Good story and my boy Diego is a great fight it's just a matter of time before he wins the Welterweight BeltQuote:
Diego Sanchez – Chasing Destiny
By Thomas Gerbasi
Still two years away from his first professional fight, Diego Sanchez, then 18 (18 ½ as he makes sure to point out) was at a crossroads. Fresh out of high school, he had been a wrestler and a fan of the UFC, but he really didn’t have any indication that fighting was going to be his life’s work. Then fate struck. “I wasn’t looking for the fight, it found me, and that’s basically the way fighting found me,” he remembers, referring to a street fight that ultimately changed his life. “I hadn’t been in a lot of fights in my life and I got tested in the street fight one time, fighting a big, strong, tough athlete who had strong endurance – he was a football player and he outweighed me by like 70 pounds, and I was able to overcome those odds,” said Sanchez in an interview conducted before his aborted UFC 58 bout with John Alessio. “And I had wrestled, but I didn’t know jiu-jitsu – it was all heart. And when I overcame that guy, I started to think that maybe I am meant for this.” As simple as that, the Albuquerque native had a direction in life, one that led him not only through the MMA ranks and to the middleweight championship of the first season of ‘The Ultimate Fighter’ series, but one that will bring him to STAPLES Center in Los Angeles on May 27th to finally face the veteran Alessio at UFC 60 (their first bout was scrapped when Sanchez was stricken with a virus days before the bout and rendered unable to compete). It’s a long way from that street fight in New Mexico. “I always loved the UFC, I always wanted to be a UFC fighter, but did I think it was gonna happen?” he asks. “I didn’t know. But after that happened, I started to realize. Then it was just one fight after another, building momentum, my confidence grew and I continued to trust in God and believe that maybe this was why I was put on the TV show and why everything is just the way it is. I believe its destiny.” It’s also a lot of hard work. Sanchez didn’t fall out of the sky as one of the rising stars of the UFC’s welterweight division. He paid his dues in the King of the Cage organization before his berth on TUF brought him into the nation’s living rooms each week, and even though he’s currently riding high, it wasn’t a journey without hurdles to jump over. “With every fight my maturity grew, and with every fight I learned a lesson,” said Sanchez. “A lot of things happened in my career which were blessings in disguise. There was stuff that hurt and I had to work through, but it helped me mentally as a fighter, overcoming those things like injuries and mental battles, fighting my friends, fighting on TV without my trainer, being alone on that TV show and things like that. It helped me mature as a fighter. Every fighter’s gonna mature, it’s just how you take a win and how you take a loss.” Sanchez hasn’t lost yet as a professional MMA fighter, with his last defeats coming to Jake Shields and Marcelo Garcia in the Abu Dhabi submission wrestling championships in 2005. He learned a lot from his time in the tournament. “I wasn’t down about it because I took that tournament on two weeks notice, I wasn’t training, and I cut 23 pounds in a week,” he said. “I was so weak from my match with Jake Shields, a match that I lost, and then I was able to stick with Marcelo (Garcia) a day later in the absolute division and I was stronger because I had a day to recover. We were 0-0 with 30 seconds left and I was getting desperate and I went for a sloppy move with the best grappler in the world and he caught me with the counter move and I was submitted for the first time in competition. But what I had done to my body, I killed myself. I never wanted to quit so bad in my life. I was mentally weak in that sauna, and I felt myself wanting to quit. It taught me a big lesson. After that happened, you will never see Diego Sanchez cutting weight like that again for a mixed martial arts fight. Because if I had been in a mixed martial arts fight, I probably would have been beaten, because my insides were gone. I felt my organs hurting and I never want to feel that in a fight.” He pauses. “I did a lot of things wrong to get things right.” These days though, the “Nightmare” express isn’t showing any signs of stopping any time soon. After winning his TUF championship bout against Kenny Florian, Sanchez blew through veteran Brian Gassaway at UFC 54 and then was matched against fellow young gun Nick Diaz at last November’s TUF 2 finale. The lead-up to the bout was filled with trash talk and accusations, and even as the two prepared to enter the staging area at Las Vegas’ Hard Rock Hotel and Casino before their walk into the Octagon, tension was high as Diaz hurled insults and threats at a stoic Sanchez. “I’ve been through a lot of fights,” Sanchez muses when asked about Diaz’ attempt to get under his skin. “What it comes down to is, I’m a professional. Regardless of whether the guy likes me or doesn’t like me, I’m going in there, I’m fighting, and I know what I’m fighting for. I’m fighting for my pride, for all that hard work I put in, and I believe I’ve put in more hard work than my opponent. I’ve been non-stop for five years now. I’ve been wrestling for 15 years and I haven’t stopped. I’ve seen the goal at the top of hill and I haven’t stopped climbing. I’m aware of that and I keep that in mind when I’m getting ready to go in there and fight. I’m also aware that any type of energy is an energy form – whether it’s me getting