I have known Pete Irving for some time now as a friend, training partner and as part of the coaching team for my fighters. He’s without a doubt one of the best of British talent in MMA today. Pete’s is not just an all round MMA fighter; he has paid his dues with blood, sweat and tears within all the disciplines it takes to be an fighter in the sport of mixed martial arts. His fight record of 6-5-1 may looked mixed, but it tells the tale of a fighter who is not of mixed success but of a fighter that has always pushed himself above and beyond the call of duty. Living the life of a true Spartan, he has survived to tell his story so far.
Alan: Many people are now watching The Ultimate Fighter so of course more people are interested in MMA training or even fighting MMA. But many do not realise what the full picture is all about.
Pete: My main challenge is coping with injuries, rehabilitating and training around them. Every fighter goes in to his fights carrying one problem or another; you just have to apply a bit of strategy to get around them. It’s devastating though, having to pull out a week before and wondering if people will speculate that you bottled it, or warming up for a fight and injuring yourself minutes before you walk out. When you’re standing across the ring from a guy thinking “ I’ve got nothing to throw at him that won’t hurt me more than him”, it’s heartbreaking; after all the technique you study and practice, the dieting, the training, the sacrifice, and there you are struggling to imagine how you can possibly win. There’s no other way to describe that feeling.
Alan: Being a fighter you haven’t always make choices based on best practices!
Pete: I admit, I haven’t managed my career in a very smart way. Sometimes I’ve just been stupid because of a desire to fight without considering a long-term plan. Other times I’ve been the victim of circumstance, everything from faulty scales and bad ref’s to international terrorism and U.S. homeland security policy. Losing is terrible, it’s like grief, if you’ve never been in a fight and lost imagine that feeling when someone has died, only it was you that died. You long to turn back the clock and have your time again, but it’s futile. Winning is great, but it’s so short lived, then you need to go out and search for that buzz again. The cruelty of it is that it’s so hard to let go of the feeling of loss, and so hard to hang on to the feeling of a win. But as you get older it gets easier, just like grief, you let it go. People can speculate however they want about the inconsistencies in my performance, but I know what went wrong and why. I don’t get stage fright, look at my face and you’ll realise. My body just let me down sometimes; I have good days and bad days; if the fight falls on a bad day, in spite of my best efforts, that’s just too bad for me. I love fighting, I wish I was a Paul Jenkins, fighting every other week, but I can’t make that work. I wiped myself out last year, trying to do that. I fought 4 weekends in a row, 3 MMA fights and a sub-wrestling tourney. I had a fight lined up for week 5 but my opponent fell through. By the end I was shattered from all the training, travelling and dieting, all the smacks around the nut. Everybody was saying I was being stupid, and they were right, but I had good reasons. “Everybody gets where they are today by making the decision they think best at every juncture along the way”, a wise man once told me.
Alan: You rolled with the punches in your everyday life as well.
Pete: I tried to get out to the U.S.A. to improve my training, improve my chances of making it to the U.F.C. The big show wasn’t over here then and TUF 3 hadn’t aired. British fighters weren’t getting picked. It seemed like the right thing to do and I gambled on it, I packed up, I made the mistake of borrowing money to get there thinking I could make the money back if I got my career going. It went south, and I ended up back in London 3 days later with just enough for a bus back to Newcastle, a tuna fish sandwich and a nasty, weak Nescafe in the coach station while I waited. Then that was it, broke. I don’t have anything else, all I know how to do is fight, and so that’s what I did. I called everybody begging them to get me a fight with anybody. I fucked up a couple of times, but I put a roof over my head, I ate; and most importantly I didn’t run to my friends or my family looking for a handout, I didn’t sign on, I didn’t beg or steal. I manned up and did what I know how the best I could. I made the decision I thought best at the time, and I stand by it. My head is held high.
Alan: Your training has changed with all your experiences now
Pete: I’m much smarter now about the way I train. A lot of it comes down to being more picky about which people I spar with, I used to just get on the mat with anyone and everyone, but it’s just not smart. I get busted up like that, trying to take it easy on beginners then having them spaz out and hurt me with something stupid. Finding good training partners for MMA is tough, there are good boxers and Muay Thai fighters everywhere, and now more and more good jiu-jitsu guys to work on all the constituent elements with, but finding wrestlers and guys to put it all together with has been really tough. Until pretty recently I’d been going into MMA bouts never having sparred a single round of MMA rules in the run up. It’s just absurd really, trying to piece it all together in the actual moment. Ground and pound is the real problem, nobody wants to train it right because it’s too difficult. You wear 16 ouncers and the bottom man can tie up your hands too easily and the action stagnates, you wear 4 ouncers and you come away all marked up to hell. It’s always one way traffic too, that’s just the nature of striking on the floor, one guy can hit, the other guy probably can’t send back much leather; so if you’re asking your jiu-jitsu guys or your Thai boxing guys to train G’n’P with you, you’re pretty much just taking liberties on them, or you’re not training realistically. I’ve had to get out there and travel to find the sparring, which is a great experience - but it’s expensive; I can easily spend more than I get paid for a fight just on getting around to train for it. I shouldn’t complain too much, I’ve been very fortunate with the people that have given me support. I’ve been all over, to California, down to London with my brothers the Iron Wolves, S.B.G. Manchester, over to Darlington Thai boxing to train with Abdul and Hassan. All of these guys could have closed the door on me as a rival, but they respected my struggle and my mission and welcomed me in, helped me to prepare. Training with Abdul has been a massive help, he’s often in the same boat as me in terms of needing someone to come in and spar 3x5 minute rounds of MMA rules with. He knows how to train as hard and realistic as possible without getting too torn up to perform on the night. It’s useful to measure my abilities against someone who has been in with top guys and potential future opponents too. I think we’ve got a pretty good exchange going in terms of wrestling info for jiu-jitsu.
Alan: I know from the build up to fight’s with my Iron Wolves Team, that the time in between fights has been harder and when we had fights coming up.
Pete: I’ve had a lay off from the ring of a few months, and it’s tough. It’s mentally hard getting up in the morning, and looking in to the future without those markers down the line that having fights lined up provides. Counting off the days and weeks till you fight the next guy just helps you get through life, and do it with some focus. It puts things in to perspective and pushes all the things you can’t control out of your mind because the imminent kicking you are going to receive if you don’t show up to the gym and work your arse off. It’s too easy to spend too much time asking yourself what it’s all about, and just sink in to that quagmire of existential angst. Anyone can fall foul of it, especially people with a fighter’s mentality. Without fighting the little grievances and the big issues are too much to cope with, but when you’re forced to tap into that primitive, survival mode part of your brain day in and day out it keeps you off the downward spiral.
Alan: What else has come from your break from the ring?
Pete: I’ve done a lot more coaching while I’ve been out of training, I think I’ll stick with it once I’ve retired. I’m confident that given the time and the talent pool I’ll coach guys to be 10 times better than I’ve ever been. I’ve learned a lot about the different pieces of the puzzle that coaching entails recently. Just like my own fighting, I’ve learned a lot via osmosis from the people I’ve been around and a lot from the more painful process of trial and error. I’m lucky in that Barry (Kru Barry Norman) embraced what we were doing with the MMA when I came back from Brazil, so in addition to training my stand up he taught me a lot about coaching and cornering. All the little tricks you learn from a good corner man, minor details with potentially major effects, the literal difference between victory and defeat, you don’t learn them in grappling. Organising a corner kit, dealing with cuts, pre and post-fight massage, keeping time, it’s serious business. I’ve managed to keep my hand in during the layoff by working corners for a few Muay Thai fights, seconding Craig (Jose). When I take my guys to MMA fights he seconds me; we’ve worked out a good dynamic, knowing what to say and when, getting in and out of the ring fast, being efficient in all the little tasks you have to squeeze in that short, critical minute. I’ve learned a lot the hard way too, by being determined not to make the same mistakes again, or repeat the errors of guys who’ve cornered me badly. I’ve learned good tricks from opposition corners who psyched me out. I lay down the law in corners now; I’ve ended up in some fights with an entourage all telling me different things so that my head cornerman is obscured. Likewise I’ve had hangers on and assorted teammates chipping in with unwanted advice or negative talk at critical times and undermining my corner work. Everybody wants a piece of it when it comes to fight time, to swoop in and grab a bit of the reflected glory, but they weren’t there day in day out sweating with the guy about to fight. They weren’t awake all night sweating and feeling sick like I was. They don’t know the code words and signals, didn’t talk through the strategies, so when you get those quiet moments before the fight when the fighter is totally open and suggestible and you’re reinforcing all you’ve worked hard to program in, or they’re in trouble in the ring, then someone comes along and starts saying “hey, why don’t you try this?” it’s dangerous. Often it is well intentioned, not as self-serving as I’ve made it sound, but people don’t realise they’re jeopardising the fighter, it makes me furious. I let everyone know what their job is now, especially if it’s just to shut up and stay out the way.
Alan: So, what does the future hold?
Pete: I think in the future I’ll turn out some really good champions, but it’s a major investment in terms of time and emotional energy training someone. The amount of responsibility I feel for that person is costly, and it’s hard to do while I’m preparing myself. I like to coach, largely because I hate seeing people doing stuff wrong, I have to stop myself going up to fighters from other camps and correcting them when they are warming up at shows! I don’t want to be one of those guys who gets vicarious kicks from reffing and coaching though, my heart is in there doing it myself. I want to get my record looking respectable and I want to fight in the U.F.C. I haven’t showed people half of what I can do and it grates on me. I’ve thought long and hard about it and I don’t think I’ll honestly be able to die contented if I don’t make it there and win.
I had a little experience of reffing recently too, just two MMA bouts on Paul Hamilton’s Muay Thai show. Fortunately the bouts themselves had no real contentious moments, nobody cheated, but I still managed to make some small errors that could potentially have affected the outcome of one the bouts. I was heavily struck with the weight of the responsibility; I was reffing the co-main event, Hassan Muradi against Carl Morgan, two seriously strong aggressive wrestlers. I could have easily wound up getting in the line of fire when the guys shot their takedowns in a relatively small ring and made an almighty mess of an important bout. I had visions of myself gaining youtube notoriety under the title ‘ref crushed by Iranian wrestling champion’. I’ve been unkind about refs in the past whom I’ve felt have been unjust toward me or my fighters, but as with all things, when you’ve walked a mile in someone’s shoes you get a little empathy for them.
Being a good coach isn’t about moulding someone in your own image, if they’re that way inclined it makes your job easy, but it’s about bringing out the best in them, shoring their weaknesses up and building on their strengths. I’ve pieced a lot of the puzzle together for myself, I’ve done the trial and error, and I don’t like seeing other people having to go through all that too. They already have all that ironed out in the States, in Japan; in gym’s around the U.K. I’m always concerned about falling behind the curve. When I first fought I’d never even been in a boxing ring. I was terrified I would trip on the ropes and look a fool so I was trying to see how other people were getting in the ring all night. I was so focussed on getting in the ring without landing on my face that when I got in there and Colin Sexton turned to me and said “Fighter ready?!” I nearly said, “No, I was just concentrating on the ropes”. It’s funny with hindsight, but I’m angry with myself that now I’m taking my guys to shows and putting them in a cage when they’ve never had one to train in. Introducing new factors in the actual moment is my pet hates from a coaching point of view, but financially it’s just out of my control right now. The minute I get a big money fight I’m going to spend the purse on a nice big cage for me and my lads to train in. I even considered starting a show just so I could buy a cage and keep it to train in; it all comes back to finance.
Alan: With more interest in the sport, money is getting better.
Pete: I’m overjoyed that money is starting to come in to our sport. We, the athletes, deserve it. In one respect I’d love to see fighters rivalling and outstripping the footballers. I’ve got some T-shirt designs with ‘N.U.F.C. – Newcastle Ultimate Fighting club’ made up, it’s lucky nobody notices us all that much or I’d probably be in trouble for infringing trademarks from both Newcastle United and Zuffa. Football is a bit of a pet hate of mine, but let me explain. If you’re from Newcastle and you don’t like football, you’re an outcast. Seriously, tell someone in Newcastle you don’t follow football and they’ll give you a look like you just said, “My idea of fun is dressing up in my mother’s underwear”. It’s social leprosy, and it’s something you’ll contend with from the cradle to the grave, it really makes life more difficult. I had a fight once that went to a narrow decision loss. I was gutted of course and someone said to me “I know exactly how you feel, we (meaning Newcastle United) lost too, it went to overtime and they scored”. Now, in case their phrasing misled you, this person does not play for or coach for Newcastle United. Can you imagine what an insult that is? Telling me they knew how I felt when they didn’t have the vaguest inkling of what it’s like to even get punched in the face, never mind living like a monk in order to train for weeks on end, only to walk away with a runner up trophy. People always talk shit about footballers “they train so hard”, “they need lots of money because their careers are so short”. Bullshit, 7 sports cars isn’t a fucking pension fund. Coked up and drinking in the strip club the week before a match isn’t a guy who trains hard, or cares. These guys don’t deserve the money, and moreover they don’t deserve the loyalty they receive from the fans. I promise you, they’re not the nice guys off the movie ‘Goal!’. They don’t have the same drive that we do, the personal honour. We can’t take months off and still get 1000’s of pounds a week, put them on statutory sick pay and see how fast those hernias and hamstring pulls get better. We can’t pass the ball either; it’s all on us. Our sport is the one all others aspire to be, and every man bar none would do it if they had what it takes. I’ll illustrate, I’d go up to Newcastle United any day of the week and play football with them. I’d get whipped, but I couldn’t care less. How many of them would come down and spar with my team and me. You know the answer, and don’t pretend it’s because of finance or contractual obligation. It’s about courage. If on the off chance anyone from Newcastle United happens to read this article, I invite you to come and prove me wrong any time. Any time!
Alan: I think they will need the magic sponge! Does the money side of it take away from fighting for the honour their art?
Pete: Although the fact that guys will potentially make a good living from fighting makes me happy, I’d hate to see that corruption of the character of the fighter that happened in boxing and in other sports. I loved hearing Crezio’s stories about his Vale Tudo challenge matches, about his father and Carlson Gracie, all fighting for the honour of Jiu-Jitsu. It’s romantic, and spiritually pure, fighting for no money with no spectators, just simply for the honour of it, and the bragging rights. It’s a time we can’t go back to, and I wouldn’t even if I could, but it’ll be sad when it passes out of living memory, even if the fights are a hell of a lot more exciting now.
Alan: What is the Pro and Cons of fighting MMA?
Pete: The upsides well outweigh the downs, and I hope that with more and more gyms and athletes emerging all the time the sport will just get better. As the talent pool deepens I’d like to see more weight classes get introduced. The 7-kilo gaps are absurdly large; there are 3 categories in boxing and Muay Thai for every 1 class in MMA. I have to slaughter myself for weeks to make lightweight, but I can easily weigh in under welterweight on the same day, so I’m damned if I do damned if I don’t. I know from talking to people and looking at what’s out there loads of good guys would go for a light-welterweight class. Jason Tan and Izidro just fought at 73kg on Cage Gladiators, Samy Schiavo just fought Jenkins at 73kg, Dan Hardy could do it, Mick Sinclair, and the list goes on. The talent pool is still thin at the lighter end, so I can see why the weight classes aren’t there where they are most needed, even though it’s a vicious circle, but light-welterweight would be jam packed with talent without harming 155 or 170 pound divisions.
Alan: You just got back in the ring and Won a British MMA Title. What was that like?
