UFC: Nick Ring Talks Training with GSP, UFC Debut, and Hate-Mail

Undefeated in 11 professional bouts, injury-free and aligned with Montreal’s TriStar gym, the future appears to be very bright for Nick “The Promise” Ring.

Prior to making a name for himself on "The Ultimate Fighter: Team Liddell vs. Team Ortiz" for both his well-rounded skill set and colourful personality, Ring was regarded by many Canadian mixed martial arts fans as one of the sport’s best kept secrets. Boasting a pre-"TUF" resume that included 10 wins—including seven first-round stoppages with notable victories over Bill Mahood and Ryuichi Murata, Ring’s rise to prominence has been seen by many as a long time coming.

Once on "The Ultimate Fighter," it didn’t take long for Ring to make an impression on his fellow competitors and coaches, including Tito Ortiz, who, after seeing Ring pick up a TKO victory over Woody Weatherby in the tournament’s elimination round, picked “The Promise” with his squad’s first selection.

After beating the tournament’s eventual winner and current UFC middleweight Court McGee in his second bout on "The Ultimate Fighter," Ring re-aggravated a knee injury and was subsequently forced to withdraw from the tournament.

After undergoing another knee surgery—his fourth—and being forced off his season’s finale, Ring made his much-anticipated professional Octagon-debut against two-time DEEP middleweight champion Riki Fukuda at UFC 127 in Sydney, Australia. In what proved to be a controversial ruling, Ring was awarded a unanimous decision victory over Fukuda after three rounds of action.

In the future, Ring will be looking to build on his undefeated record as he continues to take on progressively stiffer competition in the UFC’s middleweight division.

Recently, I sat down for an exclusive interview with the Calgary-based mixed martial artist.

How is life for Nick Ring these days?

Life is fine. Back to boring—you know what I mean? All the lights are off and you’ve got to go back to real-life.

Is it tough to get back to your ever day life after devoting two months of your life to a fight?

I spent six weeks in Montreal leading up to this fight—there’s a lot of stuff that falls behind while you’re gone. It’s not hard otherwise. Right now I’m just cleaning up a bunch of messes—you know how it is.

How does it feel to be back home in Calgary?

Man, I love it. I love Calgary. I don’t like leaving for long periods of time, but hey—sometimes that’s what you’ve got to do for you job, right?

Is that the first time that you’ve travelled to prepare for a fight?

I went down there in November—just to check it out. They’ve got a lot of really good guys there.

Could you tell me a bit about your experience at TriStar in Montreal?

Man, they’ve got an unbelievable roster of fighters and talent. There’s always a bunch of new guys coming through, but you’ve got Georges [St. Pierre], Denis Kang, Rory MacDonald—sorry if I’m forgetting names—but they’ve got really good guys to go out there and train with. With Firas [Zahabi]—I love what he does with the guys...I’ll be back.

How does it feel training with guys like Georges St. Pierre and Rory MacDonald?

The skill levels are very high. With Georges—first of all getting over the star-struck thing—I’ve been watching him for years, so to be training with Georges, I’m like, “Wow—this is crazy!” After you get over that, he’s just a really skilled athlete—he’s got such a good martial arts game and I see him being champ for a long time yet.

Do you think there’s anybody in the game that beat Georges?

No, I don’t.

What makes Georges so great, in your opinion?

I think it’s his work-ethic, really. He’s always all-ears to his coaches, and he’s always looking for new ways to be better—he doesn’t mind putting in the work, right?

What inspired you to get involved in the sport to begin with?

You know what; I was a kick-boxer to start off with. I was in Calgary doing this stuff in the ‘90s. Mixed martial arts was something that we saw on the videos or whatever [laughs]. We were aware of it up here, but it really wasn’t happening. I got in contact with a few guys that were doing some of this stuff—they were doing some grappling, it was Brian Bird and a bunch of other guys back in the old days. Brian would’ve been one of the pioneers of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and mixed martial arts in Calgary and these competitions started going on around town. Like I said, I was in kick-boxing, so I could only go so long without trying it—it was kind of like a new thing, I loved the no-rule environment whereas kick-boxing is all stand-up and Jiu-Jitsu is all on the ground. I thought it was really neat that you could mix the two, and I really wanted to be a part of it. When I had my opportunity, I took it.

