Showing some fight
MMA whiz gives tips to UNM coaches in several sports ahead of today’s basketball game
Albuquerque is a fight town. And the Pit used to be its home. On what would have been the 52nd birthday of the late Johnny Tapia, still widely considered one of Albuquerque’s favorite sons, with an invitation extended to his wife, Teresa Tapia, and several others in the Duke City’s still very much thriving fight community, the UNM Lobo men’s basketball team is giving a long overdue go at hosting a “Fight Night” promotion tonight in Dreamstyle Arena - the Pit when they host, appropriately, the San Jose State Spartans.
Holly Holm, Jon Jones and other local champions are expected to be among the fighters on hand for pregame and halftime recognition and throughout the game itself.
“Hopefully it will be a cool event for them as well and bringing different parts of our community together,” said UNM men’s basketball coach Paul Weir, who has a photo of Tapia hanging in his office and invited last season world-renowned mixed martial arts trainer Greg Jackson to come speak to his team.
“I know at different times, we all seem to be kind of competing with each other, or just at odds over scarce resources or things of that nature . ... But I hope it doesn’t spill over into the feelings toward each other. We feel, or I definitely feel, warm toward the fighting community.”
The Lobos, a team that has been rather inconsistent this season in showing fight — responding poorly at times to opposing teams playing physically or going on long scoring runs — hope anything can help them reinject some toughness into their game. The final month of the regular season has begun with UNM holding a 10-13 record (4-7 in Mountain West play) and almost out of wiggle room to move up
the league standings and get a top five seed in the March 13 MWC tournament in Las Vegas, Nev.
The “Fight Night” promotion coincides, coincidentally, with a new initiative being rolled out by Jackson, one of the world’s top MMA coaches who is from Albuquerque and is one half of the Jackson-Wink MMA empire along with Mike Winkeljohn.
Jackson last month started the New Mexico Experience. It’s a simple initiative that helps promote various entities from around his home state — one from northern New Mexico, one from central New Mexico and one from southern New Mexico — as he is on a world stage training some of the top fighters in the UFC and other MMA organizations.
At last weekend’s UFC 234 pay-per-vew even in Australia, Jackson tried promoting by wearing T-shirts and doing other activities to promote three New Mexico entities — Santa Fe’s Meow Wolf, the International Balloon Fiesta and Las Cruces’ Organ Mountain Outfitters.
“The New Mexico Experience, for me, is about helping and promoting anything and everything from New Mexico,” Jackson said Tuesday in the Jackson-Wink Academy after training nearly a dozen UNM coaches and assistant coaches from several Lobo sports.
“I’m super proud of my state. I’m super proud of my Lobos. So what we do is we pair up with different organizations or different businesses to use the MMA platform that we have to really push our teams. We’re all athletes from the same state. The Lobos are amazing and the mixed martial arts team we have at Jackson-Wink here is also amazing. So, athletes getting together to help athletes is a big deal.”
Jackson doesn’t charge anything for the promotion, but as the coach of some of MMA’s biggest stars, is often interviewed or even seen on pay-per-view events in the octagon, now wearing such t-shirts as Meow Wolf, or possibly wearing Lobos gear at next month’s UFC 235 main event with Jones.
Jackson’s relationship with Weir started a year ago when the then first-year Lobos coach asked Jackson to come talk to his team.
“You push yourself to a place you don’t want to be,” Jackson told the Lobo players last year. “You get to that point where you’re exhausted and what do you do? Calm down and breathe. You aren’t going to die. I promise you. Then (when exhausted to what seems like the limit), you do whatever skill set you need to train. …
“The point is you have to consistently do that (and push yourself to that limit) to normalize it . ... Thrive where others suffer. That’s the key to success.”
That message is something Weir has said he hopes his teams can embody because, as he has also said, that tough, blue-collar mentality comes to mind when he thinks of Albuquerque and of the Lobo fan base.
UNM assistant coach Jerome Robinson on Tuesday went through some of the Jackson-led workouts, along with coaches from women’s soccer, women’s golf, volleyball and football.
“I had a lot of fun,” Robinson said. “I don’t think I could do MMA. I’m a wimp. I love boxing and I love MMA. I love watching it. Appreciate the art of it. I appreciate what they do in the ring, but it takes a different individual to get inside a cage and go one-on-one, whether it’s boxing or mixed martial arts. It’s a different mentality.”
ON THE SPARTANS: The visiting Spartans have struggled this season, losing their 10 MWC games by an average of 24 points. But Weir said they still offer plenty the Lobos can learn from.
“They’ve got good size and will do some things we haven’t seen much of,” Weir said. “They do play a lot of zone. We haven’t seen a lot of zone this year, so we are going to kind of work on that. And we’re also just working on ourselves and just work on that process of just trying to be the best team we can be.”