411 MMA Interviews: Denniston Sutherland

Posted by Alex Watt on 11.04.2011

Reigning UCMMA Middleweight Champion Denniston Sutherland chats to 411 about his upcoming title defence, past fights, BAMMA, the UFC, Anderson Silva, the state of MMA in the United Kingdom and much more!

One of the biggest names in UK MMA is Denniston "Mad Max" Sutherland (15-7). The 38 year old Jamaican born middleweight made his Mixed Martial Arts debut at the age of 33 against heavyweight fighter Neil Grove. Since then, "Mad Max" has gone on a great run amassing 15 wins against top fighters on the UK MMA scene. Most recently, Sutherland captured the UCMMA Middleweight Championship from UFC and PRIDE veteran Mark Weir. I was able to catch up with Denniston in a phone interview on October 26th.



You're just six weeks away from your defence of the UCMMA Middleweight title against Jake Bostwick. That fight will be a rematch as well; he defeated you via split decision last year at UCMMA 11.

Well, he got a gift [decision]. And I'll maintain, I'll maintain until the day I'm in my grave that he [Bostwick] got a gift. And he knows he didn't win it. He won't admit it but I bet that he will admit it after I finish him next time. I'll make it obvious.

So you're excited to get that rematch? Sort of, put any of the doubts to rest?

I've never been a rematch man. Because, I know, it's an ego-trip. You get one shot and if you win that fight, or if you know that you won the fight like I did but you think you got robbed and everything, then you get in there and it's almost a given that you're going to win again. Of course, the guy can change but, to be honest, I don't see him changing that much that he's going to be able to turn the tables on me. But I've never been the ‘rematch dude'. I just think it's a cop-out. If you go into the fighting business, then every lesson you learn you need to keep that and it needs to be burned in.

So, losing to Jake Bostwick, wrongly or rightly or for whatever reason, I learned a hell of a lot from that. I'm definitely not going to repeat any of the mistakes I made in that fight. One of them was to take the fight in the first place. Because I was injured, I had broken ribs three weeks before the fight. I shouldn't have fought. I should have pulled out at that point. But, again, the show must go on and you're thinking you don't want to disappoint. You don't want to let down the promoter, you don't want to let down any of the friends who bought tickets. So you go out there, and I was told by a couple of coaches ‘look, you need to get out of this fight.' And I was like, ‘No, it's too close.'

But, I went in and I did my best. And I got him to the ground and everyone knows when I get someone to the ground, I finish the fight. I couldn't stay on top of him because every time I punched, my ribs just tightened up a bit more. So I tried to just keep giving myself space and getting myself up higher. Everyone knows, again, that Jake is not very good off of his back; he normally taps. So it made him look good and I still don't think he won. But that's my opinion. So it's not like I'm making an excuse; I still don't think he won, even though I didn't do everything I could do.

What I take from that fight is it was my fault that I wasn't prepared and was unable to finish the fight by fighting at less than one hundred percent. If you cannot fight at close to one hundred percent, then you shouldn't fight. Then you leave room for excuses. And I wanted to just take that lesson and be pissed off every time that I see Jake Bostwick and hear people say ‘Oh he beat you.' I'm going to use that as fuel for my next fight.

But now I'm getting a rematch and my ego has kicked in a little bit and I'm thinking ‘Okay, I've got the chance to set the record straight.' Now I'm going to train doubly hard and try and avoid as many injuries as I can. But, when I get in there I'm looking to make him look like he doesn't belong there. It's not going to be a close fight. You know, there's no guarantee that I'm definitely going to spark him, he might be the one to spark me, I might make that mistake. But to be honest, I don't see that happening. I'm going in there to destroy him. To completely annihilate him. To get him out of there as fast as I can and as brutally as I can.

That fight with Jake Bostwick in December will be your first defence of the UCMMA Middleweight title which you won at UCMMA 21 with a first round knockout win over MMA veteran Mark Weir. Regarding the Weir fight; was a KO win how you were expecting the fight to play out? And what was that feeling like – knocking out a veteran, who has fought in the UFC and PRIDE, to capture the biggest title of your career thus far?

