Frank Mir Comeback ?

Remaking Frank Mir:

How Ken Hahn gave a BJJ black belt a striking game
J. Regar

Even more surprising than Frank Mir’s recent UFC 92 victory over UFC interim heavyweight champion Antonio Rodrigo Nogueira was the manner in which he did it. The Brazilian jiu-jitsu ace battered Nogueira not with his ground work but with a remarkable stand-up game. Much of that improvement can be attributed to Mir’s new stand-up coach, Ken Hahn of Striking Unlimited, who speaks to MMAjunkie.com’s Jacob Regar about Mir’s transformation and his keys to one of the year’s biggest upsets. MMAjunkie.com: When did you begin coaching Frank Mir? Ken Hahn: Eight weeks before the (Antoni) Hardonk fight (in August 2007). MMAjunkie.com: What were some of the traits you saw in him that made you interested in being his coach? Ken Hahn: I had already worked with him and had seen him around when I was at Cobra Kai, but I never approached him. I was training one of his close friends, and his close friend said to Frank, “Hey, you’ve been with these other trainers for so long. Why don’t you give this guy that I’m working out with a chance?” So he started watching me train people, and he said to me, “Well, you’re opening up a gym/ I’m going to go over there and try it out.” That’s where [our relationship] started. I never really approached him. I’m not the type of guy that’s going to steal someone’s fighter, but at the same time, I’m not going to turn him away. If he wants to learn from me, I’m going to teach him. Basically, he did that, so I told him, “I’ve been with a lot of different fighters at a lot of different levels, and I’m not going to teach you unless you want to listen. He agreed to listen no matter what, and I agreed to teach him. It’s kind of like those old days in the karate days when you have to do everything I say or I’m not teaching you. As soon as you ask “why,” we’re done. So as long as he understood that, I told him, “You’re going to be the best there is, but you’ve got to follow me and trust me.” And that’s how it all started. The first two fights, I didn’t really have a chance for him to display everything we had been working on. A lot of the skills we worked on were put in the background because most of the fights ended by submission. But the Nogueira fight was a match made in heaven because I knew for a fact that â Now, people want to claim that he was too weathered and that he has been through too many wars, but I told everybody my opinion that he has been through a lot of wars and he is going to be slower. Despite that, the type of training that we provide for Frank is not what regular people get. Nogueira was training with Forrest Griffin and Wanderlei Silva for this fight; that’s all the people he trained with. Those three guys just got together and hugged each other while I had Frank train with reputable professional boxers â one heavyweight and one light heavyweight. Then I had him spar with kickboxers, wrestlers and Olympic-level judo players. When you have a chance to train with so many different high-level guys, there’s just no way around improving. .You’ve got to get better. There’s a rumor circulating that Frank only worked on striking and didn’t focus at all on jiu-jitsu, but he was with Robert Drysdale almost every day. He had privates with him. Once again, he was in a position where he was getting tapped out every day. Then all of a sudden he was getting tapped out every other day, and then once a week. That means your skills are getting better and better. So that’s completely different than training with all of your buddies, and there’s no one to really push that drive in you because you’re already at the top. Who’s going to tell Nogueira what to do? No one. Who’s going to tell Wanderlei what to do? No one. Who’s going to tell Forrest what to do? No one. The bottom line is Frank was willing to listen and do whatever I said. I mean, who’s going to say, “You’re going to spar professional boxers today? Well, I’m not a boxer.” I don’t care. You’re going to box them, and you’re going to survive because that’s what is going to get you the hand speed. That’s why he was so much more efficient boxing. MMAjunkie.com: What was your game plan for Frank heading into his fight with Nogueira? Ken Hahn: My game plan for Frank was for him to showcase his standup abilities â for him to be faster, stronger and more confident. And don’t worry about the jiu-jitsu. Make a name for yourself by knocking a legend out. I said, “You’ll be known more for knocking him out than for submitting him.” MMAjunkie.com: Given Nogueira’s boxing expertise, did you think Frank would be able to take advantage of him as well as he did with his hands? Ken Hahn: Yes, because I saw his hands on the show. Once I saw him hit mitts on the show and spar some of his guys, that was it; I know exactly what he’s capable of. Plus he’s had so many fights, you can look at them and see how many times people have knocked him down, not knocked him out, but knocked him down. So my strategy was, “You’re going to knock him down, then keep knocking him down, and when he gets back up, knock him down again for five rounds, and then you won’t get tired because you’re not trying to gut him.” That’s basically what he did. And then by the second round, he got so relaxed that he became even more deadly. If it had gone to the third round he would have began engaging the kicks. In the first round he threw a couple of kicks just to see what was going on, but if he would have followed up with a kick, he would have killed him. The first round was rough, the second round started getting better, but that was it. He couldn’t handle it. The only punches Nogueira landed were one or two jabs and a low kick. That’s not good. That means that 80 percent of Frank’s shots landed. MMAjunkie.com: Frank was switching up his stance during the fight from southpaw to orthodox and back-and-forth. Was that something you helped Frank worked on, or was that more of Frank’s own style? Ken Hahn: No, it’s because he