The MMA Q&A: Ryan Bader

Ryan Bader chats with Cameron Gidari on this week's MMA Q&A.

MMAMADNESS: How did you become a mixed martial artist?

RYAN BADER: I’ve been a wrestler for my whole life. Wrestled in college and wrestled at the elite level and nothing to do after that… as far as being an athlete. Work, come home, not worrying about going to practice, and I found out that I missed that part, I missed the competition. MMA’s a natural progression for collegiate wrestlers, so it kind of fell into place. A friend was training at Arizona Combat Sports, and asked for a little help in wrestling, [he was] fighting Matt Hammill. It was Jesse Forbes, and we went in with him and started training. Had my first fight, loved it, and stuck with it.

MM: What was your first experience as a mixed martial artist?

RB: My first experience was probably my first fight. I was fighting at an Indian reservation in Arizona, and I’m warming up. Kind of nervous, and a bunch of things running through my head as far as what’s going to happen, how it’s going to play out, and I look over at my guy who I’m fighting. I’m fighting a guy… he has a long pony tail, and he starts warming up on the mits, and his pony tail flew around and hit himself in the eye, and he went down, and then right there I was like, ‘I think I’m good on this fight.’ That kind of alleviated some of the nerves.

MM: What is the best part of being a mixed martial artist?

RB: The schedule. It allows me to be an athlete which I’ve always wanted to be. That’s how I grew up, since I was five years old, doing some kind of athletics. Basically I’m living the life of a college student without school. I just have to train, and that’s what I did as a wrestler going to school, so now I’m just training full time and… getting ready for fights. The freedom to do that, freedom to be my own boss physically and get to the gym and do what I need to do and then after the fights, have some fun for a little while, then back to training. It’s pretty much the freedom and the competition and the desire to be the best that I can be at my particular sport.

MM: Is there anyone in the sport that you look up to?

RB: There’s tons of guys I look up to. For me, I like watching the guys that came from my background. I like watching those wrestlers, early wrestlers. The Dan Hendersons, Randy Couture. It gives you a blueprint, how they came up and how they’re succesful. But I also like watching different types of styles, like Anderson Silva. [Antonio Rodrigo] Nogueira I look to a ton, being on his team on the Ultimate Fighter and getting to know the guy and how cool of a guy and caring of a guy, and also his skills as a mixed martial artist. I look up to him a ton.

MM: So who was the first person to call you ‘Darth?’

RB: I didn’t really like it for awhile. They started calling me ‘Darth’ on these wrestling message boards a little bit, and Aaron Simpson was calling me it in college. When I came to Arizona Combat Sports… they started calling me it without prior knowledge to it, so I’m never going to get away from it. It’s better than ‘master-Bader,’ so I’ll take it.

MM: As a Star Wars nerd I love it. You even have the theme music remixed as your walkout song. Who did that?

RB: I just found it. It’s a Rage Against the Machine remix to the Imperial March.

MM: Arizona Combat Sports is a very close knit camp. What benefit does that give you?

RB: The benefit is that we know each other well, we’ve been buddies and cage fighters for ten plus years… It’s knowing the guys… and also we’ve been going so long that we’re all real competitive. We want to beat each other and want to progress and turn it up all the time, so in sparring we go after it. No one wants to give an inch. And we’re there for each other. If Aaron [Simpson] has a fight and I just got done with my fight, I’m there for him and vice versa, so it’s not like, ‘I had a fight, I’m done for two months afterwards.’ It’s one thing that makes us successful