The seeds for his successful career were sown long ago in his native land of Brazil, growing up in Belém as the son of highly ranked Shotokan karate master, Yoshizo Machida. “I started training karate when I was three or four years old,” he explained. I would watch my father training, he was a grand master in Shotokan karate and we lived on top of the gym so it was only natural that I would hang around the dojo. Every once in a while I would go in and play around just for fun.”
Competition for Lyoto came early and he quickly wanted to test himself against others from a young age. But it was someone closer to home that was his biggest challenge, someone that set him on a path to success. “I started competing around the age of five or six years old and really enjoyed it,” he said. “But then around the age of eight I started losing a lot of competitions to my older brother, Chinzo, motivating me to train even harder so I could beat my brother.”
Lyoto would dedicate himself to the discipline of karate for the next ten years, training under the watchful eye of his father, and it wasn’t long before this student of the arts began seeing advantages in sport not often associated with South America. “I got my black belt at age thirteen and I started taking training very seriously”, he revealed. “I began competing throughout Brazil in many different states and many different competitions until I was sixteen when I started getting into sumo just to see what it was like. I began getting very into it and started competing in a competition held for all the Japanese descendants in Brazil and realised I could do well in sumo too.”
The sport of Vale Tudo had been popular for many years in Brazil and for an ever-developing Machida the question was always how he could use the very traditional martial arts style of karate to defeat some of the toughest fighters on the planet. “I would train with a lot of Vale Tudo guys in Brazil, so that’s when I really started to appreciate my love for karate and that I could use Karate in Vale Tudo,” he explained. “Then I opened my eyes to mixed martial arts (MMA) when I was around thirteen or fourteen, watching the first UFC’s and seeing that it was a competition that involved a lot of different disciplines. I thought that this is what I want for myself and I was already training karate, sumo and judo so I started training jiu-jitsu to prepare myself for those situations and I knew that I wanted to be an international fighter. MMA was very new when I started watching it but it was always very important to me and my family that our karate had a lot of effectiveness, so when we started watching MMA we started noticing we could be effective and I started training with a lot of jiu-jitsu guys and a lot of Muay Thai guys and started seeing that I could adapt my karate to combat their styles.”
Lyoto also had some advice for budding martial artists of a young age, hoping to follow in his footsteps, and the parents that can be either very helpful or very damaging to the development at this early age. “It’s good to start training in your youth,” he began. “Anywhere between twelve to fifteen years old is a good age to start, not even when you’re a little kid when I started. But if you start training when you’re around the age of thirteen, by the time your twenty two you will be a very technical guy. I started training at an early age but that was my choice, there was no pressure from my parents to say that I had to go out and become a champion, I need to train hard, etc. I would compete because that is what I liked to do; I liked to train to go into competition. I see that a lot these days. Parents tell their kids that they have to be the champion, they need to train harder and that is not good motivation for a child.”
Despite varied opinions from the press and general public worldwide, Lyoto maintains that mixed martial arts is one of the most respectful sports in the world, with many fighters priding themselves on winning a fight without inflicting any serious injury upon their opponent. This is something he puts down to their backgrounds in foundation martial arts such as karate and jiu-jitsu. “Many of the fighters in MMA come from a martial arts background and respect is a very important part of that and we try to keep the respect with each other,” he said. “Today you see a lot of professional fighters that respect each other’s skills because they know that anyone can get knockout and anyone can knock someone out. We all train hard in many different arts.”
May 23rd will represent the coming of age for Lyoto, a culmination of everything he has worked hard for over the past 27 years. Despite being the challenger, he goes into UFC 98 as the favourite to emerge as champion, with his ability to hit and not be hit as the main reason. His last opponent, fellow Brazilian Thiago Silva, fell foul of his own over aggressive strategy, finding himself continually thrown to the ground by the stronger Machida and floored by his lightning fast strikes. Now he is ready like never before, ready to claim his prize and step into the spotlight. “I have been training my whole life for this moment and I know that its one step in my life that I have to climb up,” he said. “After this fight there is going to be another step and another fight. Every fight I must train hard for. Technically it’s just another fight but on the emotional side of things, this is THE fight.”
His opponent for the bout, Rashad Evans, is known for his counter striking as well, goading his adversaries into over committing before connecting with devastating power and precision. This is something that Machida has paid close attention to in the build up to the fight, studying his opponents every move and formulating a plan of attack no matter where the fight takes them. “I have been watching a lot of Rashad’s fight footage and studying very hard,” he explained. “I have a lot of tricks up my sleeve that people haven’t seen yet, a lot of striking, a lot of different things that will make my opponent strike at me. So even though Rashad is a counter striker as well, I still think it’s going to be a great fight because Rashad is the champion and Rashad does like to go at it and engage at times. In the end, it’s going to be a great fight.”
As you might expect, Machida is a man of action, not words, something that can’t always be said of his opponent who has already tried to get under his skin by saying he will frustrate him on the night into making a mistake. “Every time I go into a fight I hear my opponent say they are going to do this and going to do that to counter me, but when that cage door closes, then we’ll see what’s going to happen,” he explained. “People can say whatever they want to say but we will have to wait until that moment.”
For the pure martial artists amongst you who are looking to watch a true technician in action inside the sometimes chaotic world of the UFC’s octagon, you need look no further than Lyoto Machida. His effortless style, speed and accuracy as well as his ability to finish the fight wherever it goes makes him quite possibly the most dangerous and difficult to work out light heavyweight in the world. In ancient mythology, a dragon is known as a legendary creature that strikes fear into the hearts of all that stand before it, leaving a string of victims in its wake and ruling over its surroundings. In the UFC, “The Dragon” has already felled six opponents since his 2007 debut, is perfectly placed to capture the title and reign over the division for many years to come.
By Michael Pepper.
MMABay.co.uk Editor.
