Published by Stephen Rhodes
Mike sent this in:
When calling Amir Sadollah’s cell phone, you are immediately met with an automated female voice welcoming you to enjoy a selection of music chosen by the phone’s owner while they try the number of the party you are trying to reach.
The message is followed by an orchestral arrangement of what, thanks to my limited knowledge of classical music, I discern to be one of Beethoven’s or Mozart’s well-known symphonies, which I assume Sadollah has taken great care in choosing, reflecting his obviously sophisticated tastes .
Wrong on all accounts.
“I think it’s Bach or something; I don’t know,” Sadollah says. “It came with the phone and I just kind of stuck with it because it made me seem brainy.”
Perceived notions about who he is and what he’s all about are something the winner of season 7 of The Ultimate Fighter reality series has been dealing with his whole life, and a reality he says he has never let bother him. During his stint on the show, Sadollah, who entered the TUF house with four amateur and zero pro fights to his name, proved many people, who assumed he was in over his head in the competition, wrong. Despite the fact that he beat Steve Byrnes, Matt Brown, Gerald Harris and CB Dollaway to clinch himself a berth in the final – all fighters who were all talented enough in their own rights to win the competition – no one put much stock in the idea that Sadollah could very well be the dark horse to win the whole show.
Surprising most, he did just that, submitting the heavily favored former All-American Division I wrestler, Dollaway, again the same way he did on the show, via a textbook armbar.
Shrugging off the fact that he was overlooked by most when predicting who would earn the coveted six-figure TUF contract, Sadollah says he likely would have bet against himself if he didn’t know better.
“I definitely felt like not a lot of people gave me much of a chance [of winning] coming on the show. Even though on paper I didn’t have the pro background, I was confident I had the experience as far as what I felt I needed to know. I definitely think I am better and more experienced than my record would indicate,” he says. “From the time I started training in mixed martial arts until now, I’ve probably been in the sport about seven years. I paced myself starting out, I definitely took my time trying to stay around it and do a little bit of grappling and a little bit of Muay Thai and a little bit of MMA. It didn’t happen overnight.”
Besides the obvious monetary bonuses he took with him from the show, Sadollah lists having the opportunity to see if he would sink or swim when shoved in the deep end of the pool that being in front of television cameras 24-7 feels like to some as being the greatest reward. Sadollah credits the crash-course experience of being in the fish bowl for six weeks, which he says gave him a taste for the lack of privacy that is a byproduct of being a celebrity, for helping him to put things in perspective and to remain grounded no matter how strange or surreal his life gets.
“One thing I realized from being on the show is that it kind of immediately jolted you to that feeling of being exposed and being on camera and being accountable for everything you say and do. Once you’ve been on TV or are in the public eye, it’s almost like it’s expected that it’s okay that people ask you whatever they want to ask and what you do is public knowledge, so it’s definitely another whole factor to the game. It was so weird to me before I was on the show to think that anyone would recognize me, or come up to me and say that they’re a fan and stuff,” Sadollah explains. “I still kind of stop and pinch myself when it happens and say, ‘Man, that’s crazy’. It’s weird, but in a good way, for sure. I mean, if that had happened to me three years ago, I would’ve been like, ‘What the hell’s going on?’. You get used to people talking to you like they know you and you’ve never met them in your life. It’s strange what you can adjust to. Strangely enough, I feel like I’m getting shyer as I go along. But in certain ways I’m a little bit more extroverted.”
Heading into the show, Sadollah weighed his options and thoughtfully considered whether he wanted to be remembered for his performance inside the Octagon or his personality in front of the cameras. Making the critical choice to just be himself, he said, allowed him to put all of his attention into what he was really there for.
“You can always tell watching a show who was putting on a character and who wasn’t and I think people are smart enough to realize that. I wanted to be the person that I wouldn’t hate on there, so I kind of felt that being genuine was my best bet,” Sadollah says. “I figured that way, I didn’t have to waste energy worrying about what I was doing or saying and I could just focus on fighting and winning the competition.”
After stumbling briefly in a TKO loss to Johny Hendricks at UFC 101 in August, Sadollah upped the value of his stock by handing uber-durable brawler Phil Baroni a one-sided drubbing – a performance he modestly undermines his part in, instead crediting the win to his coaches and the game plan they formulated for him.
