Ultimate Fight Night Interviews 9 December 2000
Gaz Roriston, Ninja, Danny Batten, Alex Reid, Dex & Lee Murray
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Gaz Roriston : Groundfighting in Vegas Trainer: Andy Jardine SFUKING: Despite being recognised as one of Andy Jardine’s most enthusiastic fighters, your last two pro fights haven’t gone as you’d have liked them to. What do you intend to do to redress the balance Gaz? Gaz Roriston: In all honesty, now on the UK Vale Tudo circuit, because it’s so small, there’s a lot of people bringing lots of new techniques to the forum. I’m not trying to make excuses, but the judges all need to be fighters now. There are a lot of great fighters out there at the moment. I’m going to be modelling myself on Sakabura right now. He lost all his fights for a year and now he’s the Gracie hunter [laughs]. Thing is, I’ve never really had the chance to get good behind closed doors before I started competing. My entire MMA education has been in the ring. I love to fight. I’m here to fight you see my face at every show. SFUKING: What’s your training regime like at the moment? Gaz Roriston: I’m improving my drills right now. You know, drill my techniques. I learnt a lot in Las Vegas. I have a lot of techniques out there now but I’m not, like, at one with them yet. It’s a question of applying them smoothly and drilling them down. I feel that, in terms of groundwork I’ve got as wider knowledge as a lot of people out there in terms of BJJ and the new BJJ. I’ve trained with Andre Palaneres who has brought a lot of techniques out of Brazil. But the sport is changing. Its not just Brazilian Jiu Jitsu any more — you have to mix up your freestyle wrestling, your judo. Freestyle wrestling in my opinion has the best takedowns and the best base out there so I’d like to start drilling my freestyle; double legs my side control and stuff. My stand ups fine, but at the moment I’m grappling fit. I want to be stand up fit, all-round fit. SFUKING: Tell us a bit about your time training in Vegas. Gaz Roriston: I had a great time. I have relatives out there who I went and stayed with. It was wicked. I think about it all the time and really want to go back again. SFUKING: Who did you train with out there? Gaz Roriston: I trained with John Lewis. I trained six days a week, twice a day. Brazilian Jiu Jitsu classes but Vale Tudo two evenings a week. So I picked up a lot of submission techniques and various tricks fighting with a Gi. But I have to start applying that to my Vale Tudo. Well, I’ve got better at it. I just want to start applying what I learnt in Vegas more. I want to train more with Alex Reid. SFUKING: Do you know your next fight yet? My next fight will probably be Andy’s next show, Millenium Brawl 2. SFUKING: Thanks Gaz. Ricky ‘Ninja’ Salhan : What a striker! WAKO British Champion Trainer: Andy Jardine. SFUKING: How did you like your first Pro Vale Tudo fight? Ninja: Errr…It was allright. I was a bit nervous. I tried to keep myself calm. I’ve had quite a lot of kickboxing fights already so I knew what I was in there doing. And I went ahead and did it.0 SFUKING: How did you prepare for this fight in comparison to your kickboxing? Ninja: Nothing much different really. Same training. Pretty much the same. My next fight is for the European Championship WAKO rules. SFUKING: And Vale Tudo? Ninja: Well I’ll see how that goes. I’m not really that hot on Vale Tudo. I’m more into the kickboxing, but I’ll give Vale Tudo a go. I’ll do a few more Vale Tudo fights. See who I’m matched up against and see how I do and then I’ll decide if I’m going to carry on doing it. I might be fighting in Millenium Brawl 2. I don’t know yet. SFUKING: Thank you very much, Ricky. Danny Batten : Definitely one to watch. One of the brightest talents to emerge in 2000 Trainer: Lee Hasdell SFUKING: That was a spectacular fight, Danny. How did you find it? Danny Batten: I can’t remember a lot about it, to be honest. I go into one when I’m in there and I can’t remember much about the fight. When I got mounted I just wanted to stay on there as long as I could because I knew it was tiring. And I was feeling tired myself. So while I was mounted, I just rode him and rested myself. Doesn’t take much energy just firing a few punches down from there. And I think that’s what really turned it around. I think up to there it was just about even. I think it was a case of him being better standing up and me being better on the ground. And luckily it went my way. SFUKING: Where are you going on from here? I mean fight-wise? Danny Batten: I don’t know. I’ll have to have a chat and see. SFUKING: Have you got any other events lined up? Danny Batten: Erm, yeah. I’m going to be fighting in the European Jiu Jitsu championships in Janurary and then I’m going to be doing a Luta Livre tournament in February. I’m not too sure where its going to be held just yet but I know its sometime in February in the UK. SFUKING: Have you been changing your training schedule recently? Because you’re reasonably new to the sport? How are you preparing? Danny Batten: Yes, I’m quite new to this. I come from a Tae Kwon Do background which many people know now but I’ve been doing Thai Boxing with Lee, improving my standup and striking. And obviously the Shin Shen Jutsu (SSJ) where my groundwork has come from. I don’t suppose anything’s changed really because I’m training in everything. SFUKING: I hear you did an SSJ seminar recently? Tell us how that went? Yeah