mad, that’s me wasting energy; or him getting mad, that’s him wasting his energy. When I step into the ring, I want to have 100 percent of my energy, I want to thrive off the energy of the fans in the crowd, and of course my main helper is my lord and savior Jesus Christ. I just feel that God is the one who keeps me calm and helps me not let that get to me. It also comes down to me being very confident, because if I’m not confident, then I’m gonna start to have doubts and start to think about the bad things that can happen to me in the cage – like getting knocked out or submitted or cut. If I think about those things, it’s gonna be on my mind and it’s gonna bring me down. I stay positive, I stay focused, and I think about what I have to do to beat my opponent.” That night, in a dazzling display of high-quality groundfighting from both men, Sanchez scored a unanimous decision over Diaz and truly established himself as a UFC-quality fighter. “Nick Diaz was in the best shape of his life for our fight,” said Sanchez. “I know Nick trained his ass off for our fight and he made a lot of sacrifices in his life, and he was on his game when he fought me. That’s why he was able to stay with my pace. A normal guy is gonna keep going and going and going, and then he’s gonna break at one time. They won’t be able to keep up with the speed, and that’s when they break. I’m hoping that’s what’s gonna happen with John Alessio.” Against Alessio, Sanchez is facing another MMA veteran with an impressive track record. The 24-year-old from New Mexico knows his opponent well. “I’ve known the guy for a long time,” said Sanchez of Alessio. “From my first fight as a King of the Cage fighter, he was already the champ, so I saw a lot of his fights, and he’s basically what an MMA fighter is today – he’s good at everything. Everybody has their little specialties – mine may be ground and pound, his may be boxing, so it makes for a good fight. The winner’s going to be whoever imposes their will – me imposing my will to get on the ground, him imposing his will to stay standing.” If he emerges victorious next month, the inevitable call for another step up in class will go up, and the fanatical among his following will start calling for a title shot. But Sanchez admits that that’s not on his radar right now. “I don’t want to fight for the title,” he said. “If I could prolong fighting for the title, I’ll prolong it as long as possible. I want to fight guys that match up well with me. I think Karo Parisyan is a great fight for me and I think our styles match up well. Our standup striking is very similar, and I also think our wrestling and submissions are on the same level so I think that would make for a very exciting fight. Also, somebody I really have an interest in fighting, but he’s in a different weight, is Chris Leben. I want to fight this guy, so me going back to 185, if the fight’s right and my management does things right and Joe Silva works it out, I may be making it back to ’85 to fight Chris Leben.” “I’m young and I look forward to rising up the rankings and continuing to learn as a fighter,” continues Sanchez. “I’m still learning a lot and every fight I’m getting better. I’m doing things so different now. My health is better than ever, my recovery time is better than ever, I’m smarter, and when it’s my time, I really want it to be my time. I want to be champ for a long time. That’s why I want to wait as long as I possibly can. With the rise of mixed martial arts, I believe it’s coming to an all-time high and it’s only gonna grow and the money’s only gonna get better, so of course, I want to wait until it’s my time to make the money that (Randy) Couture and (Chuck) Liddell are making now. That’s my plan, if I can have my way. But I’m paying my dues now.” And despite comments like those, Sanchez still finds himself at the center of message board wars between his diehard fans and those who are as diehard in their dislike of him. He refuses to let the negativity of some fans get to him though, as he chooses to focus on the positive side of the MMA fanbase. “I have plenty of wonderful fans that love me,” he said. “Of course I’ve got people who are haters and negative people who want to see an undefeated fighter lose, and there are always gonna be those people out there no matter how good I do in my career, and no matter how good anybody does in their career. People want to see the person who hasn’t got beat, get beat.” If Sanchez keeps on the right path and keeps improving the way he has been over the last year, he may not lose anytime soon. But he knows that in this sport, one second of missed focus can turn a win into a loss, and he can’t afford for that to happen – not now, not ever. “It’s your life on the line when you get in there,” he said. “This is my career and this is my life. I’m number four in the world right now, but I’m not here to be number four. I’m here to be number one. And with (Georges) St. Pierre and (Matt) Hughes and BJ (Penn) and Karo, I’ve got tough, tough work cut out for me, and if I slack, that means I’m doing stuff a fighter shouldn’t be doing, that’s gonna bring me down as a person and as a fighter.” “You never know when it’s gonna be your last fight, and I fight every fight like that,” Sanchez continues. “I’ll fight John Alessio like it’s going to be the last fight of my life. When I’m in there, I will fight with every ounce of blood I have in me, with all my spirit, heart, and mind. And I’ve heard fighters say this, but truly, he’s gonna have to kill me to beat me because I’m not gonna quit, I’m not gonna break.”