“It was definitely a tough fight. I don’t know, I think that we just had a good game plan, and I was able to execute it,” says Sadollah. “It was definitely a confidence builder; it showed myself and the people around me the level I can reach.”
Despite logging arguably his best showing of his young career against Baroni, Sadollah, who was born in Brooklyn, didn’t take on any of the New York Bad Ass’ swagger and doesn’t lay claim to his nickname either, but says he gets dibs on the being the badass of the borough he was born in.
“He can have Long Island, I get Brooklyn,” he deadpans.
Up next for the self-anointed “Brooklyn Bad Ass” is Brad Blackburn (15-9-1, 1 NC), a fighter who has yet to lose in the Octagon and whom Sadollah feels presents a bigger challenge to him than Baroni.
“Stylistically, it should be a good match-up. He’s up there skill-wise. It’s definitely the type of fight that I like and it’s a challenge for me and I think that’s what I tend to respond to,” he says. “I definitely think it’s going to be more technically demanding than my last fight, so we’ll see how I do.”
For Sadollah, fighting has never been about proving to others who he was or what he could do, but rather was, and still is, about strengthening himself as a person while improving his mind, resolve and perseverance.
“I think that’s one of the things I love about fighting so much – it was the first thing I did in life that made me feel like it was making me better at life. It was the first thing I did that defined me. I always knew that if I could learn how to function in this, I could handle every aspect of my life. I definitely think a lot and I’m always looking for the answer,” Sadollah explains. “You come to the point where you realize you’ll do what you need to do, but the hard part is finding the RIGHT answer not just a solution. My parents raised me with fair amount of self-confidence; I always knew I could do what I want, but I never knew for a fact that I could do what I wanted until I got into fighting.”
Earning a paycheck for doing what he loves was something the 29-year-old, who left his career as a surgical technician behind after signing with the UFC, says took some getting used to. He says the money is just the icing on the cake and the real payoff is the enjoyment he gets every time he steps into the cage.
“I’ve always been uncomfortable with getting paid to fight. It’s weird, but I remember at the end of the show when I got a check for fighting, it was just weird to me; I felt bad, like some sort of guilt – like getting paid for sex, or something,” he recalls. “I was like ‘You mean I get paid to do what I love? What’s the catch here?’ I think if you ever do a fight for the money, that’s when you need to retire. Any fight that I wouldn’t do for free, then I wouldn’t be doing it. But don’t get me wrong, I spend it like it’s water.”
Besides his performance in the cage, what endears Sadollah to his ever-growing base of fans is his quiet confidence, humility and quirky sense of humor. Admitting he wasn’t blessed with the athletic prowess of a guy like UFC welterweight champion Georges St. Pierre, he says some may be surprised to learn that he wasn’t always as popular as he is now.
“I was never a super-athlete growing up, but there are other things besides pure athleticism to my success so far. I didn’t play a lot of sports in high school. That was kind of an awkward time for me. I definitely had my corner of friends, but I was never the jock — I was never the popular guy and was never the class clown, so to speak,” recounts Sadollah. “I really just did my own thing. I wasn’t a loner, but…you know what – let’s just scratch all that and say I was the coolest guy in school, good at all sports and I had like 50 girlfriends. Let’s just write that.”
So now that he finds himself under the constant microscope that being a UFC fighter entails, are there any deep dark secrets from Sadollah’s past that haven’t surfaced yet?
“I don’t know. I hate candy corn. I’m not sure why, but I can’t stand it. When I was little, I was sick the week that they taught the months of the year, so for some reason there’s about a three or four-month stretch where I get hazy and I have to really think about the order of the months. I know the summer months because it was summer and my birthday’s in August and I was always excited for that,” he reveals. “I know the fall, obviously because of all of the holidays but after New Year’s until about springtime I have to really think about what month comes next. I’ll be like ‘April….March…. what the heck?!’ I’m lucky I don’t have a lot of fights in the late winter or early spring because I‘d have no idea what month it was and I wouldn’t know where I’m supposed to be. I’d need a personal assistant.”
. Jan 07, 2010
Filed under: Octagon Buzz Exclusive, Amir Sadollah, Brad Blackburn, UFC