Confidence has never been an issue for me. Every fight I step in to, I expect to win. Every one. So I never have a confidence issue. Mainly because it's so blinkered coming up to a fight and you don't leave any room in there for doubt, any room for a loss. The only thing you're thinking about is a win. When it happens and you won in the way you thought you would have won, yeah, you're going to celebrate. But often you need time to let it actually sink in. It's like looking around and removing the blinkers and people are telling you that you just beat Mark Weir. It reminded me, I guess, and you actually start to realise the gravity of the situation. How big that moment was. Because Mark Weir is no small name.

In fact, I watched his first fight in the UFC where he knocked out [Eugene Jackson] in seven seconds, just over seven seconds. And I was thinking, ‘This guy is the nuts.' And then years later I'm fighting him and knocking him out in three minutes. I start to look at it like ‘That's a big achievement Max' and start patting myself on the back a bit. But at the same time not too much. The feeling was overwhelming over the next few days but on the night I was still with the blinkers on, I expected to win. I didn't give him a chance coming out of that fight. I expected to finish him, that's what I trained for. If you look at it, all of the camp (leading up to the fight) there was no backing up. It was all about getting in there and finishing him.

So you weren't wary of him because of what he'd achieved in the sport?

No I knew where his strengths are, and that's from range. If he's outside - which is his style, it's long range fighting - then he's going to beat me up. I've never been the type of fighter to have a ‘tit-for-tat' fight, like I get hit and then you get hit and then I get hit. I've never been that kind of fighter. I've always been a come forward fighter. It just turns out that my kind of style is exactly the style that beats his style. So I didn't have to do too much strategy; I knew what he was going to do and it's exactly what I wanted him to do. I didn't have to change my style in order to beat him.



You lost a close split decision to Tom "Kong" Watson back in 2008. Of course, he is now the BAMMA Middleweight champion; would you be interested in going over to BAMMA and maybe challenging Tom for that belt?

Yeah definitely. It's not so much Tom Watson why I was thinking of fighting in BAMMA. I fought on BAMMA 1 remember. So when I fought at BAMMA 1 it was supposed to be like that was the semi-finals; so I beat John Phillips and Tom Watson beat John Maguire. Tom Watson and I were then supposed to meet at BAMMA 2 for the title. Obviously [backstage] politics get involved and money and we'd fought before on Ultimate Challenge, so they said ‘Okay, maybe the fight is redundant' as far as they were concerned. But I personally think it was political, like, not putting him under those kind of pressures anymore. Because, again, that's another fight that I'm pissed off about. I think I won. But, like you said, it was close. I can live with that. So I would definitely like to get the BAMMA title, but it doesn't really matter to me if it's not Tom Watson that has it when I go for it.

Okay, because Nate Marquardt recently signed with BAMMA too. Is that a fight you would be interested in, if Marquardt could be persuaded to move back up to 185lbs?

I did an interview a few months back where I was saying, ‘definitely I'd love to fight Nate Marquardt.' Because of his calibre. He's a very good fighter, he comes from a great camp and he's experienced. He's fought over in Japan and he's fought in the UFC, so he's got a lot of experience behind him. He's a bad boy. That's the kind of guy I want to fight. The harder the fight for me, the more I show up basically. The more of an underdog I am, the more likely it is that I'm going to win. Because that's how I am; I'm more motivated by the guy who's going to kick my arse.

So on that subject, your manager Wad Alameddine has recently stated that he thinks you are ready for bigger, international fights. And now you've said it as well. Where would you be looking for those types of fights? We've mentioned BAMMA but are you looking at some of the U.S. companies? Bellator? Strikeforce? The UFC?

Yeah I'm not pussy-footing about, I'm looking straight at the UFC. That's where I want to get to. And I love titles, I've got six of them already, but the main title to collect is the UFC title. So you can collect as many of them as you like but you have to chuck them out when you go for the UFC belt. And I'm not being disrespectful to anybody or to any promotion.

No. Well (the UFC are) the big boys aren't they?

It's the pinnacle of the sport. I want to fight the best guys in the world, I want to fight Anderson Silva. I'm not ruling that out. Look, time is not on my side; I'm 38 years old. But, as far as other people are concerned, they thought I should just give it up. I've been told it was a stupid decision to go in to MMA at the age of 32. And suddenly at 33, 34 years old people are changing their minds. I was making my way in the sport and I was actually beating people. So people were like, ‘Oh, maybe he can do this.' I've never been one to listen to what other people have to say. I know that I can be a lot better than I am at the moment. And I can be, with the right trainers and the right support.

So my ultimate goal is to be known as the best in the world. And it's just a matter of time. I've no doubts there. It's just a matter of getting in, staying on track, staying focussed and getting the fight. I don't believe there's anything in life you can hope for, work hard for and not get it. If you work hard enough, harder than the next guy, then you get what you want. Unfortunately for me, I never really put my goals really far in the past. I didn't have big goals. That was always my problem. I've achieved every goal that I've set, but they weren't, like, massive goals. Now I'm starting to set massive goals. Goals I know I'll achieve.

Okay so the UFC is one of those goals?

That's the main one.

Are there any connections there at the UFC?

My manager, he's got a couple of guys in there. So, it's who you know. You've got to know people. You could be the best fighter in the UK and still get looked over for other guys because you don't know anyone up at that level. I've seen guys – and you yourself might have seen these guys, you're a fan of MMA and the UFC, you might have watched it and seen some guys in there and you've thought to yourself ‘My mate can fight better than that.' But he's in there. Because he knows somebody. So, they have the best guys there at the top but they do have some guys who aren't necessarily the best, who just sort of fill up the ranks.

[The UFC] are starting to – there's a lot of new British fighters coming through. Of course, there's the card coming up in Birmingham (UFC 138 on November 5th) where there are a lot of new British fighters competing. Some with the same management as you, so the link is there…

I did actually say to my manager to try and get me in to that one but [the UFC] want to see a win streak which I understand. This is why I'm not too happy about the Bostwick fight and a few others, especially the Tom Watson fight because that messed up my win streak. I was on eight wins in a row and that would have been nine. So that kind of stuff sets you back and if you think about how long ago that was; that was 2009, and I'm still not in the UFC. So that put me back by a couple of years. And how many guys do you know in the UK who have got a nine fight win streak and are not in the UFC? So had I beaten him, who knows where I'd have been [now].

How I look at the whole thing is; me in 2009, as a fighter, was too immature. Not as a person, I mean I've been paying my own rent for a long time. I think I'm pretty grown up. But as a fighter there were a lot of things that I hadn't faced yet. I'd not had many defeats, where you get your arse whooped because of something stupid you did, either in training or during the fight. Or some mental issues you had that you never worked out. But now, I've done so much since then that I feel I'm in a much better place now to fight in the UFC than I was then.

The way I look at the UFC is it's a one-shot deal. You get one chance to make your mark and if you don't then you get to be one of the ‘other guys'. Guys who have fought in the UFC; they're called ‘UFC veterans' but really they just fought in the UFC, they're not really going anywhere. They just take up space, they're along for the ride. They're not going to be going for the prize, the championship. And I don't want to be that guy. I want to be the champ, I want to be the guy. Like, all the middleweights see me and are like ‘shit, that's the man.' That's where I want to get to.



Cool. So just to go on a little side-route there, you mentioned Anderson Silva. Do you think you could beat Anderson Silva? Do you think you match-up well…

I'm not that dumb, at the moment he'd kick my arse. Like I said, if I get in to the UFC then I'll have to work my way up like anybody else. I don't think I'm going to get in there, have one fight and then they're going to give me Anderson. I'm happy to do what everyone else has done; work my way up to the top. But, I know how I improve. I improve a lot between fights and the thing about the UFC is that they can keep you busy. You can fight every other month if you want to. With that in mind, I would work my way to the top. I don't care how long it takes, I would get there. And I would stay focussed until I get there. That's my first immediate goal; to get there and get the title.

Right, so to backtrack I just wanted to touch on your start in the sport. You mentioned that you came to it later on at the age of 33. You were born in Jamaica and started training in MMA over there.

I didn't start training MMA there, I started training MMA here.

I was under the impression that you started training over there and then came over here to pursue it further?

No mate, there were no opportunities (in Jamaica). There wasn't at the time any opportunities to train MMA there.

So what was it that got you interested in MMA?

