The longest days for Kenny Florian (Pictures) start at 4:30 a.m. That’s when the Boston-bred, Boston-based mixed martial artist rises from bed in the pitch dark, showers, suits up, compiles two days of research and sets out on a two-hour drive to tape a weekly fight recap show at ESPN headquarters in Connecticut. When he gets home, he trains in the afternoon and again at night.
In the run-up to a marquee fight against Roger Huerta (Pictures) at UFC 87 this Saturday at the Target Center in Minneapolis, Florian, 32, finds himself at a strange intersection. As his MMA career hits its peak, several opportunities have emerged that could allow him to build a foundation for life after fighting. In addition to hosting “MMA Live” weekly on ESPN.com, Florian, an intelligent, verbose fighter who has a communications degree from Boston College, has also won praise for his recent performances as a color commentator on UFC telecasts. He keeps an active blog, his abilities as a seminar instructor are in demand at MMA gyms coast-to-coast, and he and his brother are opening Florian Martial Arts in Brookline, Mass., next month.
In short, Florian is trying to do it all, whether he’s wearing a blazer or fight shorts.
“Every fight, I think I’m going to take some time off, and I’m just not able to do it,” he says. “Either from training or from other commitments, it’s just been one thing after another, so I’ve been super busy for this fight, but it’s like that every fight. I’m always busier and busier. It means I need to focus that much more on my training when I’m [home]. Fighting is the reason I’m on the [ESPN] show. Fighting is the reason I’m able to pay my bills. That needs to come first, for sure.”
Florian tapped the breaks on his hectic schedule in recent weeks. He temporarily yielded the ESPN seat to former UFC heavyweight champion Frank Mir (Pictures), a well-spoken fighter following a career path similar to his. Keith Florian, Kenny’s brother and cageside advisor, who delayed his honeymoon so he could corner Kenny against Huerta, believes the relaxed schedule came just in time.
“It was getting to the point where we hadn’t seen him for three weeks,” Keith says. “He literally had seminars every single weekend for about a month and a half. He was still training, but we hadn’t seen him. He’d be in New York, and then he’d be training with whoever he trains with over there. Then he’d be back in Vegas, and he’d be training over there in Vegas with some other people. And he’d be training in Mexico with other friends.”
Kenny Florian may be shuttling all over the map on the UFC’s public relations circuit, but he’s also finding gyms to train, keeping a strict diet and refusing to lose a step. His longtime muay Thai trainer, Mark DellaGrotte, thinks “KenFlo” has managed to obtain peak form since his last fight -- a TKO win over Joe Lauzon (Pictures) in April.
“I used to be able to stop everything Kenny Florian threw at me, and now I can’t,” says DellaGrotte, who regularly spars with his charges. “Now I get lumps, and I get black eyes. He is a 155-pound fighter that is a sparring partner for Patrick Cote (Pictures) at 185, for Jorge Rivera (Pictures) at 185, Marcus Davis (Pictures) at 170, Stephan Bonnar (Pictures) at 205; the list goes on and on. If you call Marcus Davis and Jorge Rivera and Patrick Cote, they’re all going to tell you exactly what I’m going to tell you: Florian gives them f--king hell.”
In Huerta, Florian will face a fighter who has weathered a similar PR regimen recently. Huerta has been so pressed for time that he’s publicly expressed his displeasure with the grind and what the UFC pays for it. The UFC sees the 25-year-old -- a balls-to-the-wall, gutsy fighter with movie star facial features -- as its potential centerpiece in the Hispanic market. Huerta’s approach to combat in some ways resembles that of Diego Sanchez (Pictures), who overwhelmed Florian at “The Ultimate Fighter 1” Live Finale in 2005 -- the first time anyone outside of small clubs and halls in Massachusetts saw Florian compete. It was a case study in UFC jitters.
