Rich Franklin – The Next Chapter
By Thomas Gerbasi
As a former math teacher, Rich Franklin is used to dealing in absolutes. 1+1=2, 3x4=12, 20/5=4. It even carries over to his fighting career, where hard training + the right training partners + the perfect gameplan = victory.
For the most part, it worked for the Cincinnati native, who was unbeaten for the first four years Related News
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of his career until being stopped by Lyoto Machida in 2003. Even then, the defeat could be explained away by a simple absolute equation: Franklin at 205 pounds + world class 205 pounder = likely defeat.
Solution? Franklin – 20 pounds = champion.
In Franklin’s sixth fight following the loss to Machida, he won the UFC middleweight title by dismantling Evan Tanner over four rounds in 2005, and defended that crown with a first round knockout of Nate Quarry and a one-sided five round pounding of David Loiseau. There appeared to be a dearth of legitimate challengers to take on the dominant champion – at least until Anderson Silva arrived on the scene in June of 2006.
A bout was scheduled for October of 2006 between the champion and the dynamic Brazilian striker, and if Franklin was worried, he didn’t show it. And why would he? His championship formula had been untouched.
But less than three minutes into their UFC 64 championship match, Franklin’s nose, championship reign, and mystique were shattered in one fell swoop by Silva. No worries for the former academic standout – just back to the lab.
“Basically after the first fight I thought to myself that I just really needed to realign my whole training system and make some major changes,” said Franklin, who did just that and put together two wins over solid contenders Jason MacDonald and Yushin Okami to earn himself a second crack at Silva last November in Cincinnati. There was no stone left unturned in preparation for the fight, and Franklin was ready to ascend to the throne once again.
“The second fight, I did everything I could do to win that fight – I left town, I was completely focused, I had a good training camp, and everything went the way that it should have,” he said. “Long story short, he ended up clipping me and I end up losing the fight, and that’s just how things go.”
The rematch saw Franklin more competitive, but at the end of the first round he was, for all intents and purposes, knocked out against the fence by Silva. Rescued by the bell, he staggered to his feet courageously and made it to his corner. But when he came out for the second round, it was just a matter of time – 67 seconds to be exact – until Silva lowered the boom a second time.
Now what? What do you do when you’ve done everything right and it’s still not good enough? What are your goals when you’ve already reached the top, and to get back there you’ll have to fight and beat someone you may not have the opportunity to face again?
If you’re Rich Franklin (24-3 as a pro) you continue to fight, even though it’s not your only option. You continue to fight because it’s a part of you that you can’t really put into words that make sense to anyone other than yourself. And even as you continue to fight, you do so with the cold, hard realization that you may never get a chance to redeem yourself against the man that just may be the Ken Norton to your Muhammad Ali, the Vernon Forrest to your Shane Mosley.
“There’s always that part of me now that says yeah, I definitely think that given another chance I can beat Anderson, but that may not come around,” said Franklin. “Quite frankly, even if I think I can beat Anderson and even if I can beat Anderson, the question you have to ask yourself is, ‘is that a fight the fans really want to see?’ I’m not sure if Franklin-Silva III is a marketable fight. I don’t know if the majority of fans out there want to see us fight a third time. Most of them might say ‘You know what? I’ve already seen that; I’m not interested in watching it again.’ So you take what you learned from those losses and I made the changes that I believe are going to move my fight career forward, whether I fight him again or not.”
And so he carries on with his career, a career that will see him travel to Montreal to face Travis Lutter on April 19th. It’s a great match on paper, one that will pit Franklin’s striking against Lutter’s grappling, even though both have enough tricks in the other’s realm to make things interesting.
“I don’t think there’s any secret to the fact that I want to keep the fight standing and Travis is gonna want to try to take the fight to the ground and catch me in a submission,” said Franklin. “He’s one of those guys that definitely poses a threat on the ground, so I have to definitely fight at the top of my game and not make any silly mistakes. I do believe that if I perform to the best of my ability that I can win this fight.”
That’s typical Franklin – no trash talk, no bravado, just a matter-of-fact breakdown of what may be the most pivotal fight of his career. If he wins, he remains among the upper echelon at 185 pounds and has more high-profile bouts to look forward to; he loses and there must be a re-assessment of where he belongs in the middleweight pecking order.
It’s a tough position to be put into at the age of 33, but Franklin has fought through worse fates, with the early part of this year being particularly trying. First there was the surgery for a torn meniscus in his knee in January, followed by the more painful blow of the sudden death of his father, Richard Sr., at the age of 56. It’s the kind of loss that can sit you in a corner and keep you there motionless for hours. But Franklin has found solace in the gym in recent weeks as he prepares for Lutter.
“When I’m on the job, those are the times when it’s easier to keep my mind off things like my dad passing away,” said Franklin. “My father passing away was the first time I ever had someone really close to me pass away, and it’s a difficult thing to deal with. The hardest part about that, or the time when it becomes the most difficult, is when I have nothing to do or when I’m about to go to bed at night. Then I start thinking about things. Thinking about my dad and memories and all that kinda stuff, that becomes difficult. The times when I’m at the gym, those are the times that I’m able to keep my mind off of things.”
