What We Learned Inside Chris Weidman’s Fight Camp

UFC star Chris Weidman doesn’t have the face of a fighter.

It’s smooth and unblemished. There is no crooked nose, lingering shiner or cauliflower ears. How does a man who attacks people for a living have a face like that? “I try not to get hit,” says Weidman. “But I’m not scared to take a hit.” He’ll eat punches all day long if need be, but he manages to avoid getting whapped aggressively in the mug.

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One could reason it is because of his defensive skills – he has never been taken down – or his wrestling moves honed from his college days. Or it could be due to his wife, Marivi.

When Weidman entered the Ultimate Fighting Championship league in 2009, Marivi gave him an ultimatum. “She told me that if I ever came home with a black eye, I was done,” say Weidman.

So far, so good. Today Weidman boasts a 13-0 UFC record, and he says his goal is to finish his career undefeated. He is a terror in the Octagon, pulverising opponents into submission, including a wicked leg block against Anderson Silva that shattered Silva’s left limb in 2013.

And yet outside the ring, Weidman is a doting father and husband. During the first few weeks of training camp for his December 12 UFC 194 middleweight fight against Luke Rockhold (14-2), Weidman dropped off and picked up his son and daughter at school because Marivi had just given birth. “I am used to being told what to do [by Marivi],” says one of the toughest guys on Earth.

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So how does a guy go from giving his young daughter a hug goodbye in the morning to pummelling a punching bag an hour later? Weidman has mastered the art of compartmentalizing his life, a skill any man who wants to be successful could use.

Your job may call for aggression, assertiveness and decisiveness, but just as important, you need to be able to flick the switch to family man, friend and neighbour when you’re no longer on the clock. Weidman’s UFC success is ironically driven by failure. As an amateur wrestler at New York’s Hofstra University, he became a two-time All-American in his 90kg weight class.

In 2007, he placed third at the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) championship, his highest finish. “I accomplished a lot, but I never achieved my dreams of being a collegiate national champion and an Olympian,” says Weidman.

“I wasn’t working as hard as I could, and I was surviving off my competitive side.”

After college, Weidman and a pregnant Marivi lived in his parents’ basement while he worked as an assistant wrestling coach at Hofstra and taught private wrestling lessons to scrape together a low five-figure income. An injury torpedoed his chances of making the 2008 US Olympic wrestling team and UFC was a last-ditch effort to keep competing.

By then, Weidman had awakened to the fact that his talent would only take him so far. At this juncture he had no room for error.

“I wasn’t just slapping myself in the face by not working hard,” he says. “I had to go out and do my best for my family.” Beginning in 2009, he won his first three UFC fights in the first round. Defeating Silva twice in 2013 catapulted him to UFC stardom. Earlier this year, Weidman KO’d Vitor Belfort in the first round to give him his sixth career knockout. “He is very well rounded as an MMA fighter,” says Fox Sports UFC Fight Week co-host Richie Vaculik. “Extremely confident, too. Huge self-belief.”

The fight against Rockhold will be the closest Weidman has come to competing against a mirror image of himself. “They have very similar styles,” says UFC president Dana White. “Both are good wrestlers and can punch and kick hard. Rockhold will be the aggressor.” Rockhold’s best chance to win, says White, is to exploit any holes in Weidman’s fitness. “Weidman’s cardio has been tested. Rockhold will push the pace, take this thing to the later rounds, and try to wear Weidman out.”

As Weidman has risen through the UFC ranks, White has gotten to know him outside the Octagon. At times, White acknowledges, it’s hard to tell that Weidman is a professional fighter. “This guy doesn’t have a bad bone in his body,” he says. “He represents the guy next door.” When Weidman goes into fighter mode, though, his camp refers to the mood shift as going to the dark side. “He is the van-driving husband and father by day, but in the gym he loves to mix it up,” says White.

For all the talk about UFC being a rough and tumble blood sport, far less is made of a fighter’s need to stay cool. “You can’t be a madman going crazy,” says Longo.

“You want controlled aggression.”