Sokoudjou’s key to beating Nakamura—Depressurization

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By Chuck Mindenhall

A lot less pressure. That’s what Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou says is the biggest difference between his upcoming UFC 84 fight with Kazuhiro Nakamura and his hyped UFC 79 debut bout with the more experienced Lyoto Machida. The fierce striking 2001 US Open Judo champion is built like Thor, and, though bloodied and still smarting from another intense training session at Team Quest in Murrieta, California, he’s all benevolence and smiles.

“My mistake was taking the Machida fight too serious, you know,” says the 24-year-old native of Hom’la, Cameroon, whose parents back in the homeland have absolutely no idea that he makes a living as a fighter. “I’d been out too long, nearly eight months, and I’d put too much pressure on myself. I got in there, and I just didn’t show up. It’s one of those things where you train, and you think you’re ready . . . and then you get in there and things don’t go your way.”

Pressure, of course, is one of the side-effects of hype—and there was no shortage of that on the back of Sokoudjou (4-2) going into the fight with the undefeated Machida, especially after having disposed of Antonio Rogerio Nogueira with a big left (23 seconds) and Ricardo Arona with an uppercut right (1:59) in his previous two fights in PRIDE. That’s two convincing knockouts over highly ranked opponents at 205 lbs in less time (2:22 combined) than it takes for most fighters to land a solid jab. The hype surrounding the “African Assassin” was certainly warranted. But as many octagoners have found out the hard way, the UFC can be a cruel wake-up call for those with one-dimensional game plans and a bad case of the jitters.

So the plan for Terry—as he’s known at Team Quest—heading into his fight with the judoka Nakamura? To depressurize.

I think I’ve always been mentally prepared, but usually I go into a fight just as if I’m going to practice . . . I go there, play, and go home. In the Machida fight I was going in to fight—and that’s a mistake. I’ve never let that happen to myself before. So this time I’m going in just to play.”

Sokoudjou moved to the States at the age of 16 to compete in the US Judo championships, and has not gone back to Cameroon since—although he plans on returning home after his bout with Nakamura. Asked if he’d finally tell his mother, who thinks he’s a student right now rather than a gladiator who makes his way to the cage in a tribal mask, of his true identity and he says “Hell no! She’d kill me!” (If you read this, Mrs. Sokoudjou, Terry will be enrolling after the Nakamura fight, and as a CSI fan, his emphasis will be on forensics) Sokoudjou’s English is so good that most of his Team Quest comrades are used to his good-spirited repartee at the gym.

And interestingly, Sokoudjou’s professional career has direct ties to Nakamura. Former two-division Pride champion Dan Henderson brought Sokoudjou in to help him train for his fight with Nakamura in 2004. Now four years later, Henderson is cornering Sokoudjou and hoping for similar results (Kaz lost to Hendo due to an injury).

“It’s kind of funny, the reason I’m fighting today is because of Nakamura, and now here I am, it’s me who’s got to fight him.” But, I’ve always wanted to fight Nakamura, ever since then.”

The parallels don’t end there. Nakamura’s last fight was a loss by unanimous decision to none other than Lyoto Machida at UFC 76 in September of 2007. Because Kaz tested positive for marijuana during the screening after that show, he served a mandatory three-month suspension and it’s now him who will face the challenge of fending off ring rust.

Nevertheless, Sokoudjou expects Kaz to be aggressive, which he hopes to take advantage of by dropping a few Geronimos into his head.

“I know Nakamura will come out bullrushing me, so I’ll keep my hands on his face and punch the crap out of him,” Sokoudjou says. “I’ve seen a few of his tapes, he’s a tough guy. Always goes forward, and never stops. It’ll be an interesting fight.”

The BJJ Blue belt also intends to show the full display of his arsenal, which includes a strong ground game that went missing in his UFC debut.

In that fight, a patient Machida took Sokoudjou to the ground and kept him on his back working from the guard and half-guard, supine positions that he was unable to generate any offense from. In fact, Terry looked clumsy and stiff on his back. Sokoudjou ultimately tapped due to an all-too-telegraphed arm triangle in the second round, a submission that Machida went for time and again with the relentlessness of a man trying to start a stubborn lawnmower.

“It was a little bit surprising,” Sokoudjou says of his helplessness to scramble Machida’s attempts. “I just wasn’t able to get myself back together and come back and do what I was supposed to do. But we move on.”

The lesson Sokoudjou took from the Machida fight boiled down to this: Cardio, cardio, cardio—and after that, technique.

So he brought in former judo champion and Olympic gold-medallist Pawel Nastula to help round out his game, along with Greco Roman cage vet Henderson, the big Aussie Peter Graham and the conscience of Team Quest, Ryan Parsons. The sessions are brutal—at one point Nastula worked Sokoudjou into the prostrate position, and then the fetal one after a half-hour session. The Team Quest crew are nothing if not the scaffolding to a teammate’s will power, and Sokoudjou kept at it. Asked how he felt afterwards, Sokoudjou said, “like sh*t—did you see how bad I got beat up today? Not fun.”

But worth it if he can get his first UFC win against Nakamura, whom he says is a resilient and hungry foe, but hardly a judo wunderkind. “I mean, if you look at his fights, he barely takes anybody down. He gets taken down a lot. I’ve seen three or four of his fights and most of them he barely does any takedowns, but Shogun [Rua] took him down, Kevin Randleman took him down. But he’s really good at getting up, too. He’ll take the fall but he gets back on his feet very quickly.”

Which is fine by Sokoudjou, so long as it’s his arm being raised at the end of the fight, which he suspects will be the case, feeling as footloose and fancy free as he is.

“I’ve always went in loose, like going to the playground instead of going to fight, and right now I just went back to my old self. Just go there and play and it’s just a fight, and I’ll go home with a win. No pressure, no nothing. Play time.”

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