“I think in that fight I was just super insecure and super not ready for the cameras,” Florian says. “I had no idea how huge it was. It literally hit me in the face, and by the time I knew I was in the fight, Diego was mounted on me, and I was bleeding.”
Florian learned a valuable lesson in defeat.
“That was really the big wake-up call to know that 80 percent of this really is mental,” he says. “Everyone is doing the right things now. Everyone knows that you need to train in everything. Everyone knows you need your own strength and conditioning coach, you need to eat well and all that stuff. So what’s the difference? The mental difference. That’s really what it is. Who has the better confidence? Who’s more secure with themselves and really confident in what they did to prepare for the fight?”
Florian’s mental will and confidence were forged in a fight with Sean Sherk (Pictures) in 2006. In only his third UFC bout, Florian challenged for the vacant lightweight title against a 34-fight veteran moving down from welterweight, where he’d only lost twice. Florian hung with Sherk for five rounds, bloodying the Minnesotan and staying very much in the hunt despite repeatedly being taken down.
“That fight was so important to my development as a fighter mentally,” Florian says. “I think that the Kenny Florian who fought Sean Sherk had a lot of heart. He was tough but still technically just not where he needed to be, physically not where he needed to be. Just the gains I’ve made physically are night and day. I would smash that old Kenny Florian.”
Florian has not lost since that five-round affair, rattling off four straight wins against tough competitors and diversifying his arsenal each time out. He’s one of the least predictable fighters in the lightweight division, and that’s by design.
“Somebody may say, ‘Oh yeah, he fought the perfect fight. We’re going to fight just like that the next time,’” Keith Florian says. “Well, you know what? Your opponent is looking exactly at what you were doing that last fight. They’re already finding counters for that. That’s exactly why you have to keep evolving. You can never stand still. If you stand still, you’re dead in the water.”
Florian and his camp do not expect to stand still at all in the fight against Huerta. They expect Huerta, fighting on his own Minnesota stomping grounds, to come forward tenaciously and try to turn the match into a brawl, make it a battle of wills and disrupt Florian’s game plan any way possible.
“I think Roger’s well rounded like the other fighters nowadays, but he’s got that something extra as far as heart and determination, and he’s not going to quit,” Kenny Florian says. “It has to be something technical that’s going to take him out. You have to capitalize on a mistake.”
If Huerta errs, Florian’s camp banks on it having something to do with hitting a wall with which he is unfamiliar. The biggest war Huerta has engaged in during his UFC tenure -- a “Fight of the Year” candidate against Clay Guida (Pictures) in December -- saw him struggle through two rounds, only to deliver a stunning knee strike that set up a submission in the third. Florian, a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt, hopes to present challenges that will preempt such a blow from getting through.
“Roger hasn’t hit that wall yet,” DellaGrotte says. “Most fighters learn about who they are and what they believe in when they hit that wall, when they’ve been around the block once or twice.”
DellaGrotte senses Huerta and many fans are discounting Florian amidst the hype “El Matador” has enjoyed for most of his UFC tenure. Huerta’s done nothing but win in the Octagon, and fans have rallied behind him as a result. Florian, meanwhile, has had to slowly build up his fan base; two of his three career losses have been before massive television audiences.
“If this was a popularity contest, Kenny would be f--ked,” DellaGrotte says. “But it’s not a popularity contest; it’s a fight. So therefore, Roger is f--ked. I love Roger; he’s a great guy, but every time I see Roger, he kind of gives me that wink, like he knows something I don’t. He doesn’t realize the joke’s on him. I’ve never seen Kenny so hungry.”
Florian was cageside the night Huerta defeated Guida, calling the action as an analyst for Spike TV. He straddled the line between objectively calling the action and scouting a fighter who now stands between him and the apex of his profession. It was symbolic of the crossroads at which the multi-talented Massachusetts fighter finds himself. MMA is his past, his present and his future.
“My life pretty much revolves around this right now,” Florian says. “It’s all I do. It’s all I really think about.”