His wins keep multiplying, his notoriety keeps soaring, and his bank account keeps growing. But WEC bantamweight champion Miguel Angel Torres remains, as always, discontent and unsatisfied. Many consider him to be the gold standard by which all other mixed martial artists should be judged, yet the 28-year-old Torres is still an underdog in heart and mind. Days before his title defense in Chicago against hard-hitting Takeya Mizugaki, Torres is once again steeling himself for an all-out war by harkening back to his humble beginnings in East Chicago, Indiana.
“In the last week, I have been running around my neighborhood just to relax,” Torres said. “The mental images that I see – the abandoned mills, the abandoned houses, the gangs, the young kids, the run-down streets it reminds me of where I come from. It gives me a sense of empowerment. It reminds me of what I have to do. I think of my daughter, her future is at stake. Before when I was fighting it was more about honor and pride. Now my daughter’s future is at stake, so every fight I have is stock in her future.”
Even when he rose to be comfortably middle-class, Torres continued living in the downtrodden city where he was raised. Then he came to fear that his family might become a target.
“I had to move,” he explained. “There were like three Section 8 houses, my house, a Section 8 house again, a crack house -- it’s like the whole block was Section 8. I would travel and go to Mexico and do a promo, then return and go to a UFC for the weekend. My girl was there with my daughter and people knew I had money, and people started coming over, it was getting kind of weird. I didn’t want my daughter and my girl at the house if something happened. I moved in September about 10 minutes outside of there. I tried, man, I really tried to stay. My gym is still in the ghetto.”
For the past month, Monday through Friday, Torres has been sleeping at his gym.
“I can’t be in the mindset of my house,” he says.
He goes home on weekends to be with his family. But Torres is extreme and almost maniacal in his single-minded preparation. He borders on being anti-social during this transformation and craves solitude. He doesn’t need the cameras or the limelight, even though he’s been busier than ever with media covering his upcoming fight. He’s doing his best not become the Barry Bonds of MMA – that is, an exceptional athlete who is largely loathed by the reporters who cover him.
“I think that’s the biggest setback of doing well, all the media you have to put up with,” said Torres, who nevertheless tries to be accommodating, professional and patient with reporters. “I wouldn’t say I get antsy, I just get real short-tempered. I like to be alone, I like to focus on what I need to do. My whole mentality changes. I go from being a regular person to being this fighter, this animal. People want to ask me questions and be cheery and they want me to express myself, but I’m in a mood where I don’t want to express myself in the manner they expect to see.”
The dark side that dwells within Torres was originally reserved for Brian Bowles, until Bowles bowed out of the matchup with a back injury. In the dynamic Georgian’s place is Mizugaki 11-2-2, a crafty Japanese fighter with knockout power who is doubly dangerous because the full dimensions of his game are a mystery to the champ. The suspense doesn’t bother Torres in the least since he’s lost only once in nearly 50 fights.
“Going in with a lot of unknowns is the way I train,” he said. “I used to train back in the day where I didn’t know who I was going to fight until the week of the fight. I don’t train a specific style for who I’m going to fight against. If I’m going to fight a wrestler I still train standup, I still train jiu-jitsu and I still train wrestling. When Brian Bowles got injured, nothing changed in my training camp.
“I know Mizugaki has a big right hand. I’ve seen a couple of his fights on YouTube, nothing too current, but I’m prepared for anything. I’m ready for the fight to go on the feet, for it to go to the ground, for it to be in the clinch. I know Mizugaki will come out there and bang with me. I don’t think he wants it to go to the ground, I don’t think he has too much expertise on the ground. He says he wants to stand up and bang with me -- so I’m going to give him what he wants. That unknown factor makes it a fight for me, I think it makes it more fun. I am an artist and I like to express myself in the cage and to not know what the other person is going to come and do is awesome. That makes the experience more pleasurable for me.”
In case you failed to notice, Torres possesses a supreme, off-the-charts confidence, a la a Michael Jordan in his prime or a Floyd Mayweather Jr. The thought of losing, he said, enters his mind only at the beginning of a training camp. Then it vanishes. By fight night, the possibility of losing is nowhere to be found in his consciousness.
“The only thing in my brain is going to be to destroy my opponent,” he said, envisioning the moments before he enters the cage on Sunday night. “I keep in my mind all of the experiences that I’ve gone through to get where I’m at. It hasn’t been an easy road, I’ve paid my dues, I’ve trained with some of the best guys and best teams in the world. I have a ton of experience. This guy I’m going to fight … he hasn’t trained the way I’ve trained, he hasn’t fought the guys I’ve fought.
“Every fight for me is the Super Bowl, every fight is the biggest fight of my career. One of the biggest reasons I’m where I am now is that I’ve never had a fear that a lot of guys talk about. I’ve never had the fear of being in the locker room and knowing you’re going to go out there and fight in front of all these people. I’ve never had that fear. I have an answer for every scenario and situation that can happen in the ring. I know I don’t have a weak chin, I know I can take a good shot and give a good shot, I know I can defend myself and attack non-stop for an hour. Between my past experiences in training and in my fights, no person in the cage is going to make me experience something I haven’t already experienced.”
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