(…and the home…of the…brave.)

A few years ago I went to a Sportfight event in Portland, Oregon where Ed Herman beat Glover Texeira via decision to claim the Sportfight middleweight title. Afterwards he came down the aisles shaking hands and he looked more exhausted than any human being I have ever seen, which is also how he looked from about mid-way through the second round on. He still won, though, and it was a great fight.

Afterwards, Chris Leben told me that Herman’s philosophy on cardio at the time was something along the lines of ‘I get tired when I do a lot of cardio and don’t party, and I get tired when I don’t do a lot of cardio and do party. I’m just going to have to get used to getting tired.’

I only bring it up now because Herman is one of those fighters who is really awesome when viewed through the correct lens. That lens? A tough bastard who sometimes does things that aren’t so smart, for reasons that aren’t so smart, but he knows it and has a ‘what can you do?’ type of attitude about it. I realize that sounds a little weird, but I think these quotes from a recent article on UFC.com sum it up nicely.

On fighting Alan Belcher:

“I think I’m better in the clinch.” Herman says. “I think my Greco style and dirty boxing is going to beat his little fancy pants Muay Thai stuff. …I think he’s a purple belt in Jiu-Jitsu, but all that changes with a couple of elbows.”

On what went wrong against Demian Maia:

“Basically, my game plan in that Maia fight was to try to keep it standing and box him or beat him up in the clinch. I knew he was going to try to take it to the ground, it was no secret. My game plan was to break off when he pulled guard and haul him back up. We practiced that for months. But for some reason when I got into the fight, I kind of went on auto-pilot and I didn’t use my brain and I sat down there in his guard.

On coming of age at Team Quest:

“It was pretty much, ‘if you keep coming to practice, if you can keep surviving, you belong.’ And I was like . . . all right. So me and [Chris] Leben showed up every day and got our asses whupped for three years. That’s pretty much how we got tough, dude.”

Call me crazy. There’s just something about that guy’s sincerity and total lack of pretense that I really like.