411 MMA Interviews: Bas Rutten

Posted by Jeffrey Harris on 10.29.2011

Former UFC Heavyweight Champion Bas Rutten sits down with 411mania.com for an exclusive interview about his new TV show on Fuel, Punk Payback, his thoughts on upcoming fights, his career in MMA and broadcasting and more!

Bas Rutten AKA "El Guapo" is a former and undefeated UFC Champion and former undefeated King of Pancrase. Since his retirement from MMA, Rutten now works as an analyst on the hit series, Inside MMA, which now airs live every week on HDNet. Now Bas is gearing up for a new TV show set to premiere next month on Fuel TV. The name of the show is Punk Payback. The show will utilize real surveillance footage of a robbery or carjacking taking place, and then Bas will be shown in a new clip on a similar set to showcase some combat moves in how to avoid being assaulted by a "punk" or criminal on the streets. For those unfamiliar with MMA, you might also know Bas Rutten by just turning on the TV and Cartoon Network where he is the spokesperson for the Move It Movement Tour with TV spots that have been achingly hilarious. Currently, besides his MMA broadcast analyst work, Bas is also working on the new Kevin James MMA-themed comedy, Here Comes The Boom. This year, Bas Rutten voiced a wolf named Sebastien in the hit comedy, The Zookeeper. This week, I got the chance to speak with Bas regarding his new show and endeavors.



Jeffrey Harris: So what is your new show, Punk Payback?

Bas Rutten: Everybody who knows me outside of mixed martial arts, they probably know me from the clip we have on YouTube: ding-ding, bong-bong, ding-ding-ding. So we thought, you know hey, listen everybody loves this, there's a lot of bad people outside in the world; let's teach the people at home how to be safer and that's the teaching method on YouTube from that clip, we put it to the show. So now what you are going to see is, I'm going to narrate about a video clip, like a surveillance camera picked up a robbery at a gas station. I look up at the tape, I say this is what happened, I explain the situation, then we build the same set and then they put me in the spots where the victims are. And I'm going to show the people at home how to fix a problem like that.

Jeffrey Harris: And besides this TV show, you also appeared in Kevin James' movie, The Zookeeper, as the voice of Sebastien the wolf. How did you like doing that?

Bas Rutten: You know I always like stuff like that. What is not to like? I'm doing pretty much stuff that I like. They always say if you can make your job from your hobby, which is exactly what I did. So I'm having fun with everything that I'm doing. I'm extremely happy with it.

Jeffrey Harris: You're also working on Kevin James' new MMA themed comedy movie, Here Comes The Boom which comes out next year. Can you tell us anything about your role in that movie?

Bas Rutten: Well it's a – it's not a fighting role. So ordinarily I would like for the people – they can discover what I'm actually doing. I think people are going to be happily surprised. We already have great, great reviews. It was a lot of fun working with guys like Kevin James of course and then Henry Winkler, Salma Hayek, and then myself. I think people are really going to like it. It's an enjoyable movie. It's a heartfelt movie. It's mixed martial arts, and it's a comedy. So everything that people like, it's in there.

Jeffrey Harris: So the show sounds like a great way to present martial arts as a form of self defense, is that an important message for you?

Bas Rutten: Yeah, no. It's more for entertaining people. What I'm using, what I'm telling people at home to do – it's all real stuff. And it's very solid. Everything is real, but of course I do it with a twist, you know the way I teach – with a smile and with a laugh. And we had a lot of fun doing it. But needless to say, we say many times in the clips also, if someone comes at you with a gun and he's asking you for money, give him the money. But for the TV show's sake . . . let's say this guy says something bad about my mother, ooooh, now I can't let him go. I'm not going to give him the money. This is what you do. And then I come up with crazy scenarios and it's funny. It's funny and it's educational.



Jeffrey Harris: You are also the spokesman on Cartoon Network for the Move It Movement Tour. How did that get started for you?

Bas Rutten: You know everything, 95% of every job that I had, including pretty much the movies and everything, it comes from that clip on YouTube. That guy who did that, and I tried to contact him but I never got a reply. I said, "Dude. That clip gave me so much work." And that includes Cartoon Network. It was crazy because I thought Cartoon Network, especially when I did the anti-bullying campaign, you know it's non-violence. They want to touch the people who are watching the bully, bully a kid, and then those kids around it have to get somebody else; get an adult you know and never, ever go to violence. But on Punk Payback, that's a different – it's more a comedy/educational self-defense system. I don't know what you call it. I do know that everybody's going to watch it guaranteed. If you see it, whether you like it or you don't, it's really funny and I think people are going to have a lot of fun watching it.

Jeffrey Harris: I just got such a kick out of turning on my TV and seeing Bas Rutten on Cartoon Network telling me to eat my vegetables and wash my hands, and "make those germs cry for their mommies!" It's fantastic stuff.

Bas Rutten: How funny is that, right? With respect to that when I was a kid, my parents are very proud right now, that is until they see Punk Payback. They're going to go, "Oh. You really do hit a kid? You think that it's so funny." But my dad, my dad really loves my kind of humor. My mom – it's the same with my wife also; she knows I got this crazy humor. And you know a lot of people actually have that crazy humor. It's just a fun humor and to make fun of punks what I call them, which are criminals. Also each week, we have a clip with like a dumb criminal, someone who does something really dumb. And each week we also have a contest, the El Guapo Award. And it goes out to a person who saw a robbery and took action. And clips like that we have also. The comedy – you're going to see people robbing a place with thongs on their faces, situations like that. Like, "Dude, really? You think a thong can cover your face?" And they actually think that they can away with it.

Jeffrey Harris: Do you have your action figure yet?

Bas Rutten: You know I do, I do. I have a really small one that I take everywhere where that I go. I got it from Jase, like a six year old kid, he gave it to me. His parents said, "No, don't give it to him." He said, "No, I want to give him this present." So I got this little one, I call him Mini-Me. And if you go on Twitter you see me with Mini-Me everywhere we go. So if I go to Japan, you have the picture with Mini-Me in Japan. And then of course I have the action figure, the Ken and Barbie-sized [one]. Needless to say, when I came in, Ken got all the hair and I got all the Barbies. I made a picture of that which was my daughter's idea. And you see my daughter's got that twisted humor too. So you see me standing with my foot on Ken and then all the Barbie's are around me, very funny.

Jeffrey Harris: How excited did your daughter get when she saw you on Cartoon Network? Has she seen that yet?

Bas Rutten: They are used to a lot of stuff that I come home and OK now I'm here, but the small thing is when I go to school to pick them up to see the reaction from all the other kids. Then they realize, "Oh a lot of people are watching Cartoon Network." Kids are running up to me and they start hitting me or I have to teach them things. It's really funny when I pick my daughters up from school. My fourteen year old when I go there, last time I think I have 12 kids around me. Two of them asked me to sign their detention slips. So I had to sign – and I saw these parents coming by and they go, "Who is that guy? Who are all these kids hanging out with?" But with the old guy at the gym, so of course my daughters are very safe because they know the consequences, needless to say I can't do anything, but then again you know I got a lot of kids their age in my gym that are also at the school. And I say, "OK, you keep your eyes out and if anything happens, you alert me." So they're my eyes and ears.

Jeffrey Harris: You are a former fighter and champion. After having walked away from the sport is there anything you really miss about fighting?

Bas Rutten: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every time when I see a fight, I miss it. It's the feeling, there is nothing like it. Like with the hole in one, with goals, or scoring a good knockout because you set it up that way or you getting a great submission because you set it up that way. That's just really cool you know. And most of the time you worked six weeks to two months for a fight, and you go over a bunch of new things you're going to use in a fight. And then if one of them works that's great. It's always when I see guys walking to the ring or the cage, you know, yeah I do miss that feeling. But the problem is – just the neck surgery, my knees are really bad. I can't even train. Once I roll on the ground for an hour, then I got to drain my knees again for two days in a row or three days in a row. So once the training isn't fun anymore, then it pretty much stops the career.

Jeffrey Harris: You were a pioneer in the sport and helped pave the way for it. But now that you're retired and an analyst for Inside MMA, what is it like for you see the sport growing and blowing up at the moment?

Bas Rutten: All the way back in 1993, when I had my first fight in Japan, they interviewed me right after, and I told everybody, I said, "This is going to be the biggest thing in seven years. You watch. And everybody wants this." I compared it to "it's a time to Rollerball." Rollerball. In the future, there's no more violence and the only way for people to unload their stress is to go to the Rollerball game. And I said, "There's so much animosity and anger in the world you know. People like to see [it]." And it's not a bad example. I think pro-wrestling, that's a bad example because kids actually think that that is real. And somebody jumps on somebody else, and then he just walks away. And they go, "Oh, I can do this to my buddy." That's when accidents happen. With MMA, you see cause and affect always. You hit somebody in the head, he goes down. I probably shouldn't do that somebody else and you probably shouldn't do that to me because it's going to hurt. So I think that helps. I was off. I said it was going to be seven years. I was off a whole bunch of years. No, no, no, I said four years. I was seven years off, that was the jip because it was like in eleven years like – I believe in like 2003-2004 that I think everything started spiking. But I expected it. I told them at that time already also, I said, "I think this is going to be the Olympics." I actually thought 2012, I don't know if we're going to make that. But I think in 2016, they should be able to have them in the Olympics like in the old days because the first Olympics had Pankration which was mixed martial arts.

Jeffrey Harris: Will you be in Las Vegas for UFC 137?

Bas Rutten: You know I'm going to be there at the Tapout Center for the memorial fund for Shawn Tompkins. On Friday, I'm going to be there at six o'clock. And then the next day, Kevn Randleman and I will teach at seven and all that money also goes to the family of Shawn Tompkins. So hopefully we'll see a lot of people there and it's going to be a success. I'm not going to stay for the fights. I'm going to be out. I'm actually going to be at the fights on November 12: Junior dos Santos/Cain Velasquez. I'm going to be there also promoting the show Punk Payback, the red carpet thing and that's where I'm going to be present.

Jeffrey Harris: Do you have any thoughts on the main event this weekend? Who do you think will win the BJ Penn/Nick Diaz fight?

Bas Rutten: Ah you know it's a hard question. I like BJ a lot. I know him personally. And Nick, I've always been a big fan of Nick. I do know that – I think Nick if he throws the jab and keeps that reach, I think he has a really good chance of winning this fight, especially because he's always in unbelievable shape. If BJ wants to win this fight, he's got to go in and preferably in because of the reach disadvantage that he has and he needs to unload and take him down and be on top and go with elbows and ground and pound. Something like he did with Joe Stevenson, you know stuff like that he has to do with Nick. Playing the guard game I don't think is going to work with Nick. You really have to need mount to get a good ground and pound. And don't go for submissions. Because if you miss a submission it's going to be highly likely on a guy like Nick again and that's the other way around also. If you miss a submission, you're going to give up your position. I think to play it safe, take him down, be on top because he's got great takedowns BJ has, and then just work from the top. And if Nick can keep it on his feet and throw that creepy jab out the whole time, then you know if BJ doesn't have an answer for that then Nick is going to take this fight.

Jeffrey Harris: I also read that the UFC Undisputed 3 game, which will have Pride FC gameplay in it, will have your commentary in it, is that right?

Bas Rutten: Yes, together with Stephen Quadros. We did like six sessions.

Jeffrey Harris: That's awesome.

Bas Rutten: Yeah, really funny. And that was just do whatever we want to do. So it was uncut, really funny.

Jeffrey Harris: I really do miss Pride and listening to guys like you and Mauro Ranallo breaking down a fight. And it was in a Takanori Gomi fight after he won by submission, and I think you said, "Everything you ever wanted to know about mixed martial arts, you saw right there!" You just sounded so pumped and excited and I got excited too. And that's one of the things I miss about Pride, some of those really exciting, huge moments. It was so much fun.