Did you ever think that you would be this successful?

I don’t know, that’s kind of a tough question. I’ve always wanted to. I’ve had a lot of injuries and that was something I really had to push through to get here, but I’ve always had my eye on being in the UFC and finally I’m here.

What do you think you would be doing if you weren’t involved in the sport?

Oh, probably be a janitor or something like that [laughs]. Believe me, I’m not very qualified for much else. So you know what? This is gonna happen there, boys.

What did you want to be when you were growing up?

You know what? I never actually wanted to be anything [laughs]. I wanted to be a professional fighter, so...

Like, a professional kick-boxer?

I always gravitated towards martial arts. I did a bit of schooling part-time, here and there, and I went down that road for a little while while I was doing my martial arts, but I was having a lot of success and at a certain point I just wanted to focus on the martial arts and that’s what I did. If you want to be good at this sport, you’ve got to put in the time, right?

When did you start kick-boxing?

That was ’94.

How old would you’ve been back in ’94?

[Laughs] 15—I was a little punk kid.

Were you involved in any other martial arts before you got into kick-boxing?

When I was a kid, the thing that got me into martial arts was "The Ninja Turtles," so my parents put me in karate. What kid my age didn’t take karate? I think that was pretty much everybody. I did that for a couple years, but we moved to another town that didn’t really offer anything like that, so I probably put that down for four or five years and then I got into kick-boxing when I was 15, and we moved back to Calgary. We moved to Edmonton for a little while and moved back to Calgary and started taking kick-boxing.

You wanted to compete in K-1 as a kick-boxer—that was your goal?

Well not for the first couple years. I trained for two years doing that before I competed and I did that for a while—in four or five years I thought maybe that could be a goal. When you put that many hours into martial arts you come to the realization that maybe this could pay the bills someday. That was kind of a goal for a while, then I started paying more attention to this MMA-stuff—I started doing it and I kind of shifted directions.

Why do you fight?

I think it’s called testosterone. I don’t know—I don’t think I really have a good reason, I think it’s always just been something that I gravitated to. I like the competition, I like the preparation—all that stuff. This sport is the most raw and primal sport I can even think of—it beats running, playing a game of basketball, baseball, whatever. There’s nothing like it—it’s a true mental and physical challenge. Any athlete in any other sport will tell you the same thing; fighting is definitely one of the hardest.

How important has the sport been to your life?

This sport has been very important to my life. It’s been pretty much my whole life since I was a teenager.

Do you consider the sport to be a passion of yours or is it more of a job?

When you’re doing anything this many hours a day, it’s both. It is a passion, but you have to treat it like a job if you want to get anywhere. That’s putting in the same amount of time each and every week, training—even when you don’t feel like it. It’s just like any other job; you’ve got to get up and go—whether you like it or not. You pick this job because you are passionate, and if you aren’t passionate, you’re not going to go very far.

Do you ever have difficulty getting out of bed to train?

I’ve got my days, I think just like anyone else. But I make it happen, I like doing it, so it’s not that big of a deal to get out of bed.

Do you have a lot of nervous energy leading up to a fight?

No, no, no. I don’t think it’s like that for me. I mean, obviously you’ve got to prepare but I don’t think it’s a nervous thing at all—it’s more of a competitive thing.

Did you have any jitters before your UFC debut?

You know what?  That was probably the most relaxed I’ve been. They run so efficiently that I didn’t have anything to worry about. I’ve fought quite a few times and it’s just another day at the office, I suppose, but when I got out there, walking out to the crowd—there was just so many of them, I think it was a 20,000 person crowd—you couldn’t see any individual one; it was just a sea of people. I think that actually had the effect of making me less nervous—not more. I think it’s harder to fight in front of a crowd of 400 where half are friends and family than it was fighting there. When it’s 20,000, it’s dark, it’s loud and you just kind of go through the motions; head to the ring and do your job.

How do you feel about your most recent performance?

