Exclusive interview with the VP of ONE FC and former UFC Middleweight champion – Rich Franklin

Interview with Rich Franklin

A former world champion, a businessman, the new Vice President of ONE FC and a philanthropist – These are just some of the things that can be attributed to Rich Franklin. Rich came to India back in 2012, and some of the Indian MMA fans had the pleasure of meeting one of the greatest MMA fighters of all time and a UFC legend. When I approached Rich for an interview, he was gracious enough to take more than 45 minutes out of his busy schedule to give my colleague, Ratish Menon and I an interview a couple of days ago.

Not only is Rich Franklin a former UFC Middleweight champion, but he has also taken up a new challenge by opening a chain of organic juice bars he named Ze/Lin. He has also recently accepted ONE FC’s offer to become the new Vice President of the organization, and discussed in detail regarding his new ventures and his MMA career. Rich also dwelled on his current status as an MMA fighter, and held nothing back while talking about his final match and regarding other fighters such as Chael Sonnen and Cung Le. Here is an excerpt from the interview:

1. Given that you are such a big name in the sport, to spare the mundane round of questions, could you tell us a bit about how your MMA career came about into being?

I grew up playing sports my entire life, and MMA wasn’t around when I was a kid. So I used to play sports that other kids used to play – our version of football, basketball, baseball etc. I tried everything, and by the time I was about to graduate high school, I really wanted to play college ball, but none of the colleges were offering any kind of scholarships.

I wasn’t big enough or good enough; I didn’t have the God given talent. So my senior year of high school after football season was over, I decided to get into karate. My dad put me into karate when I was a young kid, and I liked it. So I thought, “Maybe if I do this and if I train to do that, then I can fight in tournaments and can compete” because of the competitive edge that I had.

My primary goal was that if I get into a fight on the street, I know how to defend myself. I trained during the first summer – that was the first summer of the UFC, and I got hooked and immediately became a fan of MMA. That led to me basically training through college, and karate turned into kick boxing and that turned into jiu – jitsu, a little bit of judo and some wrestling.

I started training for hobby but at the end of the final year, a friend of mine asked me why I don’t take a fight and see how that goes. I thought, “Okay, that’s not a bad idea”. So I did that at a local show, and I won. I happened to be very good at it, and so I did one fight after another. Finally, and this was when I started teaching, and after 3 years, I thought, “Hey, I wonder if I can do this full time”. And that’s when I quit and decided to fight full time.

2. When would you be starting in your new role at ONE FC? What are your key responsibilities as the Vice President of the organization? Can you please elaborate on how the opportunity presented itself?

I had been to Singapore several years ago and taught a seminar, at a school called Evolve MMA with Matt Hume. The gentlemen I worked with, I developed a good relationship with them and I liked the training facility down there, so I thought when I was down there that I would like to go back and do a portion of my camp in Singapore. So, during my subsequent trips to the country while teaching at the seminars, I got to meet some of the people that ran ONE FC.

After a couple of years coming down there, it led to conversations about me possibly working for the company and taking a job. And when the talks became real and legit, I called up the UFC and said, “Hey, we need to meet with you guys (Dana & Lorenzo) and describe my talks with ONE FC and what they had proposed.” The UFC said, “Rich, it does sound like a good job and you should take it.” So, the UFC gave me their blessings and I accepted this position at ONE FC.

My responsibilities at ONE FC would be wherein they would be using me quite a lot in the broadcast; I am not sure in what capacity because I am not going to be commentating on fights completely but they will be doing some other things with me. I have been to just one show at this point and right now, I have worked with the CEO of ONE FC and as we move along, my role with the company will change. But right now, I am doing a lot of public and media relations activities and help build the ONE FC brand and the sport of MMA internationally with ONE FC the same way that I did here in the United States ten – fifteen years ago.

I am also doing a few things with their fighter development programme, such as teaching seminars to a lot of the fighters in the organisation, in between my efforts to acclimatize with the company culture and how ONE FC does business. For a company that has just done 16 shows, they have an amazing production unit and everything is run like a well-oiled fine-tuned machine, the logistics of all that stuff is just spot on. I work with the other departments in there too with a tiny bit of suggestions here and there if they ask my opinion on how I see things.

In the course of 45 minutes, we discussed about a lot of things with Rich, including his fight with Ken Shamrock during TUF – 1 finale, his loss to Cung Le, Chael Sonnen’s recent retirement and his thoughts on the UFC 175 main event. You can listen to part 1 and part 2 of the interview.