Bas Rutten: It was. It was a lot of fun and it was the best show at that moment. What a show it was, what crazy . . . I'm sitting there doing commentary for 91 and a half thousand people in an outdoor stadium, people coming in on a parachute. I mean dude it was the craziest thing ever. And then all these great fighters, the heavyweight tournament that they had. They had such great heavyweights at the time. Everything was fireworks. And especially Bushido when that came and Gomi, I mean he was dropping people left and right. He had great fights. I mean Cro Cop and Nogueira and then Sakuraba all the way in the beginning. You know seeing Wanderlei [Silva] go to the top, yeah that's really cool. That's something that no one can ever take away from, that's really cool stuff. I always Mauro, I say, "You there is six billion people on the planet. And just two of them, just two of them here right now – we're making history with these great fights." Fedor vs. Cro Cop, like whoa. And we were right there, sitting there. And even the music is still a different feeling. Even if you go to the UFC, their shows are unbelievable, but in Japan you're whole body would – you felt your bones [shake]. There was so many, I don't know, bass boxes spread out over the whole place. They really knew how to make something [big].

And the clips, which unfortunately a lot of the times the American audience didn't see, the clips in Japan which if you have the original Pride DVD's you see the clips that they showed. For instance, when Cro Cop fought Fedor, it was unbelievable. They went from Cro Cop's gym to Fedor's gym. Cro Cop's gym: everything was new and high tech. It was like Drago vs. Rocky. Fedor was with the rusty kettle bells, and it went back and forth and back and forth. You saw Cro Cop at the grave of his father, and then you saw pictures from the war and then corpses in the river. I mean dude, it was like – I'm getting goosebumps now. I remember when Cro Cop came out, he was crying because he just saw that clip. And I go, "Oooh, I don't know if it's such a good thing to go to a fight with Fedor like that." But that Japanese movie-making, it was so cool what they had. It's too bad that those clips were never seen here in American TV. I always asked them why don't you broadcast it in America? Because then it will explode even more. But they said, "No. The other people own it."

Jeffrey Harris: You'll be in Anaheim for Cain Velasquez vs. Junior dos Santos. I think Cain Velasquez is going to win. Who do you think is going to win?

Bas Rutten: Yeah I also I think Cain. Don't get me wrong, I know Junior if he connects with something, but Cain has that . . .

Jeffrey Harris: He's the total package, I think.

Bas Rutten: He's the total package and he can go. He will take Junior down. Junior will get up. But he will take him down again. And Junior can go 15 times, it doesn't matter because Velasquez doesn't get tired. And that's what's going to happen; I think he's going to outwork him. Or in between those sessions of course if Junior connects with some crazy knee or some crazy punch.

Jeffrey Harris: Is there anything or a sponsor you would like to give a plug or a shout out to?

Bas Rutten: Go to Bas Rutten Facebook. Everything is updated now. The Twitter Account, you will see that everything is fitting. I've got a really good company doing all these now for me. So if you go to Facebook, type in Bas Rutten, boom, I will pop up. And it's the only Bas Rutten. We're working on that also because there were like 23 of them. So we took those out. And for me on Twitter: @BasRuttenMMA. And for the rest, keep watching. Punk Payback man, Fuel TV. Inside MMA of course, each week, that's also a great show and we'll keep on plugging on the road, so they say. And hopefully next year I will be even more out in the open. There are some big plans. I'm working on some really cool stuff. I think you're going to see a lot of Bas next year.

Jeffrey Harris: How many episodes in are you on Inside MMA now?

Bas Rutten: I think 208 or 210, something like that. It's been over four years. We did 13 episodes, and then they refreshed the contract to another 13 which was good for me. And then it's another 13, and I go "Whoa." And then suddenly there was no contract anymore. We just kept on going. And here we are, four years later and the show is booming man. It's live now each Monday so that's great as well and we have a lot of viewers.

Jeffrey Harris: Bas thanks so much for your time and congratulations on all your success. I can't wait to see your new show and whatever is next. Thanks so much.

Bas Rutten: Thank you. God speed and party on!



Punk Payback hosted by Bas Rutten is set to premiere on Fuel TV on November 2 at 9:30PM ET/PT. The first season is currently set for ten half-hour episodes. UFC Undisputed 3 featuring Pride FC commentary with Bas Rutten hits shelves January 3 of next year. Inside MMA is live on Monday nights on HDNet. Thank you to Bas Rutten for taking the time to speak with us.