“When I met him he had just fought Marvin Eastman (Pictures) in the WFA. Eventually it was me, Rich, Kerry Schall (Pictures), Billy Rush and Josh Rafferty (Pictures). People came and left, fighters came and ended up dropping out. But in the end it was always me and Rich; we were the core.”
“People always had some excuse: they had something to do. And I knew that when I got there, no matter what, I knew that Rich would be standing there, and he knew the same thing.”
“Without each other we wouldn’t be here today. I feel blessed to find each other. Finding a person that is just like you … everybody tells you you’re crazy, everybody tells you you’re not going to make it, everybody thinks you’re a lunatic. But then you find somebody that is just as hardworking, just as dedicated, believes in himself and wants to be an athlete just as much.”
“Having that training partner … steady, consistent, with you every day pushing and motivating you, it’s the best thing ever. A lot of people don’t have that, they’re on their own. Me and Rich have each other. We grew so much because we believe in each other and push each other. He’s a great best friend man, couldn’t ask for anything more.”
I posed a scenario to Jorge. The UFC is holding an open-weight tournament and Jorge and Rich are in the finals.
He laughs: “We’d beat the shit out of each other.”
“If you go by statistics and ask everybody, Rich would be a 10-1 favorite. But I’ll tell you this: I will never, ever, tell you that somebody will beat me until I fight him. I don’t care if it’s Fedor. I believe in myself that I can beat anybody. I can.”
“A fight is the most unpredictable business in the world. Anybody can make a mistake and I can get their back. How many upsets have you seen in fighting? Rich is way more decorated, a lot heavier, a lot better boxing skills, great JJ skills, my favorite fighter in the whole world.”
“I’m his biggest fan and best friend, but nobody will beat me until they beat me.”
Around this time Jorge also started fighting, earning two to five hundred dollars per fight.
Jorge was still in school with three quarters of a semester left to graduate in International Business, but due to his busy jiu-jitsu schedule he was failing classes due to poor attendance.
He made a hard choice to quit school, and needless to say his parents weren’t thrilled.
Jorge was never worried though, and explains it this way.
“I was put here for something man; my job in this world is to do what I do. To fight, to be a competitor, to be a professional athlete and to teach people what changed my life.”
“Jiu-jitsu changed my life. Everything I am right now is because jiu-jitsu built me into an adult, built me to this lifestyle that I have. Jiu-jitsu is not a sport, jiu-jitsu turns into your lifestyle. It comes from the inside. Everything you do is related to jiu-jitsu. It changes you, how you think, how you think about your body, how you think about your health, how you think about everything.”
“You have a shitty day you go to jiu-jitsu and have a good jiu-jitsu day and your life is good. It completely changed me and I think it changed me into a good person. I’m proud of what I became because of jiu-jitsu and because my life has been dedicated to this sport and I want to pass it along to people.”
Jorge becomes very passionate as he says these words. He has brought his fork to his mouth three times, each time putting it back to his plate untouched.
“I never thought that I wasn’t going to make it, still don’t.”
His Career
At various points Jorge was the first lightweight contender for the King of the Cage, for the Freestyle Fighting Championship (FFC) and the AFC in Florida. All of those when the UFC called him.
He had been called by them two times previously, but had been injured with a completely broken bicep tendon and then a broken knuckle.
It happened when his manager, Monte Cox called him one day and asked him if he wanted to be on The Ultimate Fighter television show at 170 pounds.
Jorge’s knee had been broken in his fight with Masakazu Imanari (Pictures) two years previously, and this was to have an affect on him.
“I went into that fight so overconfident, knowing that Imanari was the number-one leg expert in the world. He’s just that tricky with the stuff, and everybody that goes there knows this.”
“I disregarded that. I was so much bigger, stronger and in shape. I was like, ‘There’s no way this little Japanese guy … I never get foot locked.’ And the first thing that I do is throw a flying knee at a guy who likes to grab legs.” He laughs.
“I did not give a shit. I didn’t care. I thought I could beat everybody with my leg. I don’t care if I going to tear my leg up, that’s my mindset.”
Then three weeks before taping was to start, Jorge’s Muay Thai coach accidentally held his leg after a roundhouse kick, kicked his posted leg and his knee buckled sideways.
“I never felt pain like that before. I had an MRI that night and my ACL was completely torn and my MCL was almost torn all the way. My meniscus also had a tear. I worked for three weeks on the muscle around the knee and I thought I was going to get better.”
“I thought I could still beat everybody with one leg. The general public didn’t know I was injured. I was a favorite to win the show and that drove me crazy, because I knew I had lost.”
During the taping he said he became especially close with Marcus Davis, but it was the big guys he got along with more easily, because he knew he wouldn’t ultimately be fighting them.
