Everybody knows that reality television is never really reality—except when it is. For instance, 16 guys quarantined under a single roof, all of them fairly convinced of their own invincibility and anxious to bear proof, are bound to have a few confrontations. That’s an interesting sort of microcosmic reality. There’s also something very real, it should be noted, about fists and flying glassware.
Eh, for guys like The Ultimate Fighter 8’s Ryan Bader, it wasn’t really a problem.
“It wasn’t that bad,” says the light heavyweight who decisioned Eliot Marshall to advance to Saturday’s final. “I had fun. Obviously it gets tedious at points when you got to put up with other people’s stuff and all the egos in the house. I mean, you have 16 alpha males in there and they’re all fighters and they all think they’re the best and bad asses. So you just have to focus on your goals and what you came there for.”
And what Bader came there for, precisely, was the chance to prove that he was bad ass enough to fight in the UFC, which is the enviable position he finds himself in as he heads into the TUF 8 finals bout with Vinicius Magalhaes on December 13 at the Palms in Las Vegas.
Like a good student—good enough to carry a 3.3 grade point average while getting a degree in Justice and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University—Bader took a lot of notes along the way.
“I used to watch all those UFC tournaments back in the day with Royce Gracie, when they were going for the $50,000 prize at the end,” says the two-time Division I All-American wrestler and three-time PAC 10 champion. “But like a lot of people, I started watching MMA intently when I saw the Ultimate Fighter and that wrestlers like me were being successful coming out of college. I really started following it hardcore after that.”
You have to go all the way back to . . . what, 2006? . . . for that. Yes, the 25-year-old Reno-native’s comeuppance has been a fairly swift one. That’s when he helped Jesse Forbes prepare for his fight with Matt Hamill at the TUF 3 Finale. Even then, it wasn’t until mid-2007, after winning a handful of fights in small local theaters in Arizona, that Bader actually began training in MMA full time.
Ask a cerebral fighter like Randy Couture and he’ll tell you, to compile a composite record of 8-0 and find success in MMA that quickly, it comes down to fighter acumen—the knack for learning on the fly. Or, to hear Bader tell it, adaptation.
“I just think I am the type of wrestler that transitions well into fighting,” he says. “I always liked watching Dan Henderson fight, because our styles are pretty similar. Pretty much I felt like I was successful right off the bat because of my wrestling, and jiu-jitsu kind of came naturally.”
As for the striking ability that KO’d Tom Lawlor in episode three? Well, that was a tougher acquisition to make.
“Just coming into MMA as a wrestler, you’re all stiff. It took us forever to learn a hook, and then you start sparring and it’s like starting all over again. But, we do standup at Arizona Combat Sports every day with Todd and Trevor Lally, and we spar three or four times a week.”
If there’s a secret to Bader’s precociousness, it’s in the simple statement he repeats time and again when the theme of his essence as a fighter is touched upon.
“I’ve always been a competitor.”
No doubt that’s entirely true. You don’t become the Nevada State Defensive Player of the Year in high school football or rack up 120 career collegiate wins in wrestling as an idle citizen. Yet, somewhat paradoxically, Bader didn’t come to grips with this until he tried to force himself into becoming an idle citizen.
“I got out of college and got a job was trying to live the normal life because I was burned out on wrestling,” he says. “I wanted to try that.”
And so he partied with friends. He blended in. He took an office job. And he sank into the kind of general malaise that non-competing competitors compete against. In the end, it turns out paperwork didn’t adrenalize him the way a potential blast double leg might.
“I thought I was basically dying,” he says. “It was just that competitiveness [that I missed]. Just the nerves, the excitement before every fight is awesome. I just love that feeling. I was meant to be in MMA. The door is open and I went through that door and now I’m here and love what I’m doing, so I’m going to keep at it.”
And now here he is getting set to fight the biggest fight of his career for a UFC contract. To earn it, he will have to protect his joints and limbs from the world-class grappler, BJJ blackbelt Vinny Magalhaes, who has a reputation of punishing false steps and mistakes. Magalhaes took out his former Team Quest teammate and TUF 8 light heavy favorite Krzysztof Soszynski (armbar) in the semis. If one thing’s certain about Magalhaes, it’s that when presented an inch of opportunity, he treats it as a country mile.
Conventional wisdom would be for Bader, who has the ability to control where a fight goes with his wrestling ability and tremendous power in both hands, to keep it standing—where Magalhaes has been clumsy at times. That’s conventional thought anyway, and Bader knows this—but he’d prefer not to edit the flow of the fight.
“You know, Vinny’s a dangerous opponent, he’s got the ability to end the fight with a very quick submission,” he says. “I think he could get a flying armbar if he wanted to, or on the ground, so I’ve got to be wary of that. But you try not to put too much stock into the other guy’s gameplan. In my department, what I think I have that he doesn’t have going for him is mental toughness, the ability to push through things, and taking the fight out of him. I think I’m the better athlete and a lot tougher than he is. He is a lot more technical on the ground, but, you know . . . we’ll see.”
Well, they don’t call the Octagon the ultimate proving ground for nothing.
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