When he was a math teacher at Oak Hills High in Cincinnati, Rich Franklin liked his students to show proof of their work on assignments because, well—math is all about how you got there. Though Matt Hamill was never a direct student of Franklin’s, he has worked out a simple equation: Train hard, beat Franklin at 205, and become a legitimate contender in the most glamorous division of them all.
Sounds straightforward enough. But showing proof of work is a tall order for a man with everything to prove.
Hamill (6-1) will get his chance to beat one of MMA’s most recognizable names at UFC 88 in Atlanta in Franklin. And you know what? UFC matchmaker Joe Silva couldn’t have put together a more compelling piece of theater with this fight. Here is a deaf fighter in Hamill, a two-time world champion freestyle wrestler with a chance to graduate to his potential, taking on a dangerous freelancing striker in Franklin (25-3, 1 NC), the former middleweight champion who is jumping up to light heavy for the first time since he took out Ken Shamrock at the original Ultimate Fighter finale in 2005.
To paraphrase the Jiu-Jitsu mantras, here we have a game of “kinetic chess.”
“[It’s] easily the biggest fight of my career,” says Hamill from upstate New York, where he’s been training with Duff Holmes. “I never thought I’d fight Rich Franklin. I feel thrilled and excited. I feel ready. I’ve been working on everything.”
Except maybe stoking the pre-fight fires.
Though both fighters are native Ohioans—Franklin from Cincy, Hamill from Loveland—there isn’t a lot of territorializing going on here, no war of words, no cheap shots, no King of the Buckeyes banter—not even playfully. They are friends. In fact, Hamill affectionately says that he “never thought of Rich as a rival, more like an Ohio teammate” when presented the question.
So this fight figures to be a collision of styles, with a very strong feeling of the unchartered rousing everyone’s curiosity. It’s one of those fun, unpredictable fights—refreshingly without pre-fight histrionics.
“He’s skilled in every area,” says Hamill, adding that doesn’t see the experience barrier between the fighters being a factor. “It’s no secret that Rich wants to stand and I want to take him down. One thing for sure is it will be a war, and I will go with the flow. I respect him as a person and a fighter.”
For that matter, it’s hard not to respect a guy like Matt “The Hammer” Hamill, having to overcome as much as he has.
As is well documented, Hamill was born deaf, but he never has let that deter him from achieving very lofty goals in wrestling, such as becoming a three-time NCAA D-III national champion at the Rochester Institute of Technology (RIT) or taking home a silver metal in the 2001 Deaflympics. As a favorite heading onto The Ultimate Fighter 3 to win it all, he suffered a concussion in his victory against Mike Nickels that forced him out.
In the highly touted rain check fight with fellow castmate Michael Bisping at UFC 75—a fight that seemed inevitable on TUF 3—Hamill dropped one of the most controversial decisions in recent history. Blogs and MMA chats never got so heated as when they raised Bisping’s hand.
“Everywhere I go the number one thing people say to me is, ‘you beat Bisping, you got robbed!’” Hamill says. “It’s amazing how passionate people are about it. I would love a rematch but there’s no way I can make 185.”
The rematch with Bisping that was rumored to happen at UFC 78 was canceled after Hamill tore his ACL and needed more time to recover. He’s been through a lot for a guy with only seven professional MMA fights.
And so, by the time he returned to the Octagon and fought Tim Boetsch in April at UFC Fight Night in Broomfield, Colorado, nobody was sure what to expect from the slab of man they call “Hammer”—except that he’d try and take Boetsch down and pound him out.
That was half right and, scarily to the rest of the division, half wrong.
Hamill showed some new wrinkles in his game, unleashing a torrent of strikes on Boetsch that inspired one of those collective “uh-oh” moments. As in uh-oh, Hamill’s not only back, he’s added striking to his game. Some of that credit goes to Tim Greene at the Utica Boxing Club, who is again readying Hamill to throw, this time with Franklin—one of the game’s fiercest strikers.
In other words, don’t automatically presume to see the one-dimensional fighter that Hamill was accused of being come September 6, because, as he says, “I am a completely different fighter now than I was on TUF 3.” Yet one of the components he tirelessly works on is wrestling. It’s always there. Always.
In fact, though there was talk about Hamill competing in the Beijing Olympics, he made a definitive move towards his new loyalties.
“I decided to give up on wrestling and focus on my MMA career,” he says. “I did go train with Steve Mocco, the US Olympic team heavyweight. It was great training with someone world-class like that. It really sharpened my wrestling skills.”
Just another in the long line of twists and turns in Matt Hamill’s life, which will be made into a Hollywood movie called “Hamill,” slated for a 2009 release. As mentioned on UFC.com this past May, there was an outcry from the deaf community that the movie was cast with a hearing actor—Eben Kostbar, selected because of his wrestling experience and ability to sign—instead of a deaf actor. Hamill, who works with deaf kids and teaches wrestling, doesn’t see any problem with the biopic.
“It’s about my life from infancy to my first national championship in college,” he says. “I don’t see anything wrong with a hearing actor playing a deaf character.”
If the first part of Hamill’s life warrants a movie, he’s hoping this next chapter in his life—his quest to become the next light heavyweight champion in the UFC—will be the proof that drive can take you a long, long way.
As for Franklin? This is one test he hopes to ace.
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