Mar-17-2010

Reinventing Eliot Marshall, a Fight at a Time

By Thomas Gerbasi

It may have been the greatest compliment a fighter could receive. When talking about his loss to Eliot Marshall last September, Jason Brilz admitted to being totally surprised at how Marshall went from ground wizard to stick and move artist, leaving the veteran out of sorts as he dropped a three round unanimous decision at UFC 103.

To do that to a neophyte fighter is one thing; for Marshall to pull off this transformation against a veteran of 20 fights (including three in the UFC) like Brilz is quite another. But it’s all part of the plan for the Ultimate Fighter season eight veteran, who has continued to reinvent himself to the tune of a 3-0 Octagon record.

“That’s my whole goal with fighting,” he explains. “You have to be good enough so that you can win the fight in any area. It’s like my fight with Vinny (Magalhaes at UFC 97). My whole background is Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, so in all my fights that’s what I relied upon. With Vinny, he might be a little better than me, so I had to show something different.”

He did, keeping it standing as he outpointed his TUF8 castmate in April of last year. But against Brilz, who was coming off a dominant victory over Tim Boetsch and who hadn’t lost since 2001, many expected that Marshall, a BJJ black belt, would be overwhelmed by the former college wrestler much like he was when he dropped his TUF8 semifinal bout to Ryan Bader.

Didn’t happen.

“Brilz was a great wrestler who could just grind out wins, staying on top of people,” said Marshall. “Did I think Brilz was gonna beat me up on the ground or submit me? No. But I could see it being like the Bader fight and I don’t want that to ever happen again.”

And while the Marshall-Brilz fight wasn’t Griffin-Bonnar I revisited in terms of action, it was a solid win over a quality opponent for Marshall, and an impressive performance when it came to discipline and implementation of game plan. And he’s not done evolving into a true mixed martial artist like one of his training partners, Georges St-Pierre.

“The day’s gonna come when I’m gonna fight a phenomenal striker and you’re gonna get to see me take him down and submit him,” said Marshall. “You have to be able to do everything; you have to be like Georges St-Pierre. You need to be the best at every aspect of the game. This one-dimensional stuff is so far gone.”

That goes for life in and out of the Octagon. No longer is Marshall a single man pursuing solitary dreams. The 29-year old is married, and he and his wife Renee just welcomed a son – Kannen Henry Marshall - into the world last December. So while he prepares for Sunday’s bout with former world title challenger Vladimir Matyushenko, he’s also walking his son around the neighborhood, changing diapers, and doing ‘Dad stuff.’

“When I’m at home, I play with the baby and do all the things a dad’s supposed to do,” said Marshall, who luckily has his wife and mother splitting middle of the night feedings and changings while he gets ready for his fight. “Then when I go to the gym, I separate and just do the things that I have to at the gym. But what he (his son) needs is most important for me. It’s a family now, not just me and my wife.”

And to take care of that family, Marshall’s got to work, and that means 15 minutes or less with Matyushenko, the wrestling standout who was in punishing form in his return to the UFC last September as he pounded out a decision win over Igor Pokrajac. Marshall may not say it, but to the outside world, this is the step-up fight, where a win can elevate him to the next level in the ultra-talented UFC light heavyweight division.

“A fight is a fight, a cage is just a cage, you go in there and you’ve got the same 15 minutes of work that you have to do,” said Marshall. “Sure, he (Matyushenko) has been in there with all these people and he’s not gonna get flustered or surprised. He’s got almost 30 fights, I’ve got 10, it is what it is. It doesn’t matter who the better fighter is and who has more experience. The only thing that matters is who fights the best on March 21st for 15 minutes.”

It’s about as accurate a statement as you’re going to get when it comes to the fickle nature of the fight game. Great fighters can lose to inspired opponents with solid gameplans, just like promising upstarts can get crushed by the spotlight before an opponent even makes a fist. And then when you add the high altitude of Colorado into the mix, all bets are off when it comes to favorites and underdogs. And if anyone should have an edge this weekend, it’s Jersey native Marshall, who has lived in the state since his college days at the University of Colorado.

“I remember when I was 18 years old, I came out here and we were playing football at the dorms at the University, and I ran one pattern and I was like ‘oh my God,’” he laughs. “You can’t prepare for it; you have to go do it. You can be in the best shape in the world, and then you come up to altitude and there’s just less oxygen.”

Then again, while Marshall is used to training and working in a high altitude setting, he’s also the hometown favorite, which can sometimes result in an adrenaline dump when the crowd goes wild at the mention of your name. Will that equal things out for him?

You know the answer to that one.

“The cage I fought in in Montreal, in Dallas, and in Vegas is no different than the cage I’m gonna fight in in Colorado,” he said. “I’ve walked in that cage and looked at Matyushenko across from me a million times already in my head. I’ve heard the crowd, and it’s just a fight, 15 minutes, no different from what I do every day in training.”

That’s Eliot Marshall. If you want to rattle him, good luck, because he doesn’t buy into that type of stuff. What’s the secret? He keeps it simple.

“I love to fight, and I don’t love it because I want to beat people up and hurt them; I want to find things out about myself and I think that’s what fighting’s all about,” he said. “I don’t think there’s any greater way to learn about yourself unless you’re truly afraid and have some fear about what’s gonna happen to you. And if you can learn to control it then, then you can control it all the time. Push comes to shove, at the end of the day, my mom and dad are still gonna love me, my wife’s still gonna love me, I’m still gonna have my baby, and that’s what’s up at the end of the day.”