By Jeff Mayweather
Lately I have been fortunate to venture into the world of Mixed Martial Arts. My first stint with mma was a smashing success with “King” Mo Lawal. Mo came to me right before his big bout with Roger Gracie.
Mo has a passion for boxing, so his coming to me for help with his stand up and striking was an easy fit. When Mo first told me who he was fighting, to be honest I didn’t know much about mma, and had never heard of Roger. But just as if you know nothing about boxing, you would still know something about the name Mayweather, the Gracie name is the same in mixed martial arts.
I knew that King Mo, no matter how great a wrestler he was in college couldn’t use his ground game against a Gracie. The only thing Mo did was give me his name and said to look him up on Youtube. The second I saw him it was easy for me to assess what we needed to do in order to give ourselves a realistic chance of emerging victorious.
I taught King Mo the overhand right, the punch that would knock Roger Gracie out, and Mo’s stock rose in mma. Ironically so would mine. I’m currently working with Roy Nelson better known as Big Country. Before that, I was supposed to meet with George St. Pierre, but that never materialized. I did work with Vito Belfort for a short time, but our schedules clashed so we had to terminate that relationship.
Since then I have communicated with Rashuad Evans about the possibility of working together. I was most recently hired by Danny Castillo, also a young mma fighter who is very talented.
Before I move forward with my story about my transition from boxing to mma, let me share a few things about Roy Nelson, aka Big Country. This guy is a joy to work with, very funny, but also works very hard. Contrary to popular belief, he has great defensive skills. When I was called to work with him and I told people about it, anyone that knew anything about mma said that this guy is known for taking punching and has a great chin.
So when I first worked with him, I thought “I got my work cut out for me helping this guy with his defensive skills.” Low and behold I was shocked that this guy had great defense. But when he gets a little tired his defense falls apart, plus I think he likes giving the fans a show as well.
Until King Mo came into my life, I knew almost nothing about mma. I only knew of Rampage and Anderson Silva. It’s funny when I was told that G.S.P wanted to meet up with me, I had no idea who this guy was, but everyone was texting me G.S.P! I said to myself this guy must be huge if he can be recognized by those three letters. At times I would even call him G.P.S, something I was more familiar with. So that was a very funny experience to me.
I’m looking forward to branching out even more to become more of a dual trainer. There’s not a huge difference between mma fighters and boxers in regards to my way of teaching. In most cases it just boils down to technique and how fast one can catch onto what I’m trying to get across to them.
Fortunately, I have worked with some of the better known fighters because they already know some form of boxing. I try to tighten up the loose ends and try not to judge them as though they are boxers. However, I do have high expectations from them because I believe in hard work and I also have a very high win to loss ratio which sits at about 90%. This is pretty amazing, but either I have been blessed with talented fighters or my method of training works very well. I like to think it’s a combination of both. With that being said I’m still making the transition
