For Brian Stann, Change Is Good

By Frank Curreri

Four years ago, when Brian Stann turned pro, he was looking to pad his resume with something that might make for interesting conversation 10 or 20 years down the road. Winning a major championship was the furthest thing was from his mind.

“The first day I started training I thought, ‘This is really cool and it would be cool to look back on my life and say I fought professionally and as an amateur for a little while,’” the 27-year-old recalled. “It was just something I thought would be a great hobby. All of a sudden I turned pro, kept winning fights and here I am. You have to remind me everyday that I’m a champion of a big organization because I certainly don’t remember it or think about it. I never expected to be where I’m at. I’m very fortunate.”

The unbeaten WEC light heavyweight champion, who had lived in North Carolina, recently relocated to Atlanta. Stann has a new job in the healthcare industry and a flexible work schedule that allows him to train full-time. He raves about so-called “Hotlanta” being a hotbed of MMA talent. Just as important, for the first time in his career, Stann has MMA coaches like Adam and Rory Singer, Roan Carneiro and Roberto Traven teaching him the X’s and O’s of technique and fight strategy. After 9 years of military service – including two tours in Iraq – Stann is no longer on active duty, affording him more time to train for his upcoming rematch with Steve Cantwell. And though Stann smashed Cantwell in 49 seconds during their first go-round, he isn’t taking the dangerous challenger lightly.

“I’ve trained harder for this fight than I’ve ever trained before,” Stann said. “I have coaches now for the first time in my career. I’ve never had one before. I used to train with a bunch of other Marines. We were a bunch of tough guys and we really tried to focus more on quality than quantity of technique. Now I have multiple coaches. I just love it. They break down various areas of the game very well. I’m at all the gyms in the area on their best and their hardest days. It has definitely sped up my improvement. It’s amazing the amount of Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belts that are in the room at the same time. Sometimes there are up to 10, 12 BJJ black belts at the same time, three of them being world champions.”

Stann has become a bit of a gym hopper. He has his own strength and conditioning coach, often trains at Traven’s gym, and makes a four-hour round-trip drive to the Hardcore Gym in Athens twice a week. To top it all off, Stann has a beautiful 9-month-old daughter, Alexandra, meaning a good night’s sleep isn’t always feasible.

“She’s amazing. She’s teething really bad now. Last night I probably got about three hours of sleep, but that’s just part of the game,” he said. “That’s my job. I’m the provider for my family. They’re more important than fighting, my rest and all that other stuff.”

As for Cantwell, Stann respects the challenger’s striking and grappling skills, but isn’t

so sure the feeling is mutual. He harkened back on his first fight with Cantwell for some perspective.

“I was only back from Iraq seven weeks from the day that I took that fight,” Stann said. “So on relatively short notice I took that fight after not training for seven months. I knew Steve was a hell of a fighter the first time I fought him. And I knew after I fought him that he was going to win the rest of his fights and that I would fight him again.

“My motivation for this fight is very simple: Steve really doesn’t think I’m a very good fighter. He does not respect my skills whatsoever. Just like the first time, he thinks he’s going to run right through me in this fight. He said the first fight was a fluke. I don’t need any more motivation than that, for someone to tell me I can’t do something or I can’t beat them at something. So I’m 150 percent motivated to train.”

One comment Cantwell made, declaring his Brazilian jiu-jitsu is far better than Stann’s, rubbed the champ the wrong way. Stann’s ground game remains a great unknown to those who have only seen him on fight nights, not during his practice sessions. Stann (6-0) has won every fight by TKO or knockout – in the first round. But he believes anyone who underestimates him on the mat is making a big mistake.

“I am completely comfortable to go to the ground in a fight,” he said. “I use my takedown defense because I have a better chance to end the fight using my hands. And if I’m going to go to the ground, I’m going there on my own terms, not on somebody else’s terms. I mean, I don’t care who you are, I don’t care if you are a BJJ black belt and a world champion at it, you do not want to be on your back in mixed martial arts anymore. Statistically it’s the worst place in a fight to be, the judges view it as you losing the fight regardless of what’s going on. So I’m not going to let somebody put me on my back, I refuse to do it. But I have no problems going to the ground whatsoever. If the fight does go to the ground I think people will soon realize the level of my jiu jitsu.”

But if the fight should hit the ground, Stann indicated he will still have a punch-first mentality.

“I’ll look to end the fight with ground and pound,” he said. “I’m not out to look pretty and try to lay on the guy. If I’m on the ground with a guy I’m trying to punch him in the face, just like when I’m standing up.”

Stann says he is his own worst critic. He has his practice sessions filmed so that he can study his technical flaws and correct them. He’s confident that this overhauled training system will bring a victory over Cantwell.

“My training used to just be 150 percent going hard all the time, breaking my body down completely,” Stann said. “I’ve certainly overtrained probably for every fight I’ve ever had. Now I train hard but I train a lot smarter and more technical. I actually know what I’m doing now, whereas before I was simply just fighting. Every week I’m getting better now.”