I feel fine, I guess. I haven’t actually watched the fight to tell you the truth—I should get on that. I know a lot of people aren’t too happy with it, right? I guess I can’t comment on it until I watch it.

After the third round ended, did you feel that you had won the fight?

I got my ass kicked in the third round—well not really, I was just really tired. That’s the first third-round fight I’ve actually had. They gave me the first two, and they gave him the third—I definitely wasn’t feeling good after the third.

When would you like to compete again?

Sooner is better than later. I don’t like to take too much time off—even off that knee surgery; that was a full year off and I didn’t get to do any training for most of that time. I don’t like spending too much time off the matt and I don’t like spending too much time out of the cage. For me, what is ideal, is once every two or three months, but at this level, I think you tend to get banged up, so I think the longer rest periods are necessary. Once every three or four months is more realistic with this level of competition.

How does it feel, as a professional athlete, to have something like a lingering knee-injury keep popping up?

Yeah, it’s frustrating. I don’t think it will happen again, though. I changed surgeons—because I had the two ACL injuries and the other surgery was a bone graft. After the second ACL, I decided to go with another surgeon. Her name is Laurie Hiemstra—she’s brilliant. She works on the Olympic alpine skiers—you want to see bad knees, you’ve got to see these guys; bolting down the hill at a hundred kilometres an hour—when they wipe out, it’s real. People say MMA is dangerous, try alpine skiing; that’s one sport where you have a legitimate chance of dying and their knees take a shit-kicking. Some of these guys will blow all of their ligaments in both knees and Laurie is the one that puts them all back together. I figured mine was just a simple ACL, it wouldn’t be a problem for her—she’s fixed worse than mine.

With the four knee surgeries in four years, did you ever consider retiring instead of going back to the sport?

No, not really. That’s what was kind of frustrating, was, you know if I had something else going on then maybe retiring would’ve been something I would’ve considered—I never wanted to retire from martial arts, though. I had the first one and I thought, okay, we’ll just rehab it. That surgery blew, so I thought, okay go get it again. I had a long lay-off after that one because I had to get a bone graft, and then, I had to wait nine months for the ACL then I had to rehab another year for that one. I never considered retiring at all. If I am going to retire, I’m going to make that final; I don’t want to be popping in and popping out. When I say things I generally mean them.

Outside of mixed martial arts, what are you interested in?

I like real-estate. I’ve got a couple rental houses. I’m a landlord, so my job is to go around and collect rent and all of that good, fun stuff.

Does anybody ever give you any trouble?

[Laughs] You know what? I get trouble all the time. These tenants are very imaginative in how disruptive they can be to you—it’s hilarious. Shit, I’ve never even thought of.

Any crazy stories?

[Laughs] I’ve got tons of stories, but I’m not going to even get into it, though. I don’t even know what to say, but I’ve got a lot of them, though.

How would you like to be remembered by fans of the sport when you’re fighting days are behind you?

You know what? I don’t care what they think of me—they can think whatever they want. I really don’t care.

How do you think you’ll be remembered?

I don’t know. Quite honestly, I don’t read any of those things—I don’t know.

You’re not interested in the sport outside of your own fighting?

I really don’t watch it that much. Obviously I am interested, but I don’t watch that many videos or anything like that. I am a martial artist, I like to train, so if I am watching a video it’s usually so I can pick it apart. I am an MMA fan, of course, but I’ve got a lot of other interests as well.

Is there anything that you’d like to say to your fans while you have this opportunity?

[Laughs] No, not really.

No?

Quit sending me hate mail!

Do you get a lot of hate-mail?

All the time. These guys always think they’re being original, too. “Oh, you’re gay,” “Oh, you’re stupid.” I don’t know. I can’t really say too much about the fans. Some of them are real nice and some of them need to—whatever. I just think it’s silly. It blows my mind—I would never conceive of sending anybody any hate-mail, but oh well. Some people think differently. There are a lot of weirdoes out there.

Especially on the internet.

Oh, man. Guys, leave me alone—I have a life, okay?

That’s your message to the fans?

Oh, well. The rest of you, though; I love you. Unless you’re sending me hate mail—then I don’t like you.