My Submission, Is Your Addiction

For Amir Sadollah it’s one foot in front of the other until the mountaintop

By Chuck Mindenhall

Amir Sadollah wasn’t all that concerned about being an underdog in just about all of his fights en-route to winning The Ultimate Fighter: Team Rampage vs Team Griffin; turns out those cases were just too isolated. That’s because Sadollah prefers to think of himself as being an underdog to the entire concept of motivation. As abstract as that sounds, his reasoning is simple—if you’re hungrier than your opponent, you beat your opponent.

And so there’s a little insight into how the very likeable never-say-die kid from Richmond, Virginia sees things. It’s one of the reasons he was able to knock off Steve Byrnes, Gerard Harris, Matt Brown and C.B. Dollaway (twice) while maintaining the grin of a man in on a secret.

“I try not to put too much weight into what people think of me,” the 28-year-old Xtreme Couture fighter says of the wild world of perception. “Whether you’re me, Chuck Liddell, Anderson Silva or the next guy being introduced to the sport, you’re constantly being judged. Whatever it takes to be humble about that I think is a good thing.”

That Sadollah keeps things humble is a real understatement.

Growing up with a father who owned a repair shop, he still tinkers with cars and mechanical things “as balance to my destructive side.” His MySpace page has Journey’s power ballad “Don’t Stop Believin’” playing on it (“a dare,” he says); he cites Optimus Prime as a hero (“who doesn’t want to be the leader of a pack—and turn into a truck?”), and lists among his favorite books the Berenstain Bears. There’s humble and then there’s campy eccentricity.

And then there’s Amir Sadollah, with his arm raised right in the middle.

The Brooklyn-born Muay Thai fighter began his stint on TUF 7—an experience he refers to as a “pressure-cooker situation”—without any professional fights under his belt. He was the guy with the Jersey mullet who had more facial expressions than jiu-jitsu moves—or, at least seemingly. That is, until he TKO’d the seasoned wrestler Gerard Harris with a big knee after surviving a first round onslaught.

Although his housemates were aware of his intense work ethic, that’s when the size of his heart began to show, too.

“Yeah, heart is huge,” he says. “It’s cheesy, but it’s definitely important, and it’s good for me to know that I’m not going to give up easily in a fight. I never like to think, oh, it’s been established, I’ve got a huge heart and I’ll never give up, because you may not work as hard. So it’s not something you think about, am I going to quit. I just think about staying as motivated as possible.”

Sadollah, who is of Irish and Iranian descent, says these things cautiously—the way a revisionist might approach a bit of sensationalized history. That is, he’s quick to qualify his answers and downplay any of his successes. In some ways, it’s like he doesn’t believe it’s all happening, that he might be pinched at some point and wake up with Herb Dean standing over him telling him everything’s going to be okay.

And he’s right; though his rise to becoming the Ultimate Fighter was certainly memorable, it all adds up to two official wins in the UFC—Both over Dollaway, the rematch victory coming this past June at the TUF 7 Finale in Las Vegas.

For people watching at home, this fight was sort of like déjà vu—Sadollah dittoes Dollaway by submission via armbar. But for Sadollah, any fight, especially a rematch, is actually more like jamais vu—the opposite of déjà vu, when every time you encounter a familiar person it’s like meeting them for the first time.

“It was kind of good in a way for me, knowing that I’d won the last fight, knowing that I could do it, that it was possible. You’re both familiar with each other, and that can be good and bad. I kind of had an idea [what to expect], but nobody fights the same way twice, not even if you fight a day apart.”

Now having earned and won a UFC contract, Sadollah continues to train in Las Vegas with the same guys that trained him on the show, including the calming voice of his coach and corner Forrest Griffin—the original Ultimate Fighter and the current light heavyweight champion.

It’s great company to keep for a guy who likes to get punched in the teeth from time to time, just as a reminder that he’s alive. As the old saying goes, you are who you train with—but Amir also realizes that when he looks in the mirror there isn’t going to be any periphery.

“I am far from figuring everything out, but one of my viewpoints is that the toughest guy you have to deal with everyday is yourself,” he says. “It’s the one guy that can always beat you. It sounds like an After School Special. But it is about will. Especially when you get to the upper echelon, the separating factor is who has their mind right, who wants it. Everyone at this level has the ability to end a fight.”

Including the guy who’ll stand opposite him at UFC 91 in Las Vegas, Nick Catone—an undefeated, bona-fide wrestler who’ll be making his UFC debut on the November 15 card. Catone is a former Division 1 conference champion, where he won numerous awards at Rider University (where he still trains), as well as a BJJ purple belt.

Not that Sadollah needs a laundry list of all the specifics; that kind of thing leads to over-analysis. He’d prefer just a vague notion of what to expect out of the debutant, so he can do some light situational visualization beforehand, and react in the moment as things occur in the Octagon.

“I like to just have a general idea, that way I’m not surprised—but at the same time I’m not unhappy that the fight’s going like I think it’s going to go. I know a little bit about Catone; from what I understand he’s a good wrestler and a good jiu-jitsu guy, a strong guy, real tough. But I’m not counting anything out. He may have worked on his stand up. He may be a K-1 level kickboxer. We’ll see.”

And you know something? It’s just that sort of fancy that floats Sadollah’s boat.