Interview with Greg Nelson

Combat Submission set-up

FS: Are there any particular fighters that you’ve trained where you’ve seen that and thought maybe they weren’t the best fighter to begin with and you’ve been able to instill those qualities when you bring them up to that very high level of skill that you have?

Greg Nelson: Yes definitely. One of the primary Thai Boxing instructors when he first came to train in my classes when I was teaching at the Kali group before I opened my own school, he came in and he was so skinny. He didn’t have enough muscle to control where his body went. You didn’t think he would make it. He would train and kept going and going and training and going, and now years and years later he’s one of the instructors at the top. He can keep up with everybody and even in the knee range he can really show people a lot of things because he’s had to work so hard to develop himself. He had to find so many ways to motivate himself that when he teaches people now he knows pretty much every struggle because he had to do that also. As far as the fighters go, we have one student here when he first started here was about 320 pounds, and now he fights at 185. He lost an entire person! He came in and started to fight and lost his first three fights. He got knocked out for two of them, and I think he lost by unanimous decision in the third one. He just kept plugging along, plugging along because he wasn’t really fighting to gain popularity or fame. He was fighting to prove to himself to reach a goal. Now I think he’s won his last nine fights. Still when he’s in the gym, he’s very unassuming when you look at him and train with him. But what he has done is when he gets in the ring, he’s very methodical and he waits for the person to make a mistake and he has the skill level to capitalize on that. It’s great when you see that. For him is a great personal triumph.

FS: Now you’ve won some very impressive titles during your fighting career and I know you won a gold medal in the Brazilian JiuJitsu in 1999, the silver in 2001. And you also won two gold medals at the 2001 grappling games in Los Angeles. Can you describe some of these fights and what was your most difficult match?

Greg Nelson demonstrates controlling an
opponent before using a front leg-sweep
(Jiu Jitsu) takedown maneuver

Greg Nelson: I would have to say my most difficult match was the first match in the Los Angeles grappling games. The guy was good at defending takedowns and he had a really good guard on his back he could really move well. He was taught be one of the Brazilian black belts and it wasn’t like it was tough in the fact that physically I was worn down and beat, but it took a lot to get the points I needed to win that fight. The reason being when I was training for that fight I had my kids here. Gunner was really young and couldn’t walk yet and Nina was running enough to get into a lot of trouble and danger so I always had to watch them. I would be trying to get a run started because I couldn’t run outside, so I had to condition in the confines of the academy. Family always comes before my training and school, so I would stop and help them, so I never really got to run for that whole tournament. So I was hoping I would be in good enough condition. It was more of a hard battle because I wasn’t conditioned like I should have been. After that first regulation time I was really tired, but from all my other training I just trained not to show it. And I could see he was really tired and then we went into overtime again. I could see he was breathing hard but I kept my face the same, even though inside I was gasping and dying. But I didn’t want to show him and then I could see the guy kind of break and look at me thinking that I wasn’t even tired. I was very tired, but mentally I kept the edge right there, so within about 30 seconds into that overtime I was able to take him down and get passed his guard into a dominant position and won the match. In the finals I was matched with this guy (we were the two oldest guys), we dropped down to the adult division which is 18-30 and I was 36 yr. and he was 44 or 45 yrs. So I guess wisdom and time beat the youth and exuberance that day. It was really funny because the next oldest person was around 27 yr. So that was one of the fights that stick out as being a hard one. It wasn’t because it was so draining, but I really had to put on the game face and hold in a lot of things. I would have loved to put my hands on my knees and breathe hard. But it was good because it allowed me to bring something out that I hadn’t used since I competed in college where you never want to show you are tired unless you are in trouble. As far as fights I’ve only been to one where I bearly won. I had another one where I didn’t understand the scoring yet of the jujitsu. You have advantage points where you haven’t done the move but you are going to get that point which is really 0. But if it’s tied and the other guy has one advantage point over you, he’s going to win. This guy kept doing this one move that was giving an advantage and we were tied and I had no clue. Over time he got four advantage points. And they kept saying, you’ve got to go, you’ve got to go. And I was thinking I was really dominating this guy. They said I was behind by advantage and I said, what?! So then I had to move and really get going and I would reverse the guy and got the two points I needed and 15 seconds later the time was up. That was kind of a difficult one because guys are yelling to you and I didn’t know what my problem was! He was beating me and it was 2 to 2 and he had like 4 advantage point and I had one, so the match would have been over and he would have won. Because he bringing his leg over my leg which I thought was great because I was trying to move off that, but really it wasn’t great. So that was a learning experience because each area has a different way of doing things. You just have to figure it out!