Mar-7-2010

Ben Saunders and dreams of Madison Square Garden

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By Chuck Mindenhall

When you’re 6-foot-3 and cold as hell in the welterweight division, you can have a little bit of empathy for your opposition heading into a fight. Ben Saunders does. For starters, he knows there aren’t a lot of clones out there to emulate his strong gangly frame. He suspects his latest victim, Marcus Davis, didn’t have a Saunders-like mantis to give him the look. Ditto Brandon Wolff, whom Saunders beat similarly at UFC: Fight For the Troops in North Carolina.

Secondly, Saunders knows that if you get in his clinch for long—whether you’re short, tall, thin or thick—there’ll be little defense for all eight limbs being unleashed in volume. You get in that clinch and, chances are, when you get to tasting his kneecaps, you’ll soon be lying there asleep with all your hype and bad intentions, like a torpedo in a lagoon. His is a stylistic quandary and he knows it and he’s knows you know it. What’s more, he feels for you.

That’s because Ben “Killa B” Saunders knows the hell of training for Ben “Killa B” Saunders.

“I think it’s the incorporation of how I’ve evolved my style, man,” the American Top Team fighter says. “Everything has meshed together so well for me and my style . . . it’s just unorthodox and hard to deal with. I just honestly think that I’m a horrible style matchup and very hard to train for.”

Davis was the latest to find this out. He went into his fight with Saunders at UFC 106 as a 2-to-1 favorite, coming off of a tough decision loss to his antagonist Dan Hardy. Yet, heading into this bout, Saunders ignored odds-makers and stated that his goal was to be the first fighter to knock out the Irish Hand Grenade—something that hard-sluggers like Mike Swick, Hardy, Chris Lytle or Paul Kelly couldn’t do.

Not only did Saunders do it, he did it in vicious fashion in the first round of a one-sided onslaught. Exactly how he imagined it, right?

“Oh yeah—well, actually, I never completely imagined exactly how it was going to play out with Davis. There are definitely some pictures that ran in my mind that, man, if it gets here we could easily end the fight. I definitely know I have a bunch of tricks up my sleeve that could be fight-enders at any time within a bout.”

Next to be saddled with the task of solving Saunders is Jake Ellenberger, who is filling in for the injured Martin Kampmann at UFC 111 in New Jersey on March 27. Though Saunders was disappointed to miss out on his chance to beat Kampmann and prove he belongs in the top ten in the division, he sees Ellenberger as a budding young star. Ellenberger (22-5) is coming off a nice TKO win himself over Mike Pyle at UFC 108 and an eye-opening performance against Carlos Condit before that. His UFC track record is one of the reasons Saunders throws out the word “fireworks” when asked what he expects to see.

There’s no back down in Ellenberger’s game. Just the way he likes it.

“Dude, that guy is as tough as nails,” he says. “I had no idea who he was when he fought Carlos Condit [at UFC Fight Night 19], and I became a fan right then. That fight was literally awesome, and I am looking forward to fighting him.”

In Ellenberger’s coming out party against Condit, Saunders was struck by not only the 24-year-old’s aggression and his willingness to stand and bang, but the power he’s packing in his punches.

“He has heavy hands, man,” he says. “I’m not too worried about his wrestling in the sense that I’ve created my style specifically to be well-rounded and win no matter where the fight goes. I’m not too worried about him putting me into the cage. I’m not too worried about anything he could possibly do. The only thing I have seen is that he put Condit on the mat like three times in the first round, and I said, okay, he’s definitely got some heavy hands.”

Saunders honed his chops in his native Florida before making his name on The Ultimate Fighter: Team Hughes vs. Team Serra. It was there that he made realizations about his game and began implementing new ideas. When Saunders speaks about his style or “system” of fighting, he is talking about a constantly evolving Jeet Kune Do base (he was a Bruce Lee fanatic growing up) that he adds new coats to. He’s unorthodox because of his frame and style working in coalition—it’s physical and mental synergy.

“I went from Jeet Kune Do concepts, then I realized that practicality in an actual mixed martial arts fight—against not a street fighter or against someone random, but against another professional athlete—you have to bring everything to that next level. There’s no half-assing it. Basically, I had to reform my entire style and focus entirely on a ridiculous amount of time on Jiu-Jitsu, a ridiculous amount of time on Muay Thai, on boxing, wresting, on Greco-Roman, you name it.”

Now at 26 years old, he feels like more of a complete fighter. Explosive, exciting, skilled and scary.

Saunders (4-1 UFC, 8-1-2 overall) learned a lot from his only loss in the UFC to Mike Swick at UFC 99, when he made his share of tactical mistakes (he says he fed off the crowd and tried to push the action, and put himself into trouble). But the bigger lesson he says he learned was to keep his eye on the prize. It’s not a stretch of the imagination to see Saunders entering the welterweight title picture with another couple of impressive wins, and he treats the Swick fight as a speed bump on the road to the title.

And hey, if he sees Swick again on that road, cool.

“If Mike happens to be along the way, at the end of the day he’s my only loss, I’d jump on it in a second,” he says. “Because I know it wasn’t me that performed out there. I know I can perform much better, and I would love to prove it to myself and to everybody, what I’m truly capable of. But at this point, my number one goal is to move up in the rankings and fulfill my dream, which is getting that belt around my waist.”

And as a boon he’ll be fighting in New Jersey, which is right across the river from one of his dream venues to hear his name announced at—Madison Square Garden. In hopes of helping to get MMA sanctioned in the state of New York, he wants to do his bit and showcase the sport in all its skill-layered glory by putting on a good, memorable fight.

“Fighting at Madison Square Garden is on my all-time Must Do list,” he says. “Literally, that’d be a dream come true. So I want to go in there and put on a phenomenal show and give everyone in New Jersey and New York reason to pass it in New York, man. That way I can get my fight on at Madison Square Garden.”

And who knows, maybe it could be a headlining spot in 2011 at MSG fighting for the welterweight title . . . right?

“Exactly, and then I’ll have to defend it here in Florida.”

Killa B might be hard to plan for, but he has plans.