Training With Faber Urijah!

Wed, 14 Jul 2010 00:15:59 +0100

Caraway Now a Urijah-Trained Alpha Male

Jul-6-2010

By Frank Curreri

Bryan Caraway recently became one more stud in the Team Alpha Male stable, and the nerve-wracking, pre-fight episode that preceded his change of teams makes for an interesting tale.

To hear the native Washingtonian tell it, the greatest adversity in his five-year career came at the turn of the New Year as he braced for the biggest fight of his young career, a WEC debut against dangerous veteran Mark Hominick. Leading up to the bout, Caraway had more on his mind than just stopping Hominick’s crazy-fast fists and kicks.

“I was extremely confident for this fight … all the way up until the weigh-ins,” Caraway said.

MIA Cornermen
Then, according to Caraway, two of his cornermen no-showed. The next day on fight night, hours before he was to walk into the cage his trainers were still nowhere to be found, with one of them claiming a family emergency.

“I was a nervous wreck, man,” Caraway said.

Highly-regarded coach Robert Follis of Team Quest in Oregon happened to be in Arco Arena that night. Caraway had previously trained with Team Quest and approached Follis, who agreed to serve as an impromptu cornerman. He was joined in the corner by T.J. Caraway, Bryan’s brother, and a “buddy.”

“My brother doesn’t fight or train, he’s just a big fan,” Caraway said. “He cornered me back when I was an amateur just for support, so he was there for moral support. He’s actually really educated, he’s a huge MMA fan, he’s studied a lot of technique and he watches a lot of fights and he’s trained a little bit but not too much. But he’s a really analytical person and I talked to him about what I should do in this fight.”

Trapped
The hastily-arranged braintrust did their best to prod their distracted to victory, but were no match for a Hominick triangle that ended the bout just minutes in. Hominick had set the armbar up beautifully by bumping Caraway for a sweep, then immediately transitioning to a triangle.

“I actually did know that he liked that move, so that’s why it was embarrassing” to lose that way, Caraway said. “I watched him do that to other people so I knew he had that in his arsenal. That’s one of his main go-to moves.”

Looking back, Caraway (14-4) said he was not “mentally into that fight” and expects a strong rebound against Fredson Paixao, his opponent at WEC 50 in Las Vegas.

Solid Opposition
Paixao is a four-time world champion in Brazilian jiu-jitsu and one of the few practitioners to be promoted from purple belt straight to black belt – skipping his brown belt altogether. Five of the Brazilian featherweight’s wins have come via submission, including his win over Courtney Buck in March. While Caraway has submitted more opponents in MMA – 11 – he’s doesn’t planned on getting carried away on the ground against one of the world’s best.

“He’s one of the most decorated grapplers in MMA right now,” Caraway said. “I don’t know much more about him except than he’s a world BJJ champ. I hear from everybody that’s pretty much all he is. I hear that his jiu-jitsu is phenomenal and his striking isn’t very good.

“I’ve grappled against a lot of high-level black belts and I’ve beaten a lot of decent black-belt level grapplers … and I feel my MMA grappling is at a really high-level. But Fredson is a multiple-times world champion and I don’t believe in fighting other people at their strengths; I’m gonna’ fight to my strengths. I’m definitely not going to play his game and do all these things. I’m just going to shut him down and (on the ground) and if the ref says, ‘Stand up!’ Oh, well, I’ll get back on my feet and beat him up some more.”

A New Start
Caraway, a former Motocross racer and college wrestler, is training with Urijah Faber, Chad Mendes and Joseph Benavidez in Sacramento. Each of the top fighters will be competing at WEC 50 and Caraway believes it will be a stellar night for his new team.

“Me and Urijah have become pretty good friends over the past two years,” he said. “I came down here for a few mini camps just to try it out, and really loved their positive mental attitudes, they are a bunch of awesome guys and great training partners.”

Blood, Sweat, Tears Bring Smile to Caraway

Tue, 08 Jun 2010 16:05:55 +0100

By Frank Curreri

There was an epiphany, nearly three years ago, when Bryan Caraway discovered his true potential as a mixed martial artist. He had journeyed to Albuquerque, New Mexico to test his mettle at Greg Jackson’s gym for a week-and-a-half. The former college wrestler sparred and rolled with standouts Diego Sanchez, Damacio Page and Leonard Garcia, who was preparing for a UFC collision with Roger Huerta.

That’s when it happened – the compliment of a lifetime.

“After that Greg Jackson pulled me aside and told me I had exponential talent and that I could be a world champion,” Caraway said. “He wanted me to move there and he would take care of whatever I needed.”

