Known as “Meathead” from his days as a contestant on The Ultimate Fighter 10, Matt Mitrione had no prior MMA record to his name. In fact, before a career ending injury, Mitrione was a pro NFL footballer for the New York Giants. Now he is unbeaten in his UFC career and facing his toughest challenge in Cheick Kongo.
Mitrione played with a break of the navicular bone in his right foot until the pain became so excruciating that he succumbed to his injury and have surgery.
He developed a staph infection and required seven more surgeries, one that cut off his heel, reattaching it to build an orthotic in his foot leaving him out of action for 16 months.
Leaving the NFL in 2006, Mitrione returned to martial arts training which he took up as a teenager.
It has been a long, hard road since those days and two years on from Mitrione’s stint on The Ultimate Fighter, the heavyweight now holds a professional record of 5-0 with victories against the likes of Kimbo Slice and Joey Beltran.
The real test for Mitrione comes this weekend in Las Vegas at UFC 137 where he will step into the octagon and take on striking specialist Cheick Kongo.
Matt was kind enough to give me some of his time to speak to me about his upcoming fight against Kongo.
Warning: may contain traces of witty and sarcastic humour.
Karen Touma for The Roar: Hi Matt, How are you?
Matt Mitrione: I’m splendid and hey, I know a couple of your countrymen who are training at Couture. Ray Sefo. He is a tough dude.
Karen: ‘Sugar’ Ray? Good to know, back to you, how are you feeling in the lead up to your fight with Cheick Kongo?
Matt: I feel great! I feel absolutely fantastic. This is hands down the best I’ve ever felt before. My body feels great, my mind is in a good place and I look really good naked. Things are going really, really well right now!
Karen: [laughs] Do you have a particular strategy going in to the fight?
Matt: I think I’m going to try smuggle in a frying pan and bang him in the face a little bit because he seems a little tough for me so I am going to try and see what happens with it, see how resilient he is and if I can bump on his forehead with that. Ha!
More than anything else I want to get in there; test his chin and test his heart. I know he is a tough guy but I want to see what kind of challenge I can get out of it.
K: What advantages do you feel that you have over Kongo?
Matt: I think that I have the ability to smuggle a fight and do it undetected is quite an advantage. Other than that, I don’t know to be honest. I think that’s the fun part, is to find out.
Kongo seems very solid in a lot of places. He seems highly impressive and he is not afraid to show his dominant personality. It will be fun to scrap against him and it will be fun to see who breaks first.
Karen: Most people see your fight against Kongo as a real test for you. How do you see this different to your last five fights?
Matt: He is a different fight and he is because he is much more aggressive stand-up wise, he has pretty good cage take downs and he has a very aggressive ground and pound.
I feel that he is different in a lot of ways. I will have to adjust and see what he throws at me and what I throw at him. The inside adjustments are where champions are made.
Karen: You made the decision to train in your home town instead of training at Xtreme Couture, what was your reasoning behind that?
Matt: My extreme sense of guilt for leaving my children six weeks at a time.
Karen: That must be tough.
Matt: It is very, very, very difficult.
I love my kids more than anything on the planet and to not see them for such a long period of time makes it extremely difficult.
So I made quite a few things happen; Coach Neil Melanson my grappling coach from Xtreme Couture came to Indianapolis to train with me versus me having to go out there. He understood my situation.
It’s been a really good camp, I feel strong and I am ready to scrap that’s for sure!
Karen: I also heard you spent some time with Rashad Evans and Tyrone Spong. What was it like training with them?
Matt: I am actually still in Florida training with them. They’re great!
Rashad’s top control and ground game are really slick. He is incredibly strong and incredibly dominant on the ground so it’s a lot of fun to scrap with him to see how I have to work my hips.
Anything I can do with Tyrone Spong is a blessing because he is so dangerous. He whip kicks from any angle, his hands are so powerful and he can emulate Cheick Kongo well because they have a similar style to a certain extent. It’s been really good for me and it was very good developmentally,
Karen: You also trained with Mark Munoz?
Matt: Oh Yeah. Mark Munoz and I train any time we are at the same location.
There was a lot of clinch work and I took out a lot of really great lessons.
He can explain technique and positions better than anybody I have ever come across before. It was a real blessing to get to work with him and go 100% scrapping on the ground, grappling and wrestling.
Same thing for Ryan Bader.
Actually, I found this one homeless guy on the street and I kept trying to rob him and that dude was so tough it was almost like a workout in itself.
Karen: [laughs] You should have had him train with you.
Matt: I should have videotaped it.
Karen: You said after your fight with Christian Morecraft that you overtrained, what have you done differently to make sure you didn’t do for this fight?
Matt: To make sure I haven’t overtrained for this fight, I’ve paid a little bit more attention to my body and what my body says. I knew I was overtraining but I had to justify spending so much time away from my family by training all the time.
By me being home, it’s easier for me to take time off, see my kids or when my body is tired then say “ok, I’m done for the day” so that was really beneficial for me.
I sleep a lot better when I am at home versus when I am on the road. It was a good thing to be home but that said, I still travel and go to other places but I get to see my kids more often, that’s all.
Karen: You’re opening up your own gym, how is that coming along?
Matt: The gym is paid for and everything is good but I wasn’t around so once the fight is over I will really focus my attention on it.
I have all the mats down, the heavy bags up and the tarp down but it’s not open for business just yet.
It was a great place to do my training camp when nobody else was around, I could go there any time of the day and scrap and workout, which was really good for me.
Karen: Prior to fighting with the UFC you didn’t have an MMA record, what was it like coming off The Ultimate Fighter and fighting on the biggest stage in the world?
Matt: Coming off The Ultimate Fighter was brutal because everybody hated me so that was a little bit stressful.
As far as getting fights, it was good because I had a great chance to develop and had a little bit of name and face recognition so a lot of gyms let me in in their doors. They let me train with them and gave me good attention because they knew there would be publicity out of me.
Karen: You said you didn’t gain a lot of fans coming off The Ultimate Fighter but that seems to have changed since your regular appearances on the MMA Hour. How do you feel about that?
Matt: Well, firstly I am very appreciative and thankful towards Ariel Helwani. He really allowed the fans to see a different side of me that wasn’t the TV show guy and I’m highly, highly intelligent, sarcastic, witty and very attractive [laughs] so I get to Skype and really focus on some things that are common place in our industry.
It’s really been good for me and I am very appreciative of it.
Karen: Do you have any interest in coaching in The Ultimate Fighter?
Matt: Coaching it? You know, I’m going to be totally honest with you. I don’t know anything about fighting. I really, really don’t. I know how to punch people in the face, I can scrap but I can’t teach a lick of it.
I’m not one of those people who can articulate how to do things very well I just know I can do it. I’m not very patient but I have great people around me can develop a great coaching staff and I can pull some really, really cool pranks so I’d probably do it.
I can’t sit there and read a book but I can develop a hell of a prank!
Karen: I would love to see you as a coach on the show.
Matt: Yeah? You should put that forward on the underground on twitter and see if it gains any ground
Karen: I’m on it.
Karen: Who has been your toughest opponent to date?
Matt: Joey Beltran. Hands down, no question.
I punched him so hard in his face so many times and all I did was make him stumble one time. He has a chin like Abraham Lincoln on Mount Rushmore.
Karen: That was your only fight that went the distance, so that’s really saying something.
Matt: Yeah, Joey is incredibly tough.
Karen: Finally, how do see the fight with Kongo finishing?
Matt: I see it finishing with my hand raised. I don’t know how it’s going to happen and to be honest, I really don’t care how it happens.
If I have to get him pregnant in order to win, if I have to submit him, if I have to tap him out, I don’t care how it goes but as long as I win.
I see myself winning.
Karen: Matt, good luck for the fight and I’ll definitely be backing you. I may even put some money on you.
Matt: Karen, I’ll tell you what – I feel that is a very good bet. I am a very dangerous person right now.
Karen: All the best.
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