with the
light heavyweight tournament. It’ll
probably be a one-off, not a tournament slot fight is what I’m thinking, just
because I’m coming off a loss so I think they usually have their winners go
into the tournament format. So I don’t
know if I’m even eligible with their criteria.
Me: They always have a ton of reserves, people
drop out…
Jason: Yeah, exactly.
Me: Your career, you’ve mostly been pretty
healthy and injury free?
Jason: Yeah, obviously fighting is a lot of abuse on
the body, but I have been very fortunate to not have a lot of the surgeries and
a lot of the really big injuries that a lot of other people have faced.
Me: You’re about 36, almost 37. How are you feeling at this point in your
career?
Jason: I feel good.
Going back to what I said about the Hector fight, at this point I just
feel really fortunate to be able to do what I love. From a work standpoint,
there’s tons of people that drive themselves to a job that they hate, they have
a lifestyle that they hate, just so they can get to the weekends and pretend
like they don’t have the life that they hate.
So I’ve really kind of enjoyed the fact that I actually get to do what I
love. And I’ve worked my butt off for so
many years that it just feels good to still be able to be in an industry and
compete at a pretty high level and do what I love for this long. I just feel really fortunate.
Me: How has Bellator been?
Jason: Bellator’s been great. And I have no ill will… the UFC treated me
great. I never had one problem with
them. They treated me great, and it’s a
business. I wasn’t winning fights so
they had to let me go. They treated me
great, and Bellator’s treated me like a Prince.
Me: Do you have an idea what will happen after
your third fight? Do you start over with
a brand new contract and look at your options at that point?
Jason: If I entered the tournament there were tons
of options for them to re-sign.
Obviously I want to win, and if they’re looking to re-sign me that would
be great.
Me: Over the years, any generally funny, weird,
crazy stories?
Jason: I was in Newcastle (England), and I’ve never
seen that many drunk people in my life.
There were soccer games going on, and we come outside, and the streets
were just littered with stumbly drunk people… That was the scene that’s just
stuck in my head. I’ve never seen that
many drunk people that could barely even walk, there were women holding their
shoes, and we’re talking 50 or 45 degree weather, and these girls in dresses
walking around barefoot just drunk!
Yeah, Newcastle was a trip.
