It’s become a ritual of fight preparation for most mixed martial artists – get offered a fight, sign the contract, and pull up a chair to your computer and check youtube for your opponent’s fight clips. Some fighters, like Tomasz Drwal, even have video highlight reels posted, as his opponent this Saturday night, Mike Ciesnolevicz, found out.
“I was in (trainer) Pat (Miletich)’s office watching the highlight video,” recalled Ciesnolevicz. “And Miletich walks in. He doesn’t know I’m fighting because I just found out that day.”
“Who’s that guy?” said a startled Miletich as he watched the video. “That guy’s a tough SOB. Who is it?”
“I’m fighting that guy in five weeks,” answered Ciesnolevicz.
A moment of silence.
“Well,” said Miletich, recovering quickly, “You’re good at this and that, you can do this against him. You’ll be all right.’”
Ciesnolevicz laughs as he tells the story, and he knows he’s in for a tough bout against the Polish standout, a heavy handed banger who is coming off a first round knockout of Ivan Serati at UFC 93 in January. But Mike C is ready for whatever Drwal can throw at him this weekend, and despite seven submission wins among his 18 pro victories, don’t expect that he’ll be shooting in for a takedown at the sound of the opening bell.
“I think I’m well rounded enough to be able to fight him standing up,” said Ciesnolevicz. “I know he’s a big puncher, but I’m not going into this fight just looking for a takedown, and I think he probably expects that. But there are a lot of gaps in his standup. I don’t feel that he’s really better than me anywhere. And I know for a fact that I’m gonna be a lot bigger at fight time, just by looking at him.”
The Drwal fight marks Ciesnolevicz’ first UFC bout at 205 pounds. It’s his natural fighting weight, but he did scoot up to heavyweight for his Octagon debut at UFC 95 in February to take on Neil Grove. Leading up to the bout, Ciesnolevicz – a six year pro – admitted that he would have taken a fight against King Kong just to get his long-awaited UFC shot, and by fight night, as he looked across at the 6 foot 6, 263 pound Grove, the 6 foot 1, 235 pound Iowan realized that the only things missing were Fay Wray and the Empire State Building.
“The gameplan was to stand with him a little bit, but when I got in there, saw those little gloves and he starts stalking me and coming after me, it was a lot different than practice with boxing gloves,” he laughs. “I was like ‘if this guy hits me once or twice, I might be in trouble.’ I changed my gameplan quick – as soon as he gets close enough, I’m gonna shoot.”
And once the fight hit the mat, it was game over for Grove, who was submitted via heel hook just 63 seconds in.
“When he went for my leg, I knew I was gonna get him,” said Ciesnolevicz. “Big guys like that aren’t as mobile at putting the leg lock in, so there are a lot of opportunities to take advantage of. I’ve trained with (heavyweights Brad) Imes, (Tim) Sylvia, and (Ben) Rothwell, and I’m used to playing the leg game with the big guys. Not that I’m a great leg lock guy, but I just knew that this guy was gonna be a fish out of water with those submissions, and Pat really has us do a lot of drills for leg locks.”
The win was the culmination of a career long quest for the 29-year old Ciesnolevicz, who had watched as less experienced fighters made it to the UFC while he battled it out on the small show circuit. Even a stint in the now defunct IFL didn’t do the trick for him, but after his 63 second win, he was finally an official UFC fighter. Now he has to solidify his place against Drwal.
“The only thing different this time is the weight cut,” he said. “I took some time off after the last fight, and they told me originally that I probably wasn’t gonna fight until August. Then Eric Schafer got hurt, so they called for me to fill in. I looked at the time schedule and I felt that I had enough time to make weight. But that’s the only difference. I don’t feel any more nervous. I almost feel like I’m finally getting where I want to be and I’m not that nervous. I was more nervous outside the UFC because I didn’t want to lose – I knew that any fight I lost was gonna hurt my chances of getting into the UFC. That was always in the back of my head. I was fighting in these shows against guys who weren’t well known, and I was thinking ‘man, if I lose to this guy, I’m probably not gonna get in the UFC. I was always stressed and nervous before fights, but when I got to the UFC, I’m like ‘there’s nothing to be nervous about; you’re here – just go out there and fight and let all your skills loose. If you lose, you lost in the UFC; just go out there and fight.’”
So far, so good, and what makes this part of his life even more exciting is that he’s fighting in the sport’s glamour division, a fact that was made abundantly clear when he recently traveled back to his hometown in Pennsylvania to speak to a group of elementary school children.
“We got into talking about how I came from where they are and how I wanted to fight in the UFC, but people told me I wouldn’t and how I finally got there,” said Ciesnolevicz, a former substitute school teacher. “Afterwards, we did an open question and answer thing, and every question was ‘do you think you could beat Chuck Liddell?’, ‘how do you think you would do if you fought Forrest Griffin?’, or ‘do you know Quinton Jackson?’ (Laughs). I’m not ready for some of those guys yet, but I look at some of those guys at the top, and I say ‘you know what? That guy’s not that bad of a matchup for me.’ I feel like I can compete with some of those guys right now. 205’s stacked, and it’s weird because I’m such a UFC fan, and now I’m there and thinking about fighting guys that I’ve always been watching.”
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