jail

Chris Leben’s first shot at Michael Bisping didn’t exactly go as planned. Soon after signing to fight “The Count” at UFC 85 in London, Leben was forced to return to Oregon to deal with an outstanding warrant resulting from a DUI arrest before he could leave the country. Though Leben and the UFC were hoping to resolve the matter quickly, the judge had other plans. Leben was sentenced to thirty-five days in jail, prompting the UFC to scratch him from the card.

With his legal troubles now behind him, Leben is getting a second chance at Bisping, this time at UFC 89 in Birmingham, England. In this exclusive CagePotato interview Leben discusses his maturation process as a fighter, his gameplan against Bisping, dealing with hometown judges, and more.

CagePotato.com: Hey Chris. Thanks for talking with me. We’re a few weeks out from the fight. How is your preparation coming?

Really good, really well. It’s been long and intense and I’m kind of just getting to the point now where I’m ready to go fight and get this thing over with.

It seems like things really changed for you when you moved to Hawaii. What has that move done for you?

You know, it’s great. Moving to Hawaii is definitely the best thing I’ve ever done in my life. I had the opportunity to be the head coach at Icon and there are a whole bunch of guys out here training with me who are just great. But besides the gym and the wonderful people out here you have the weather and everything that is Hawaii. It’s been really conducive to my training.

I hear a lot of people say you’re much more mature these days, no longer such a wild guy in and out of the cage. What do you think prompted that transformation?

Losing (laughs). You know, I got away with being a brawler for a long time. And it’s hard to change things when they’re working. But when I fought Anderson I realized, I might be able to beat 95% of the guys out there, but I’ll never be a world champion fighting this way. So I had to go back and change a lot of things. That was one part of it.

And the other part was, you know, coaching. Now that I have a team of amateur guys fighting, it’s hard to tell them to do something if you’re not doing it yourself.

('See, what had happened was...')

Oh, the fun one can have trying to keep track of all the different theories about what's really happening with "Rampage" Jackson. Fightline has a new one. A really new one:

Our source indicates that Jackson was fumbling around with a contact lens that was giving him trouble while driving and subsequently lost the lens. He was apparently searching for it when he sideswiped at least two vehicles, mildly injuring one woman.

A frightened, paranoid Jackson, who had again, been up fasting for days, then acted on instinct and fled the scene and eventually the police.

Jackson pulled over after giving police a brief chase and was fully cooperative with authorities after that point.

This is an interesting possibility. It doesn't explain why he was picked up by the police again after being released, or why everyone from Dana White to Sports Illustrated to, well, us, has insinuated or outright said that there are some mental issues going on as well. Maybe it's both? The lost contact and lost perception of reality is a powerful duo. Either way, we hope for a happy ending to this strange tale.

('These walls are funny. First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em...')

Chris Leben's time in jail may have cost him a big time bout with Michael Bisping, but it does seem to have forced him to reflect on the state of his life. It also gave him the opportunity to choke out a convicted felon. Which is, you know, good to have on your resume.

He tells the story to MMA Weekly, describing what happened when his attempts to train in jail drew the curiosity of fellow inmates, who asked Leben to teach them a choke.

“I told the guys it’s a blood choke, so you don’t have to squeeze hard,” he said. “So I was just kind of choking him with one arm while he’s standing up. And I told him just tap when you start to feel like you’re going to pass out. Well, he didn’t tap, and at the time I’m going wow, this guy’s pretty tough, I’m surprised he hasn’t tapped yet. He just drops to the floor in the cell.

“Now I’m standing there with 20 prisoners around and they’re freaking out. This guy’s laying there, snoring like crazy. I’m like ‘it’s all right, it’s all right,’ then I realize they have cameras in here. I’ve just choked this guy out in jail – I could get in trouble for this. I kept telling them, ‘he’s fine, he’s fine,’ and it took this guy a minute to wake up. Finally he woke up and we had a laugh, and luckily I didn’t get in any trouble for it. That was beginning and the ending of my inmate coaching career.”

Two things here: 1) That's awesome, and 2) The moment where Chris chokes out an inmate and then thinks it through long enough to realize that it was probably a bad idea is, I'm going to say, emblematic of the kind of approach to life that landed him there in the first place.

To his credit, Leben seems to have enough self-awareness to admit that: