För många, inklusive mig själv, var det den första säsongen av ”The Ultimate Fighter” det som väckte intresset för sporten MMA. Det faktum att serien gick på en relativt stor kanal vid en vettig tid samt gav oss en insikt i hur det är att vara aktiv MMA-utövare och vilka personer som valde detta gav mig en kraftfull upplevelse.
Personen som gav störst intryck på mig var Chris ”The Crippler” Leben (22-11), som med sin brutala stil och smärtsamma förflutna gjorde att jag blev ett fan av honom trots vissa av hans mindre sympatiska upptåg i huset. Leben fortsatte att vara med i UFC i nästan 9 år och var under den perioden med om såväl skyhöga toppar, exempelvis när han vann två stora fighter på 2 veckor, som dopningsavstängningar och problem med lagen. Efter förlusten vid UFC 168 beslöt han sig för att lägga handskarna på hyllan och numera är han coach vid Victory MMA & Fitness i San Diego samt har ett eget radioprogram på ESPN vid namn ”Unfiltered MMA”. Han har dessutom precis blivit klar med en bok; The Crippler: Cage Fighting and My Life on the Edge” som kommer släppas för allmänheten i slutet av 2015. I min intervju med Chris diskuterade vi bland annat varför han ville skriva boken, vad han är mest stolt över från sin karriär, Anderson Silvas positiva dopningstest och mycket mer.
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You have recently finalized your book, ”The Crippler: Cage Fighting and My Life on the Edge”, which is out for pre-sale. Can you tell us a little bit about the book and why you chose to write it?
”Yeah, it’s more than just a book about fighting and training stories. It’s about my life and there’s some crazy life stories that I’ve experienced that are in the book. A lot of it is focused on stuff that happened outside the cage. I write about my struggles with alcohol and drugs and how I overcame it. Basically I wanted people to know about my journey so that a person who is in a similar position to where I was, can learn from it and see that it is possible to accomplish great things even though you are in a dark place. Just because you are in hell doesn’t mean you have to stay there and that’s one of the things I want to show with this book. Even with all my problems I still did a lot of good things in the UFC, and I’ve matured a lot since being a punk on the ultimate fighter. I think the book will make for a great reading”.
How was it reliving those dark moments and were you able to not dwell on them too much?
”Well…it was pretty brutal sometimes. I think Mick Jagger was supposed to write a biography on his life once and he stopped because it was too painful. I can definitely relate to that since it did get very dark at certain moments. But I think it makes the book very honest and worth reading. Some of my old thoughts were not fun to relive and it is easy to get stuck with them. However, going through all those situations again did make me appreciate what I have in my life right now a lot more. So there was an upside to it”.
Do you feel like writing this book has changed you in any way?
”It kind of made me more aware of the person that I want to become, and I’m not fully there yet but i feel like I am on my way. Going through all these things again made me think a lot about the changes that I have to make. I’m still struggling with being too sensitive. I tend to overreact to things that most people can just brush off and that is something that I want to change out off. It was a learning experience, that’s for sure.
What are you most proud of accomplishing during your fighting-career?
”If we’re talking specific moments I would say the Terry Martin-fight and knocking out Wanderlei Silva. With Terry Martin I was losing the fight and he had me pretty much out on my feet and still I was able to come back and knock him out, which I thought was quite impressive. And when I fought Wanderlei I stepped into the cage with my idol, someone that I had looked up to for a long time. Competing against your idol is not something you do everyday.
But I’m mostly proud of my career as a whole. Considering all the things that were surrounding me at the time, I’m proud of all my matches. Each and every fight had it’s own battles and challenges. People don’t realize, I carried a lot of stuff with me into the octagon so i had to fight both in the octagon and in my mind at the same time. And not just the competition but also the grueling training camps before the fight while a lot of stuff were going on my life. So I think all that makes my accomplishments even bigger. Also being one of the guys who took the most shots and put out the most strikes, means something to me”.
You have your own radio show on ESPN called ”Unfiltered MMA”. What aspects do you like about it?
”It’s just awesome, man. I get to talk MMA for an hour and it’s my show, so it’s not overly structured or anything but I enjoy the hell out of it. We just talk, have fun, go over things that happen in the sport, and yeah it’s awesome. I can just relax and be myself, an hour pretty much flies away. We have fans listening all over the world which is very cool”.
What do you make of Anderson Silva testing positive for steroids? Has your image of him changed after that?
”No my image of him hasn’t changed. Anderson Silva is still one of the greatest of all time, the things he did in the sport has secured that. With that being said, even though maybe I’m not the one to talk, I just felt like saying: ’You idiot!’. He was considered possibly the best of all time and in my opinion he should have called it quits after the first Weidman-fight. But no he comes back, breaks his leg in the rematch then fights with Nick Diaz and looks somewhat good and tests positive for steroids. So all that has tarnished his legacy to some extent, I think”.
Are there any particular fighters that you like to follow today?
”Mostly my friends. Jeremy ’Lil Heathen’ Stephens, Myles Jury and of course Ed Herman, who is one of my best friends in the whole world. Honestly I watch them both because I want to see them succeed, as well as keep up what’s going on in their lives and careers so I don’t have to call and bug them all the time. Other than that I think I will always have a different perspective on the sport than the ordinary fan because I was once a part of it. I don’t really care about what the upcoming fighters tweet about, but the UFC will always be a part of who I am”.
Recently there was an article about Jason Thacker on MMA Fighting.com where it showed that he has been going through a rough time since The Ultimate Fighter? Did you see it and if so, what did you think about it?
”Yes, I saw it. We actually talked about it on my show and I’ve supported the ’GoFundMe’-website that is currently up for helping Jason. I was sorry to hear that he had been going through such a tough time since ’TUF’ and I think everybody who can should help him since he’s taking care of both his parents that are ill. What I really liked in that interview is that he doesn’t blame anybody for his situation. He just tells it like it was. We all know that he wasn’t on the same level as everybody else in the house, he was there to make everyone else look good. And it is safe to say that the 23-year old Chris Leben could be an asshole, which I was to him. I wish I could take back what I did to him but I can’t. I just hope things work out for him”.
Chris bok ”The Crippler: Cage Fighting and My Life on the Edge” finns att köpa i pre-sale och kommer ut i slutet av året i svenska bokaffärer.