“I would do it again, it was a great experience. I liked and became close with everybody. I love Rashad. I love Keith Jardine (Pictures). I love Tom Murphy (Pictures). And Brad Imes (Pictures) is great, calls me all the time.”
In the second round of Jorge’s fight with Jason Von Flue (Pictures) his knee buckled and he knew that he was in trouble. He got back up and tried not to go forward anymore. Jorge smiles when he says that Von Flue finished with 49 stitches all over his face and Jorge had nothing but a black eye and a broken knee.
Life Today
It’s now 5 p.m., which is the magic hour that my favorite sushi place, the appropriately named “I Love Sushi” opens. Jorge and I head over so he can try the “Sushi Pizza” he’s been craving since I mentioned it a few days ago.
After we order, I ask Jorge to tell me about his life now.
“I’m so happy. I’m here in Canada teaching a seminar. I’m going to workout. I had a steak and I’m eating outside in a beautiful town. I was by the pool and now I’m going to workout at night. There are people in the office right now working for somebody else.”
“I don’t have a boss. People are not telling me what to do no matter what, and I do not want to have to wake up at the crack of dawn, at 5 o’clock in the morning like I see so many people have to be at work at 6 or 7. I can’t do that.”
“If you drive around on a highway early in the morning you see people going to work, they have like an Egg McMuffin; they’re driving to work cursing the world. I’ve seen people before doing this and I’m like, I don’t want to be like this.”
“Sometimes I’m really scared. I’m just waiting for a bomb to drop or some shit to happen in my life. How can I be so happy and so blessed, you know? But I am.”
Jorge is also very proud of his successes in business. His “Jorge Gurgel (Pictures) Mixed Martial Arts Academy” is about to move into a new 13,000 square foot area in Dayton, Ohio, and he has 12 affiliated schools, including the one here in Halifax.
“To say the new school is a dream school would be an understatement. The grand opening should be the week after my fight, October 1st. At 13,000 square feet it will be the biggest and busiest MMA School in the Midwest by far.”
“I have 12 different schools and I have 400 some students and I didn’t come from the Gracies. I didn’t come from a big group of knowledge like powerful teams like the Alliance or Jacare with 20 Black Belts. I’m me. I’m just one guy.”
“I do what I want. I walk in to my school to train. Those are my students wearing my name. Now, I have a school with my initials in Canada. I have 12 affiliation schools and I’m 29 years old.”
“I don’t want to expand my association anymore. I can’t handle it. If I quit fighting right now and wanted to book myself every weekend for a year, I could.”
“Every Monday I call the Vice President of my association, Dustin Ware, and ask where I’m going this weekend. He organizes it all for me.”
“I don’t want to be like some of those jiu-jitsu legends around who open 20 associations and there are people there for three years that never met them. People are competing with your name on their back and you’ve never even taught them an armbar. I want to be personal with my students.”
“Because of TUF, not because of me being in there, but because of TUF and SPIKE getting the show and the UFC growing, my business started to grow. For some reason when I went to the show, hand in hand, I started growing as a fighter.”
“It was weird, people started liking me. I got so much support. The business started getting good, the paydays started getting better, I started finally being admired and respected for what I chose to do with my life. That’s the most rewarding thing.”
Jorge insists that I mention his business partner Ed Wilson.
“He does everything. All I do, my job, is to be me. Ed is the backbone, a machine that does the marketing, the phone calls, the billing and the scanner cards.”
“Whatever I need, before I blink it’s done. He’s the most effective guy at anything I’ve ever seen. There’s no way I’d be able to run my academy without him.”
I asked him how he is right now, physically.
“I had brand new knee reconstruction. How many people can say that they’re 100 percent? All my ligaments are fake, two screws, my meniscus … everything’s from a cadaver.”
“It took me a year. Sometimes I couldn’t even straighten my knee getting out of bed and I thought I was never going to be the same again. And I am 100 percent.”
“God gave me that opportunity to be able to fight and to perform. Everything happens for a reason. God is always with me.”
The sushi pizza shows up and Jorge and I both start to salivate. Jorge is dismayed to find that the rice is fried but relaxes when he sees that is only lightly so.
This seems like a perfect time to ask him about his diet.
“If I called it a diet Mike Ferguson would go crazy. It’s a nutrition plan. Me and Rich eat every two and a half hours and it’s always a certain number of ounces of greens, protein and starches.”
“If it doesn’t come from the ground, or eat things that come from the ground, we don’t eat it. Nothing processed, so no bread, no pasta, no sugar, no fruit, no juices, no ice cream.”
“What we do eat is a lot of potatoes, sweet potatoes, a lot of oatmeal, spinach, broccoli, green beans, chicken, eggs, steak and rice.”
Jorge makes all his meals for the day when he wakes up in the morning. He also admits to drinking only water. Lots of it. Two gallons a day to be exact, and no pop, not even diet.