Oct-11-2009

Ne'er a Dull Moment for 'The Dentist'

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By Mike Russell

Call Josh Neer whatever you want, he’s heard it all before – just don’t call him a boring fighter – that, the eight-year mixed martial arts veteran says, would be crossing the line.

“That’s one thing I’ve never been called, is boring. A lot of people go in to win by decision. I’ve never been that kind of fighter, which is why people like to see me fight. Even before the UFC started handing out bonuses, I was always looking to finish the fight by knockout or submission,” Neer says. “If you’re just going to go in and hold your opponent down to win a fight, no one is going to want to see you fight. People pay good money to watch you fight; the least you can do is put on a good show for them and bang it out. A lot of guys don’t want to do that; they just want to take the easy way out.”

The path of Neer’s career, much like his life outside of the cage has been a precarious one the past few years, but the twisting and turning road he forged, although rocky at times, has righted itself and is now on a level straight and narrow.

Last month he pled guilty to DUI and felony eluding police charges stemming from a much-publicized New Year’s Eve arrest. The 26-year-old dodged a bullet when a seven-year prison sentence handed down by the judge in the case was later withdrawn. Instead of prison time, Neer was put on two-year probation – a second chance not unlike the one he was given in 2008 when he re-signed with the UFC after being given his walking papers by the organization in 2006 due to his less-than-stellar 2-3 Octagon record.

As he did with his recent UFC return, Neer affirms that he will make the best of the leg up given to him by the courts.

“I put the incident behind me and now I’m concentrating on my career. I want to go out and put on good performances and win fights,” says Neer. “If I can keep doing that, opportunities will come.”

The next opportunity to present itself for Neer, whose UFC career includes wins over former number one lightweight contender Joe Stevenson and The Ultimate Fighter Season 6 winner Mac Danzig, comes on October 24 when he squares off against American Top Team product Gleison Tibau at UFC 104 at Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA.

Besides shifting the focus of his training back to his wrestling roots and bringing in his boxing coach for more technique training, Neer says he isn’t doing anything much different to prepare for the Brazilan jiu-jitsu black belt.

“Basically, I just train to be better in each discipline all the time – not to counteract the skills of my next opponent. I don’t break down tape of guys I’m going to fight at all. I don’t want to know what they’re going to do; I want to do what I’m going to do. Sometimes I might work a little bit more on wrestling and sometimes I might work a little more on my jiu-jitsu or stand-up, but for the most part my training [regimen] has been the same for most of my career. Lately I’ve been training my wrestling a lot more because I think that I kind of neglected it a lot for the past five years,” Neer explains. “I started out as a wrestler so I wanted to work to improve my jiu-jitsu and my striking to bring it up to the level that my grappling was at. People think my wrestling is worse than what it really is because I don’t care if I get taken down because I can submit guys from the bottom. I’ve also been working a lot with my boxing coach, Jeff Perez, who has been coming down from the Quad Cities three days a week. He’s been staying with me at my house so we can work together a lot more often and that’s been a big help. Working with him, my hands have become crisper and faster and my stand-up has gotten a lot better.”

Having split from Miletich Fighting Systems, where he had trained since being invited to join the team following an epic five-round Victory Fighting Championships barnburner in 2004 which he lost by split decision to MFS protégé Spencer Fisher, Neer now trains at a small gym in Iowa called Des Moines MMA. Although his new team doesn’t have the high profile fighters as the Pat Miletich-helmed camp to which he once belonged, Neer says the caliber of training partners he trains with now is comparable.

“We have a lot of good guys in our gym. A lot of people don’t know who they are but we have so many good strikers and wrestlers in our gym that I’m always challenged. The nicest thing about it is that all of the best fighters we have are my size – between 155 and 185 [pounds] – so I have so many training partners to choose from when I’m getting ready for a fight,” he says. “Most places only have a couple of guys who are the same size who train together, so I think I have a real advantage where I train now.”

Known more for his full-throttle fighting style than his attention to technique, Neer subscribes to the proverb that professes: “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another”. As such, he prefers to put in the majority of his sweat equity at the gym against bigger, stronger opponents.

“I’m one of those guys who is always in the gym and pushing myself to get better. Any time that I go, I try to go with the best guys in the room. I don’t want to go with guys who are weak. I just want to train with the best guys,” Neer says. “I kind of like getting beat up. I feel like if I’m getting beat up, then I’m doing what I should be doing. I don’t even mind going with the heavyweights. I know if I’m getting beat up in the gym by guys who are bigger than me, when I get into the cage it’s easy because I get to go with a guy who’s my own size.”

Despite his penchant for being pushed around at the gym to increase his resiliency, the metal that it took to test his mettle on the mats wasn’t always iron, Neer says, recalling a career changing experience he had while training in Canada early on in his career.

“I was in Winnipeg, [Manitoba], Canada training with a friend of mine named Curtis Brigham at his gym. I was going with this guy and he tapped me out a few times. After practice was over, I asked Curtis who the guy I was rolling with was and he was like ‘Him? I don’t know. He’s just some white belt who has only been training jiu-jitsu for like six months’,” he says with a chuckle. “That was a bit of an eye-opener for me and I realized I needed to start concentrating on training more with guys who really knew what they were doing. I have no idea who that white belt was or if he ever became a fighter but I guess you can say that he changed my life and made me a better fighter.”

Looking ahead, Neer doesn’t give the typical “I want a shot at the title” response when asked what the future holds for him. Instead, he says he wants to maintain his reputation of being a fighter who puts on exciting fights, pointing to either one of a pair of Xtreme Couture standouts as being a potential accomplice to stealing the show of a future event.

“I’d love to fight Tyson Griffin or Sam Stout. Both of them would make for exciting fights. They’re both similar to my style of fighting in that they both go all out for the whole fight and try to finish the fight,” Neer says. “People always talk about Tyson being boring or always winning by decision but I don’t see him going out and laying on people to win a decision. He goes out and tries to finish his opponents. I think his fights are exciting. I’d love to fight either of those guys.”