Stories From The Road: Josh Barnett

An underlying theme permeates throughout the legends: They fight for neither money nor fame. They do it because they love it and always have. Guys like Josh Barnett were forged in the furnace of the unappreciated. He went anywhere to find a fight, one time circumventing a brief family “intervention” about his passion. They were concerned about his future. Barnett did everything from cleaning and mopping a dojo in exchange for training to traveling hundreds of miles to some obscure place, not knowing whether or not there would even be a fight at the end of the journey. An interesting turning point came when he was sophomore at the University of Montana, around the age of 20. He was approached about his calling, which eventually transformed “The Warmaster” into an all-time great mixed martial arts heavyweight. “I don’t know if you would call it an intervention or not, but it kind of felt that way from my grandfather, my dad and mom basically encouraging me to stay in school,” Barnett said. “The meeting was something organic. My grandfather is a lawyer and a very bright man. By then, I had decided to forego higher learning to beat up my brains cells that I managed to accumulate in the first place. They felt the thing I was pursuing wouldn’t yield the kind of dividends that you could build a life off of, at best. At worst, they feared I’d be maimed or crippled. “I told them that I could go back to school in a wheelchair: ‘I can’t be a fighter without taking advantage of the physical window I had and I was going to take it now,’” he added. “When it came time for me to travel the world, they knew I had a talent for [fighting], and they decided to support me. Then, I didn’t know whether MMA would be a full-blown career, but I knew it was something that I wanted to be heavily involved with. A good reason for fighting was because I wanted to see the world and I got to punch someone’s lights out at the same time.” He did see the world, and the world has seen him. Barnett battled injuries about which he never spoke, beaten legends, like Randy Couture, and defeated real-life giants, like the 6-foot-10 Gan McGee and 7-foot Dutch kickboxer Semmy Schilt. Nothing, apparently, has ever been too big for Barnett. Peel through the hair, the bluster and, sometimes, the rage, and one finds Barnett to be a cerebral, patient, calculating, witty guy who is nearing age 40 and can still kick your ass. At the base of that ability comes simplicity: a natural desire to fight. “That’s the thing more so about today, if you ask for respect, you’ll never get it, but if you don’t care what other people think about you, then they seem to respect you more,” Barnett said with a laugh. “If you fight for just the money, the motivation is not going to be enough. Some people that love MMA find money as a great motivator. I won’t discount that fact, but I believe that fighting is something that you have to give your whole heart to be even a mediocre fighter. No one knows how far that they’re going to make it. “Not all of us are as talented as the other guy,” he added. “There are bad breaks, injuries, bad luck — there’s a lot of things that can happen. It’s just such a difficult thing to be a professional fighter of any discipline. You have to give it your all. It’s the only way you’ll find any mode of success in this. If you’re going to be a world champion, you have to approach it in the same way. It’s not a forgiving sport. It can lead to a lot of fulfillment, I believe, if you just have the right mindset.” Barnett continues to be active in the Ultimate Fighting Championship and has been training fighters for the last 10 years. He has three acting credits to his name and will appearing in the movie “Never Back Down: No Surrender,” with Michael Jai White, set for release on June 7. He also remains involved as a commentator for New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS-TV, calling matches alongside Jim Ross. “I like to keep my hand in different things, just to keep life interesting and not limit myself,” Barnett said, “but fighting and the world of combat sports still holds — and will hold — a major part of my life. You really have to commit [to the idea] that it’s a lifestyle. It does become a part of you. I didn’t decide to fight as a career for any debt of gratitude. I fight because I love it and I had to do it my way, and fighting is something that I believe in. Bringing MMA to the masses was, and is, important to me. The young guys are a lot different in many ways. They’ve had it easier than the older guys. In the end, it doesn’t matter. Today or yesterday, it’s about loving what you do.”A Most Memorable Victory Barnett still views his rear-naked choke submission on Yuki Kondo under the Pancrase banner in August 2003 as one of his most memorable victories. Kondo tapped 3:26 into the third round at Ryogoku Kokugikan in Tokyo, as Barnett captured the open weight King of Pancrase championship. “The full circle of history of that, which is significant to me, is that Matt Hume won at the first Pancrase, and here I am, one of his students, back around nine years later to win the title while I was still involved with New Japan Pro Wrestling,” Barnett said. “I had my whole cadre of New Japan pro wrestlers in my corner that night and saw that flag of New Japan Pro Wrestling raised high that night.” The setting was not lost on Barnett. “It was big to me that it was on the Pancrase 10th Anniversary show, even though they had been doing fights for 10 years,” he said. “What was somewhat unusual leading into that fight was I was on the road on tour with professional wrestling. I had brought up wanting to fight for the title, and I had a connection to the president of Pancrase at the time through one of the New Japan office guys. Word got to him, and they hit me up about it. We sat down and negotiated this whole thing, and I brought up the fact that I beat Semmy Schilt, who wasn’t one of their guys but was a titleholder in Pancrase. I told them I was as worthy as having a title shot as anyone. “I trained for three weeks after my pro wrestling tour, but I trained while I was wrestling, too,” Barnett continued. “I came in prepared and walked away with one of the Holy Grails of mixed martial arts. It also meant a lot to me because it was the first time I had been there in Japan for a number of years. In Japan, they did far more 40,000-plus shows than any UFC show. They still have attendance records that far eclipse anything that we have ever done here. They were the first to have a real media market, where you can turn on any TV station and see an MMA fighter on a commercial. In Japan, they recognized MMA fighters as professional athletes before anything in the United States. They love a great fight. It’s a different culture over there and a different culture for fighters of any sort. “That adoration has had a difficult effect on me …

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