At one time, Robbie Lawler was pegged to be mixed martial arts’ Mike Tyson. An unrepentant destroyer whose UFC wins over Aaron Riley, Steve Berger, and Tiki Ghosn in 2002 skyrocketed him from unknown to star, the 20-year old dubbed “Ruthless” had just one speed in the Octagon: go.
“When you play football and you score touchdowns, you don’t want to march the ball down the field, you want to run it in on the kickoff, or intercept the ball and run it back to keep scoring,” Lawler told me in a 2002 interview. “That’s what I want to do, as long as my body can keep up and I don’t get tired.”
In any combat sport though, the knockout artists are usually the first to burn out and fade away. Tyson’s prime was painfully short, and when Lawler dropped three of his next four UFC bouts to Pete Spratt, Nick Diaz, and Evan Tanner, it looked like the speeding comet from Iowa had run his course.
But then a funny thing happened, and Lawler, now out of the UFC, rebuilt himself. The power and speed were still there, but now added to the arsenal was a resilience that spoke volumes. It said ‘hey, even if I don’t knock you out, I can still beat you.’ Sure, he would stumble along the way, but each time he picked himself up. And now, nearly a decade after he introduced himself to the world, Lawler is still here, still relevant, and still not even 30 years old.
How did this happen?
“It’s probably because I’m more well-rounded than people give me credit for,” said Lawler during the final stages of his training camp for Saturday’s Strikeforce bout against Tim Kennedy in Chicago. “I train hard and work on all my skills, and the reason I win fights by knockout has to do with being able to keep it on my feet and being able to stay out of submissions and compete.”
So does it bother the 29-year old to still have some call him one-dimensional?
“I don’t really care,” he said. “People are gonna hate, and that’s just the way it is.”
That is the nature of the beast in pro sports these days, and it’s a growing phenomenon in MMA, where one loss can get the critics flying out of the woodwork. Yet when Lawler says he doesn’t care, he really means it, and his ability to not buy in to any negative outside talk over the years may be the true key to his success.
Currently 18-7 with 1 NC, Lawler is at an interesting and pivotal point in his career. After scoring some memorable post-UFC knockouts over Falaniko Vitale, Joey Villasenor, Eduardo Pamplona, and Frank Trigg in various organizations such as Superbrawl, Icon Sport, PRIDE, and the IFL, Lawler settled in with EliteXC in 2007 and won that promotion’s middleweight title with a knockout of Murilo “Ninja” Rua.
The next location for him was Strikeforce, but he’s only managed a 2-3 record thus far, with wins over Melvin Manhoef and Matt Lindland, and losses to Jake Shields, “Babalu” Sobral and “Jacare” Souza. And there’s no cupcake waiting for him in Kennedy, so the question has to be asked, is it tough mentally to have to face killer after killer each time you walk from the locker room to the cage?
“No stress,” Lawler deadpans. “I know what I’m capable of, I know what I can do, and I’m not worried about anyone else.”
But Lawler has made the proper adjustments over the years to make sure he’s at his best come fight night. A longtime member of the Miletich Fighting Systems camp, Lawler worked with Matt Hughes H.I.T. Squad for a while before settling in with the Power MMA camp in Arizona, and while longtime striking coach Matt Pena is still on board, it’s the wrestlers in his new gym – Ryan Bader, CB Dollaway, Aaron Simpson – that have kept him working hard and staying hungry.
“They’re hard workers and they’re wrestlers, so that’s what I’m used to training with, and when I’m working out, that’s who my buddies are, so it was an easy transition,” said Lawler of the move from the Midwest. “When you grow up around wrestlers and train with wrestlers your whole life, it doesn’t really matter where they’re from.”
If Lawler’s team has gotten his takedown defense on point for this Saturday’s bout, allowing him to keep the fight standing, it might be a rough night for Kennedy, who “Ruthless” describes as “A hard worker, a grinder, and a pretty good guy at submissions.”
If not, Kennedy, who has submission victories in seven of his 13 wins, could make things very difficult for Lawler.
This ‘what if’ game makes this an intriguing battle, and it gets even more so since the stakes are high, with both fighters having what they see as unfinished business with 185-pound champ Souza. But Lawler’s not into the speculation game, so for now, he’ll just worry about the fight in front of him.
“I want to win and I want to be the best,” he said. “I’m not here to necessarily put on great shows, that’s just part of what I do.”
So has anything changed since he was a fresh-faced 20-year old looking to score the MMA equivalent of the 80-yard touchdown every time the bell rang?
“No, that’s just the way the game’s supposed to be played and that’s the way I play,” said Lawler. “I play with a lot of intensity and I just want to go out there and get the job done. And most of the time, it’s pretty exciting.”
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