http://www.ufc.com/news/Mark-Munoz-More-than-a-Fighter
Those who were around Mark Munoz saw the warning signs for a while. Finally, the situation had reached its breaking point. There was going to an intervention at the Reign Training Center in Lake Forest, California.
“My management, my training partners, my coaches, they all came up to me and they ran an intervention, like I was a drug addict or an alcoholic,” Munoz chuckles. “They were like ‘hey, you need to be more selfish.’”
It was an intervention like no other, but it made perfect sense if you know Mark Munoz. The pound-for-pound nicest person in mixed martial arts, Munoz was always there for everyone, but when it came time for him to get ready for his fights, he was still putting everyone else above himself. This wasn’t lost on his teammates and friends, and they let him know that it was all right if he focused on himself sometimes. Better yet, when he did, they would be there for him.
“There were so many guys telling me that ‘we understand when you can’t coach us; we understand that. You gotta take care of business, so don’t feel like you have to do all these things.’ Then my manager said ‘insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.’”
It was like this for six years, but now, Munoz is starting to let go.
“It’s a hard thing for me to do,” he said. “I’m an old dog, but I’m being taught new tricks. It’s humbling, but at the same time it’s better for me because I’m not having to spin all these plates and keep them spinning.”
Returning to action this Saturday for the first time since a May loss to Gegard Mousasi in which he tore his MCL and PCL and strained his ACL before being submitted late in the first round, Munoz has had plenty of time to realize that at 37, he can’t train like he did when he was tearing up the wrestling mats at Oklahoma State. It’s just not physically possible without reminders – in the form of injuries – that you’re not a kid anymore.
“For the better part of almost six years, I’ve been training like a madman,” he said. “I feel that nobody trains harder than me, but then that’s not the smartest thing to do. I’m getting older and I’m still training as if I was 20 years old. And I’m not taking any time off between doing these anti-bullying campaigns, running my gym, and I have a wife and four kids. My plate was so full and I kept stacking things on top of it. And then training at the same time and at the same intensity every time, training five, six hours a day. My body was giving out on me. So I didn’t have the year I wanted to last year because I had so much going on.”
http://www.ufc.com/news/Mark-Munoz-More-than-a-Fighter