Matt Mitrione wants to be the UFC's next Randy Couture
BOCA RATON, Fla. -- Matt Mitrione isn't necessarily a late-bloomer. He's just a late-starter.
After starring as a defensive lineman at Purdue and spending time in the NFL with the New York Giants and Minnesota Vikings, Mitrione didn't start training in MMA until he was 30 years old. A year later, he was in the UFC.
"At times I think it's been rough cutting my teeth in front of five million people," Mitrione told FOX Sports last week at the Jaco Hybrid Training Center after training with the Blackzilians.
Mitrione, 35, feels like he's only getting better and there's someone whose career path he looks toward for inspiration: Randy Couture. "The Natural," one of the best MMA fighters of all time, didn’t take his first pro MMA fight until he was 34. A wrestler before that, Couture, like Mitrione, had his first real professional bout in the UFC.
Couture competed until he was 48, which is something Mitrione doesn't necessarily want to do. But don't be shocked to see the heavyweight in the UFC in his 40s.
"I'm almost like Randy in that aspect," said Mitrione, who debuted on The Ultimate Fighter: Heavyweights in 2009. "Randy found that fountain of youth. I don’t know if I've found his fountain of youth, but I've had sips of it. I haven’t bathed in it."
It's hard to quite pinpoint where Mitrione (7-3) is right now in his career arc. He's certainly a viable heavyweight in the UFC, but not ranked in the top 15. Mitrione is coming off an impressive first-round knockout of Shawn Jordan in January. That came after a first-round submission loss to Brendan Schaub last September, a defeat that still bothers him mostly because he knows he didn’t prepare well enough for the D'arce choke.
At 35, has Mitrione found his peak or is he still a work in progress? Blackzilians head coach Jorge Santiago believes the latter. The key, Santiago said, is Mitrione spending the most time in South Florida with the team as possible. That will be difficult for Mitrione since his wife Tina and three children are back in Indiana.
"I really think he can still make a lot of noise in the heavyweight division, especially if he stays here," Santiago said.
Mitrione is a quick learner, Santiago said, but tries to tackle things too quickly. He might be older than most in the gym -- Santiago himself is just 33 -- but he's only been training for around five years. Compare that to 27-year-old Blackzilians prospect Guto Inocente, who has been training in Brazilian jiu-jitsu for two decades.
"I expect myself to be [kickboxing standout] Tyrone Spong," Mitrione said. "And they're like, 'Dude you've been training for five years. You're not going to be Tyrone.'"
Striking coach Henri Hooft won't even let Mitrione hit mits anymore, because of how much he overthinks it. Santiago said sometimes Mitrione's brain goes too fast for his body.
"I overthink it so much that it's almost like paralysis by analysis," Mitrione said. "I can't hit mits, because I think so much about mits that I screw up all my timing."
Mitrione figures his next fight will be against either Stefan Struve or Ben Rothwell, though he's not sure when it will be. Probably sometime in the summer. Despite his age, he's not really in a rush. He still feels like he has a long UFC career ahead of him. After all, Couture held the heavyweight title when he was 45 years old.
"I feel like I'm pretty damn good," Mitrione said. "I feel like I get better and better."