Pete: Well, it’s about time I had something to hold my pants up with. I’ve been at this for a few years now and I’ve always fought internationals or British top 10 quality guys, so it’s just nice to say “I’m the champ”, for whatever that’s really worth. Of course, what really counts is who you’ve beat, but the jewellery is nice to have on the mantelpiece.
I had a lot of grand plans for my comeback, I was going to do Crossfit every day, train down in London with the Iron Wolves, train up in Scotland with the Dinky Ninjas, go to S.B.G. Manchester. I was going to be in the shape of my life, then bang! – injured. A few weeks before the fight I got sort of spiked on my head in a freak accident while doing really light technique sparring and I thought I’d broken my neck for a moment. I was devastated and thought I couldn’t fight, but I was too invested in this fight to let that happen so I worked through it. Rosi Sexton helped me out massively, diagnosing the problem and helping me rehabilitate the injury in time to fight. Unfortunately I didn’t get much sparring in the run up, but I got fit enough for a 3 rounder and she got my neck back to 100%.
All that meant I didn’t get a warm up fight before going for the title. Most of my MMA fights have been away from Newcastle and to be honest it was quite a lot of pressure to be trying to knock the ring rust off on the top of the bill in front of my home crowd. All my MMA students, Muay Thai students, colleagues, friends, family, basically everyone I’ve ever trained with, worked with, even drank a pint with in my entire life was there, so if I screwed it up there’d have been nowhere to hide! In the end I loved it though, that extra pressure helped me focus, and all the support gave me strength. I couldn’t believe the reception I got, and after the fight I was just choked up because of the amount of people who came to support me in the crowd and in my corner. I got the belt and Richie Knox lifted me up and everybody in the place shouted and clapped. It was a cheesy Rocky movie moment, I loved it.
Of course, you’re not really the champ until you’ve defended the belt, and the Strike and Submit belt really belongs to Lee Doski, so I really have to fight him before I’ve really earned it. He had to get knee surgery so he vacated to let me have a crack at it in front of my home crowd, which was a really excellent gesture and I truly appreciate it. In the end I fought Kevin Reed from the Dogs of war camp, he was very strong, and tough to handle in the clinch, but ultimately I just had more experience in jiu-jitsu, and all that extra mat time paid dividends when it went to the canvas. He took the fight with just a couple of days notice, and fought me in front of all my people. I have to give him credit. Of course it’s easy to be magnanimous in victory, but the guy has true gameness and I really think he’ll be a force given the time to develop his ground skills. He’ll be Paul Jenkins mark II.
Alan: You are also fighting for another British MMA Title in London next. Things seem to be running in the right direction now.
Pete: I think I’m ready to get on a roll now, and with all my lessons learned I’ll finally train the right way. Smart and hard. I’ll take the momentum from this with me to London, continue the success and clean up my statistics into something that reflects my abilities. I’d like to win some more titles, just so I can get a cheesy 3 belt portrait taken, you know the ones I mean, 1 belt round the waist, 1 over each arm, pulling a tough guy face, hehehe! All really good fighters have a 3 belt photo. Hopefully I’ll put on some shows that might get the U.F.C. to take a look at me, that’s my real goal, get noticed by them and get myself on the big show.
Alan:Last words, Pete.
Pete: I could write out a list of names of people that I’d like to thank that would consume an extra page, so it suffices to say that I just want to thank the people who’ve believed in me and stayed with me through the highs and the lows. You all know who you are. Can I say a quick thanks to total aggression fight gear for sorting me out with Black and White shorts for fighting in Newcastle, and keeping me in Cryogel!
Alan Orr is a disciple of Robert Chu Sifu and the European representative of the Chu Sau Lei Wing Chun system.
Teacher of Tui Na Chinese Massage Therapy
He is also the European representative for Guro Mark Wiley in the Filipino martial arts and Sensei Eddy Millis of Shark Tank in NHB/Grappling. MMA Fight Coaching.
www.alanorr.com
www.thechinesemedicineacademy.co.uk
www.warriorfunctionaltraining.com
For further information Tel: 07958 908 196 or email: info@alanorr.co.uk