It’s times like these when you are jarred into remembering that all professional athletes - no matter how spectacular the feats they perform in the Octagon or on the field, diamond, or court – are human. And when you’re dealing with human beings, all equations and statistical breakdowns go out the window, and that’s the beauty of all sports, but this one in particular. As middleweight contender Dean Lister once told me, “that’s what makes it mixed martial arts and not mixed martial science - it’s its own thing.”
Little by little, Franklin seems to be finding that out as well, and as in all arts, you never stop learning. As for the great artists, they never stop pushing in different directions to add to their art, and Franklin has done this as well, keeping renowned trainer and fight strategist Matt Hume on board to keep him developing as a fighter.
“Aside from the technical aspect of what he does, Matt does a great job of looking at film, breaking an opponent down, and then setting up drills, scenarios, and situations that will benefit you in the fight,” said Franklin of Hume. “Even though I lost to Anderson in October, some of the drills we were doing for the fight were situations I found myself in when training for the fight, and I was actually responding the way I should have been. So it’s very beneficial with the way that he does things when it comes to strategy and all of that.”
To fully soak in all of Hume’s knowledge, Franklin has gotten out of Cincinnati and traveled to Hume’s Seattle, Washington gym for this fight, a tactic he started when he set up training camp in Wyoming for the Silva rematch, and something he wishes he had done years ago.
“It just allows you to be more focused on what you’re doing as far as training,” said Franklin of setting up training camp outside of his home city. “I don’t have the day to day stuff that I’m normally doing when I’m at home. I wake up in the morning, I make my breakfast, I go train, and I have the rest of the afternoon to relax. Then I come back and train again at night. I like it better. I would have preferred doing this from the beginning
knowing what I know now. It’s good to get away because the daily stressors of life aren’t here and because when I’m at home, I’m bouncing from one gym to the next. My boxing trainer, Rob (Radford), came out here with me, but a lot of training that I do at home is on me – I go to the gym, I work with Mike (Ferguson) at the gym, then I go to Jorge (Gurgel)’s and work with him and his guys at the gym, then I go to Rob’s and work there, and what it boils down to is that it’s difficult when you’re in a situation like that to get everybody on the same page. Out here in Washington, I go into Matt’s place and he schedules everything out from the day I got here until the day of the fight.”
Just to keep things interesting outside the Octagon and the gym, Franklin has also dabbled in the film world since his loss to Silva, playing alongside Tiffani Amber Thiessen in the to-be-released action flick “Weapon”. But don’t worry fight fans, he hasn’t gone Hollywood on us.
“The movie work that I did, I had been talking to my business team about it, and it seemed like an opportunity for something that was just kinda fun to do,” he said. “I don’t really have any acting experience and don’t necessarily think that I have a future in acting as a career. When I talked about doing a small part in a movie, I said something about having three or four lines and more or less like a cameo appearance. So here we are, we find ourselves in a smaller budget action film and it was a good opportunity. But never once did it cross my mind that ‘yeah, this is something I can do when I’m done fighting.’ I’m just not sure that I enjoy acting that much. It’s hard work, its long hours, and it’s a slower pace of work than I’m used to. Being in front of a camera when you’re acting is much different than when you’re doing an interview, commentating, or any of that stuff. Would I do another movie? Yeah, possibly. I had a good time doing it. Would I want to do it as a career? I’m not quite sure.”
What Franklin is sure of is that he’s still a fighter, still a fierce competitor and still in search of the rush that only fighting can give him. Where will that lead him? If you asked that question this time two years ago, the answer would be crystal clear, as he seemed to be sailing smoothly to the Hall of Fame as a middleweight champion with two defenses under his belt and no serious threats to his crown. Now, that conclusion is far from a foregone one, and even he doesn’t know when you ask him where he’s currently at in his career.
“I’m not really sure,” he admits. “Right now I’m worried about Lutter and fighting that fight. If I win the fight, then I’ll talk to the UFC and see what they want to do with me. Anytime I try to predict life more than one fight at a time, I end up being wrong. I’m going to basically fight the Lutter fight, see what comes after that, and roll with the punches, so to speak.”
The analytical mathematician is gone, replaced by a man who now operates like a world-class fighter – quick, decisive, and on instinct. It may just be what Rich Franklin’s career needed.
“Anderson’s not the only great fighter out there,” he said. “There are other fighters out there for me to fight, so I do see other challenges out there for me. Just because he’s the one holding the belt now, that doesn’t mean there aren’t other fights that the fans wouldn’t want to see. I’m just there to put on a good show for people. I try to always make my fights exciting and I realize that not only am I an athlete and a fighter, but at the same time, when I step into that arena there are people there who want to be entertained. And I hate to use the word ‘entertainment’ when I’m talking about fighting, but there are people who want to see a good fight and I want to be one of the fighters that put on a good show for them.”