was originally a southpaw, and then he got into that accident, so he switched to regular stance to favor his non-injured leg. After the (Brock) Lesnar fight, his leg was fully healed, and we decided to go back to his regular fighting stance and go back-and-forth. His true fighting stance is southpaw, though he integrated the two fighting stances. You can see he actually had three or four fights where he fought in regular stance. And that’s enough experience to be able to defend yourself. But, when you look at how he defended from a southpaw stance, he looked 20 times better than from a regular stance. If he was fighting from a southpaw stance against Brandon Vera, he probably wouldn’t have got caught by Brandon’s knee. But from a different stance, you have to relearn everything from the beginning. Frank’s a lot more confident in that left-hand stance. But he can switch in and out, and that’s what made him so elusive against Nogueira. Looking at the distance and the timing, every time Nogueira tried to step in, he was already gone. And then he would take an angle and weave and throw his punches. It was like in slow motion. And the thing is, every day he practiced hard. It made the fight easy. And that’s a classic example of what happened. We put him through so much hell that once he blocked that four-punch combination, he thought with a surprised tone, “Oh no, are you serious? That’s what it’s going to be like?” And then he tore him apart. To be able to block someone’s attack â like a four-punch combo â and look at him like, “I blocked every single one of those,” that means your eyes are on the game. You’re on there. And for someone to look back and block everything you threw and smile, you’re whole demeanor is going to change. Not to mention [Nogueira] got dropped three times in one round, including a sweep. He just never had a chance to recover. MMAjunkie.com: Honestly, what’s it like holding Thai pads for someone who outweighs you by 100 pounds? Does your background in Enshin Karate and Muay Thai training with Fairtex prepare you for that level of impact? Ken Hahn: I think it does. Even in Enshin Karate, we held pads for each other, so it was a really good stepping stone to enter Thai boxing and hold Thai pads. You’ve got to understand that holding Thai pads is not just holding Thai pads. You have to sufficiently hold them in a fighting stance when you use them. You have to maintain that fighting stance when you hold them. A lot of guys will hold a Thai pad for a kick, and then they will use their back foot to brace for the impact. But you should be in a fighting stance and just twist your body to meet the kick, so you can absorb the impact properly by bending your knees and such. Does that make sense? MMAjunkie.com: It does, but doesn’t it ever hurt your forearms? Ken Hahn: Oh, it does. I mean everyone is going to have the pains. But, basically, I’m not just focusing so much on power when I’m holding the Thai pads. I mean, I’ve got 200-, 300-pound heavy bags that they can blast away on if they want to just blast away. I use them more for timing and distancing and technique than for blasting away â kind of like how boxing focus mitts are. Most people associate using the Thai pads with power, and you can if you are a big guy. But if you’re a small guy holding them for a big guy, then you have to change it up. You have to learn how to take the abuse. At the same time, I don’t agree with placing the Thai pad on your thigh because the kicker ends up kicking at a wrong angle or you will bust the pad holder’s elbow. MMAjunkie.com: Rumor has it Frank isn’t the easiest guy to get motivated for training. What methods did you employ to reach Frank’s competitive drive and bring it to the surface? Ken Hahn: The main thing was making Frank believe that it’s not a fight-to-fight kind of deal; it’s being a martial artist. A martial artist trains every day. He wakes up, brushes his teeth, trains, eats, sleeps and goes and does it all over again. Whereas a fighter â most of the time â just fights paycheck-to-paycheck. “Oh, I’ve got to train, OK?” Five weeks out, train, fight, take six months off. A martial artist fights and then takes a couple of days off, and then he’s right back in training. In fact, in the old days, when I would fight in the Sabaki Challenge and all that stuff, it was mandatory for me to come to practice the next day, even if I could barely walk, at least show up and walk around. Of course, all that is is spirit because the next day you are beat down, you don’t want to move, everything is sore, but to show up to class and at least move around, that’s the spirit that you have to develop. MMAjunkie.com: In Frank’s post-fight interview with Joe Rogan, he mentioned experiencing quite a bit of fear prior to entering the cage to face Nogueira. Were you aware of this, and if so, would you mind sharing some of the content from your pre-fight pep talk? Ken Hahn: Well, I think [Nogueira’s] a hero. He’s an MMA legend. And he’s definitely a dangerous fighter. Before fighting Lesnar, I remember Frank met Nogueira in person and he stood next to him and I told him, “You can’t look at him as a hero anymore. Now he’s a competitor, and you’re going to be the guy that kills the hero. You’ve got to fight him, and you’ve got to beat him.” So I think the biggest thing to motivate him was one, making him believe that he’s a martial artist, and two, letting him know that you don’t have to throw away anything you learned in the past. If you learned karate, go ahead (and) use the karate, but know when to use it. If you have a spinning back kick, you can’t use it in the beginning because it’s not a high-percentage hit, but if you wait until the third round, then he’s not going to be expecting it. Launch away. Another thing was I just let him have fun. I didn’t yell at him as much. I didn’t force him to do certain things until after he built a certain level of stamina. This was the first fight that we had five months to train. And we had injuries and all kinds of