Caraway, who had a 5-2 pro MMA record at the time and had only recently started taking his training seriously, contemplated the invite. Then, while other fighters were tripping over each other to relocate to New Mexico in the hopes that some of Jackson’s genius would rub off on them, Caraway declined the chance for higher education at what is arguably the Harvard of MMA academies.

His reasoning: “I just never wanted to move to New Mexico.”

Home Sweat Home
Instead, Caraway stayed closer to home in Washington state under the tutelage of Dennis Hallman, a veteran of 50-plus pro fights who has competed in the UFC and holds the distinction of having submitted former UFC welterweight champ Matt Hughes not once, but twice. For Caraway, the affiliation with Hallman’s Victory Athletics gym keeps him close to his small town roots in Goldendale, Wash., not far from breathtaking mountain views of the Columbia River Gorge.

In Goldendale, a ranching and farming hotbed where the population is less than 4,000, and there are only three stoplights, Caraway excelled as a three-sport athlete. His unofficial motto seemed to be: Weed out the wimps. This is perhaps fitting for a young man whose father was in the Army Special Forces and served two tours in war-torn Nicaragua.

Grueling sports that effectively expose the courageous and expel the cowardly appeal to Bryan Caraway, who craves competitions where physical punishment is a consequence and revealer of character. The 25-year-old Washingtonian knows how exhilarating it feels to clear a 70-foot-long jump during a Motocross dirt bike race; the misery of cutting large amounts of weight and then lose a state championship final in wrestling; and the natural high that comes with winning 10 of his past 11 pro fights.

He points to Motocross as a particularly demanding sport where rider heart rates often climb to 180 and 190 and stay there for 30 seconds while straining to control a 200-pound bike at 35 miles per hour around a winding course.

“It beats your body up,” he said. “The landings and the vibrations of the body are tough. It’s constant beating, beating, beating (on your body). Once I finished a race I could barely get off the motorcycle. I couldn’t even close my hands all the way and I could barely stand up because my lower body had taken a pounding. It was harder on my body then almost else I’ve done.

“I actually won the Pacific Northwest championship series in Motocross. I went unbeaten for a season and won like 22 moto races in a row without losing. I raced dirt bikes all through high school and I won a lot of championships and trophies in the northwest.”

Cheating Death
Caraway said he had a model childhood, with one exception. When he was 15 years old, five people in his town under the age of 21 committed suicide. That means the small town of Goldendale in 1999 experienced a suicide rate that was more than 10 times the national average. Compounding the tragedies, three others peers died in car wrecks.

“It was crazy,” Caraway said. “That’s a huge deal when you’re in a small country town where there’s only 500 kids in the whole school and everybody knows everybody. It was a huge shock to the entire town.”

After graduating from high school, Caraway earned a wrestling scholarship to North Idaho College, a junior college powerhouse. Motocross had become too expensive and risky, so he concentrated exclusively on wrestling, and transferred to Central Washington University, but the Division II wrestling program was later axed due to budget cuts.

“It was like a stab in my heart,” Caraway said. “I didn’t know who I was. I didn’t know what to do. I was pretty much lost and that’s what led me to MMA.”

Fast-Forward to Fighting
Five years later, after earning his bachelor’s degree in Exercise Physiology, the fast-fisted featherweight they call “Kid Lightning” is eager to make a splash at WEC 46 against explosive Canadian striker Mark “The Machine” Hominick. Caraway feels privileged to face a well-known fighter who owns wins over Yves Edwards and Jorge Gurgel, among others. The Sacramento showdown will mark Caraway’s WEC debut and Hominick’s return to the organization after an 11-month absence.

“Mark Hominick is a UFC veteran and he’s been around forever,” Caraway said. “He trains under Shawn Tompkins, who is arguably one of the best striking coaches in the world, so Hominick is a world-class striker. His jiu-jitsu is OK and I think wrestling is where he’s lacking the most. But I have a lot of respect for him. I think he’s a good person and very respectful.”

Twelve of Caraway’s 14 wins have come by submission, and he hasn’t been stopped by punches since his pro debut in 2005, when the fight was halted due to a cut.

“Fighting is one of the hardest sports in the world,” he said. “It really tells you who you are as a person, what kind of character you have. You never really know who you are until you’ve been in a fight. It’s about pushing yourself to the limit mentally and physically. I love the challenge and I love that other people can’t do it at a high level or can’t endure the pain, the suffering or cutting weight.”

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Training With Faber Urijah!

Caraway Now a Urijah-Trained Alpha Male

Blood, Sweat, Tears Bring Smile to Caraway