that went really good. It was good experience for me. It was just Tae Kwon Do guys really, because they don’t know much about ground fighting. It was good, it was a bit of an insight for them. Some nice fresh stuff for them. Alex Reid : The man Dexter rates as a great kick boxer Trainer: Andy Jardine SFUKING: Tell us how you approached this fight, Alex? Alex Reid: Well I took a fight two weeks ago on Fred Rado’s Pancrase show so I was feeling a little Battle Fatigued. I could have done with a little bit more rest. Its just that I’ve got so much going on in my life at the moment that its like there’s either nothing happening or its all going off at once. Never somewhere in the middle. I’ve got my acting going on right now so I’ve got auditions, things going on, jobs and that. And its always the same thing. As soon as my acting takes off, loads of fights happen. And it doesn’t look good. I’ve got a cut eye now and a casting on Tuesday which isn’t going to look good. SFUKING: Tell us what you thought about your fight tonight. Alex Reid: My fight. It went okay. I think I could have done a lot better. I feel I was very sloppy. My hands should have been tighter, I really wanted to knock him out. I wasn’t that happy with my performance. I know I’ve got a lot more in me. My groundwork’s alright, I mean I finished it. I’m happy but I should have annihilated him. I was looking for the knockout. SFUKING: Tell us about Fred’s fight as well. Alex Reid: Fred’s fight was pretty much the same. I think its rust because I’ve been out of action for the last year. Going back to acting school. So I’ve not really been concentrating that hard on my training. So these last few fights have just been getting me back into it. They were good results but I’ve got quite a wide experience in Martial Arts. I mean, tonight was my fourteenth mixed martial arts event. It’s a shame because I didn’t really think my opponent was up to my standard really. I wanted a challenge. In fact I felt a bit sorry for the guy. I don’t mean that to be derogatory but it took all the venom out of my punches. I need to go in there feeling a bit nasty and I didn’t feel nasty at all. I didn’t really want to hurt him. I don’t really like to hurt people. If I’m scared of them I don’t mind. If someone’s nasty or says nasty things to me then its war but when the guys nice, its like hitting Clark Kent. SFUKING: What’s next for ‘the Reidenator’? Alex Reid: Rest. I don’t want to fight for a while. I want to drill and concentrate on my technique. I’m very rusty. I mean I probably will fight again but at the moment I want to rest, concentrate on my technique and my acting. All the time I put into my training I’m taking away from career of wanting to be an actor and I really want that bad. It works towards it as well though, because all of the martial arts stuff I do carries over into the acting. I just had an audition for Blade 2 as a vampire hunter and they want lots of good martial arts guys so that helps. So it does carry over but in all, I need to concentrate more on my acting at this time in my life. SFUKING: So how long do you think it will be before we see you in another Mixed Martial Arts event? Alex Reid: I don’t like to say. At the moment I just need to rest. I don’t like to fight too much. I like to fight four, maybe five times a year max. SFUKING: Thanks very much, Alex. Lee Murray and Dexter Casey : Ringside with the Woolwich Massive SFUKING: What’s coming up in the near future with you guys? What are you looking forward to? Dexter Casey: We’re both coming back in Feburary to fight. Bringing mean intentions back to the ring in England. There are all these people don’t know how to fight properly. They come into the ring, fanny about and don’t want to hurt each other and they’re all, like, giving up too soon. You see people get hit one time and they give up. Do you know what I mean? We’ve seen some very good fights here today, but we’ve also seen a few fights where people aren’t doing it how I would do it. I’m not the best in the world, but ringside I can see places where they could improve. But saying that, there have been some real good fights today. Neil and Danny Batten were the best. By far. Danny Batten was taking a beating in the first round and he came back and turned it around and I’m really impressed by that. That’s guts. Some fighters, and I won’t name any names, get licked one time they just give up. They go home. I’m not speaking in about anyone in particular though. I did see one boy though, what’s his name? Mike Tomlinson. He took a bit of a licking this time and lost, but last time he was getting beat and I could see he was thinking of giving up but he came back and he beat Gaz last time. He was impressive. SFUKING: What about you, Lee. Any favourite fights? Lee Murray: Not really. I’m just waiting until my fight in February. And I really hope Danny Rushton will take the fight. So we can have a re-match. SFUKING: If Danny doesn’t take the fight who would be the opponent you’d most like to fight bar him? Lee Murray: I’ll fight anybody, anywhere. Anyplace. Dexter Casey: I want Keith Dace. I just spoke to Keith Dace earlier and he said he’d fight me. That he’d have a re-match. And we’ve got three more fighters back in Woolwich now. SFUKING: What’s the scariest, Lee, Vale Tudo or marriage? Lee Murray: Oh. Marriage. Definitely Back to UFN Report part 1 | part 2 | part 3 Related Links:
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