crap, but we still pushed forward. MMAjunkie.com: Out of all of Mir’s sparring partners leading up to his fight with Nogueira, who gave him the best run for his money during stand-up practice? If that’s a Striking Unlimited secret I will understand. Ken Hahn: We had access to pro boxers. … Not guys that just turned pro. I’m talking about top-30 pro boxers. These guys are legitimate, 10-fights, seven-KOs, legitimate guys. They are two Native American brothers. One guy is 175 pounds, and the other is 260 pounds. So when you get both of those guys at pro level hitting him, he’s going to get punched the way it’s supposed to feel. He’s going to have the movement to where he can’t touch you. Why do you think his distancing got so much better? When he has to chase down pro boxers that move and slip, you start figuring out the same thing. If you roll with a champion jiu-jitsu guy, you’re going to go, “Whoa, this is different.” But the more you train with him, the more you pick up. So for standup, having pro boxers as part of our team that want to work with him was very beneficial. Those pro boxers teach boxing hear at my gym, Striking Unlimited. MMAjunkie.com: Can you drop their names? Ken Hahn: Yeah, Derek Hinkey and Tyler Hinkey. But I think just offering up different types of fighters for Frank was important. Sometimes I would feed him guys that weren’t that good so he could get his skill level up. It’s one thing to train with the best guys, but you have got to use those guys efficiently. You can’t spar with them all the time or they will beat you up. You can spar with them once every other week. The other times, you need to be sparring on [crappier] guys so you can build your confidence and work on stuff without paying the ultimate price. Try to work on new stuff with a really good guy, and you’re going to end up getting knocked out. Try it on the [crappy] guys and they don’t have the skill level to make you pay, so when they do tag you it’s not going to be that bad. But if you go against a pro boxer and you drop your hands trying to do something, you’re out cold. MMAjunkie.com: Going into the fight between Mir and Nogueira, what did you perceive to be the most dangerous areas of Nogueira’s game as they applied to Frank? Ken Hahn: I think if you play into Nogueira’s game and let him drag the fight out long, that could be dangerous. If you played Nogueira’s game and came out and tried to take him down and play the jiu-jitsu game, I think Nogueira would probably have an easier time wearing Frank out just because he’s been there so many times live. No matter how many times you’ve trained your techniques in a tournament or practice, it’s not the same thing as live fire. But the way we trained, I knew his cardio was going to be there. I actually was sad that it didn’t go longer than two rounds because that extra ring time experience would have been beneficial for Frank. If you compare how many fights Frank has to Nogueira, it’s less than half. MMAjunkie.com: Did you or Frank study Nogueira’s past fights as part of Frank’s fight preparation? Ken Hahn: Basically, I watched an entire history of his fights twice, and then I developed my strategy. The only guys that he submitted were guys that didn’t have jiu-jitsu, and the submissions came toward the end of the rounds when his opponents were tired. But everyone knocks him down, so you can definitely land punches on him. And when I was watching “The Ultimate Fighter” and saw Ryan Bader sparring with him and punching him in the face, I was like, “Wait a minute. If Bader’s doing that, you’ve got to do the same thing.” And if he’s not respecting the punch, then he’s not respecting Frank until he gets roughed up. So now when you go back and watch videos, you can see how many mistakes Nogueira makes. I noticed a lot of important things the second time I watched his fights. MMAjunkie.com: Do you think more people will now start to recognize you as one of the top stand-up coaches in MMA? Anyone who watched the fight and read your weekly “TUF8” blogs on MMAjunkie.com would have recognized many of the same principles and techniques that you discussed in those blogs being put on display by Frank. Ken Hahn: I think the true test will probably be how many new people start joining my gym; how many people will switch from their current gym, like Randy’s gym and Warrior gym, to my gym because their fighters lost? The main thing for me is being comfortable with my accomplishments. I knew where I am and who I am. Remaining level-headed is important. Basically, I just wanted to create a world champion because if I can, then that means I can produce more. MMAjunkie.com: Are you excited to help Frank prepare once more for a fight with Brock Lesnar? Ken Hahn: Excited? It’s another fight man, and I take it as a job. I told Frank he would be a champion, but realistically, it’s up to him now. He’s got to show up. He’s got to want it because it’s going to be harder now. Now, he’s not the underdog. There’s just so much more pressure on him. But as far as training him for his next fight, yeah, of course, I want to see Brock Lesnar lose. And I love going into the octagon and watching my guy display all of the techniques that I taught him. That I think is more important as a martial artist. For me it has always been, “I’m going to make you better than I was.” That’s not what my other instructor did. A lot of instructors don’t want you to be better than them because then you make your own gym and create new competition. In the olden days if you truly loved them (your students), you gave them everything because they were like a child or your brother, and you wanted to make them as good as possible. I don’t do that with everyone, but if you listen and I trust you, I’m going to give you everything no matter what. Jacob Regar is a law school graduate, the independent lead writer for American Stand Up and an MMAjunkie.com contributor. He is also a practicing martial artist with a blue belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu