Jens Pulver: Win or Walk Away?

By Frank Curreri

If you lose your next fight, will you retire?

The inquiry creates a slightly awkward air for both the interviewer and interviewee. But it is to be expected. When you’re a former UFC champion and have been on a significant slide in recent years – media interviews can easily start to feel like FBI interrogations.

Jens Pulver, however, does not take offense at the question, or the underlying insinuation. The fighter who for years has been, hands-down, perhaps the most compelling interview in MMA realizes that no credible reporter will interview him these days without somehow, someway, broaching the subject of whether his once-illustrious career is presently on life support.

No Speech, Just Action
So I ask him: If you fall to Javier Vazquez on Saturday night at WEC 47 in Columbus, Ohio, might you call it quits?

“I’ll never make that ‘I’m retired’ speech,” Pulver responded. “There’s no reason. I’ll just be done. I’ll stay away. I’ll go on and do other things, but at 34 years old I’m not going to stand up there and go, ‘That’s it for me. I’m retired’ – and then come back. I’m not going to be that guy.”

Clearly, no matter how gut wrenching and confounding the results have been inside the Octagon, Pulver clings to the conviction that he still has quite a bit of fight left in him. And the surest way to taper the retirement and irrelevance talk, as Randy Couture demonstrated time and time again, is to string together a few victories.

Watch a clip of "Driven," a documentary about Pulver's road to WEC 47, on YouTube

Training His Body, Taming His Demons
For Pulver (22-12-1), the obstacles have been more mental than physical. How do you regain the confidence necessary to be a good fighter when you haven’t been winning? His grand, frustrating experiment for rekindling that lost magic continued with his most recent training camp. He opened his own Gym, Driven.

He lives 20 minutes outside of Boise State University, where he once wrestled and graduated with a degree in Criminal Justice. He is being coached by former teammate Tony Frykland, a good friend and training partner from their days under Pat Miletich. Oh, and Pulver is again not ashamed to admit that he’s been seeing a psychologist to help his performance for this fight.

“My biggest battle now is the demons inside of me,” he said. “I just kind of lost my place. I don’t know what else to do. This is all I’ve ever known. It’s tough to lose four straight times and try to get back on the horse. I’m just trying to survive in a sport that I love and with a name that I created. It’s no easy task.

"So I definitely sat down and talked with somebody (a psychologist) about it. I started working on the depression, the anxiety and the panic attacks. The minute I had my moment of clarity, so to speak, the first thing I did was create this camp and this gym, Driven, and got around Tony Frykland and the people I grew up with.”

A New Game Plan
The Washington state native is familiar with Vazquez (13-4), so much so that he declined to reach out to former teammate L.C. Davis for advice regarding the Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt from California. Davis and Vazquez fought last year in the WEC, with Davis escaping with a split decision victory.

Yet Pulver has followed Vazquez’ career for years and didn’t reach out to Davis because “it isn’t a secret. I’ve seen the video, I know how Javier stands, I know how he fights. I know all the things about Javier. He just turned southpaw and he likes to throw big bombs for one reason: So you cover up so he can get in and get the takedown and go after the submissions.

You don’t grapple with the guy because he’s a great grappler. You try to out strike him standing up. I’m not too worried about it. I know how to stop takedowns. I know what I need to do.”

Above all else, Pulver wants to reverse a trend of jumping out of the gate too quickly and making what he calls “dumb” and costly mistakes. The numbers support his hypothesis. Of his past seven fights, only two have lasted longer than four minutes. Pulver was only victorious in one of those fights.

“Being an older fighter now, the days of trying to slug it out in the first 30 seconds, man, I have to try to stop doing that,” he said. “That’s why I’ve been getting caught by a lot of these guys in the first round because I’m doing dumb things off the bat. I’m a deep water guy and I need to get that thing into the second or third round. I need to take my time and pick this guy apart. That’s where I sit going into this fight. It’s time to sit back, have a game plan, have some patience, don’t get into slugfests and utilize what I have. That’s what Tony has instilled in me. It’s time to have a game plan, don’t just go out there and see what happens, and that’s what I did for a lot of years.”

Maturing Beyond Lil' Evil
He is asked to compare today’s Jens to the Jens who was UFC lightweight champ back in 2001. How would a fight between those two versions of self have transpired?

“The younger Jens would have rolled over him and beat him senseless,” he asserted. “The younger Jens would have crushed him just with sheer will and attitude. That was always what really carried me -- the ability to stuff anybody’s takedown, the ability to train like a madman. I rented a room; I didn’t have a home, a wife, a daughter and a son, and have to make sure that they were taken care of as well. So all I had to think about was how hard I could train and how fast I could beat somebody up, how hard I could punch ‘em.

“I got to find that guy. That’s the tough part. That was ‘Lil’ Evil.’”

Leading up to this fight, Pulver said fewer media than usual have called him for interviews, a sign that he is “kind of dying out so to speak,” he said. Again, he tries to finger the culprits that caused his demise.

“I’m fighting guys in the Top 5. I’m not going to get anything less than that because of my name. There are no easy fights for me. There are no tune-up fights for me.”

The Wins You Haven't Seen
Another reason: “Along the way, I slipped and tripped and people have evolved and the sport got bigger and everybody got faster. The aggression wasn’t there, the ability to go inside the gym and learn wasn’t there, because I was busy trying to sharpen my fatherhood skills, trying to sharpen how to be a better man skills. People might see the L’s when I get into the cage but, man, the W’s I’m getting in life are so much more to me right now.”

It’s a safe bet that the vast majority of fans in Columbus will be pulling for Pulver to win on Saturday night. If he loses, it may well be the last time he ever fights for the WEC.

“I don’t mind the people that are screaming ‘Hey, you’re tarnishing your name, retire!’” Pulver said. “The only thing I can tell them is, ‘Hey the name might be tarnished, I may go on a hitless streak for 26 games but it’s one homerun and then the next homerun and all of the sudden you’re back in the game.’ I’m still a competitor, I’m still a fighter. I still enjoy it, I still love it.

“Inside of me I want to win this fight. I have to be competitive, I want to win. It’s just time for me, it’s time for my family. It’s time for me to go out there and represent my gym and people who have put up with me. I just want to be competitive – win, lose or draw. That’s all I ask. If I can go out there and be competitive, and make it a great fight … and I’m implementing my gameplan and not doing the dumb things …. I just want to show people that I’m competitive and I’m still someone who belongs in this game. That’s it. I walk into this thing with the simplest of desires.”