Well, I saw the very first UFC… In Jamaica at the time there was, this was 1993 remember, one television station. It was one station and it ran from, like, 8 in the morning until 11 o' clock when it was signed off and you just saw the colour card thing. Until, like, 5 o' clock in the afternoon, and then there'd be the evening news from 5. The evening news and a few soaps, a few little shows, until 11 o clock at night and then, after that, the TV would sign off again. That was all our programming, from Monday to Friday. Of a weekend it was a little bit different, there was Church on Sunday and on Saturday there was a bit of sports. But it was very basic.

And then on this particular night, I think it was a Friday, I was sitting down watching TV. At 11 o' clock the TV signed off and I started to get up off the couch. Sorry, no, it didn't sign off but I knew it was about to because the last programme was on. And then on came the UFC. On came the UFC and I was like ‘Fuck' when I saw what was happening; big dudes rushing little dudes, and the big dudes getting messed up while the little dudes were walking away. And then this little guy in his pyjamas was tapping everybody out. And I felt really cheated because I didn't have anybody watching it with me. Noone was around to watch it with me and to share with me. But from then I was hooked. And I never saw it again until I came here (to the UK) but it never came out of my mind.

I came here in 1999. September of 1999. I immediately started asking people about [the UFC] and people were like, ‘yeah we know what this thing is.' It wasn't that big here. I think it started here about '98, or '97, something like that, it started to get popular here then. But not that big that you had that many schools around. But I still had to get on with life, like get a job and just change my life; start my life all over again. Because I don't have that many family over here and I had to change everything. The culture shock was what got me, which is typical when you leave one country to come and live in another country. And that's where I was from '99 to 2005.

I got married in 2004 and then by 2005 I found myself in a place where I could do extra-curricular stuff. And that's how I started training in MMA. I just got on the internet and found a little gym, which was below a chicken shop and over a sewer. I mean literally we had water from the toilet running under the mat. A couple of times as well we had to keep off the mats so that we didn't get kidnapped by some life-forms under there. It was just horrible. But it was so much fun. The first day, my first ever MMA coach Mark Chen, he's only like 66 kilos (145lbs) walking around. And I was so fat then because I hadn't done any training for years. I was, like, 120 kilos (264lbs). And I was like, ‘Yeah I can box. I used to box' and he just punched me in the face a few times, put me on my back, and beat the shit out of me for the first time. And I said ‘bye-bye' thinking I wasn't going to come back but I caught the bug, man. I completely abandoned my boxing and started doing a lot of grappling. All of my first fights I was winning by submission and ground and pound because I was so confident in the grappling.

And that's the story of how I got in to it. It's not like I was able to train over in Jamaica, it was just I saw it and got inspired. But I had to bide my time. In my head there was never going to be a point where I wasn't going to be able to or where it was going to be too late. I wasn't going to get to 50 and think ‘it's too late for me to try.' I was always going to just sort my life out and then get into it, no matter what age I was. When I got into it at 32 even my wife was like, ‘You must be crazy.' And she did say about ‘mid-life crisis', she did mention that. To this day all of my old friends, except for one or two, I don't really see them that much. We're still mates but we don't get to see each other that much. So now, all of my friends revolve around the sport.



So, like, your whole life is in this?

Yeah. I hang out with fighters. Like, I would not go to a club with a non-fighter. Because if you go with them, they have a few drinks, get pissed and tell everyone, ‘Oh he's a fucking cagefighter!' And everybody starts looking at you sideways. So I don't like that. I don't like attention being drawn to me. I don't want to get into fights. Fighting hurts. I fight for money and I train, that's it. I don't have any fun fighting people on the streets, there's none of that. It's pointless to me. Most fighters are like that. Because you spend, whatever your job is, you do that at work. In a club, you don't want to do that. This is my job now. I'm not going to lie, it's the best job in the world. I'm doing the thing that I'm passionate about.

Just to pick up on that; there is, in this country (the UK) a bit of a misconception about "cage-fighting" which, everyone in MMA hates that term…

Yeah.

People like the mainstream media (in the UK) see MMA as this "brutal" sport and that everyone who does it are "thugs". Do you want to be an ambassador for the sport against this sort of thinking?

My position on it now, you have to understand; I do this for a living now. I'm always doing it. Every conversation that I have gets drawn onto something to do with fighting, of how the principles help me in my everyday life. So people ask me a lot. But the people who want to be negative about the sport, you can't beat them. As soon as you start to say, ‘yeah I do MMA,' they're like, ‘what's that?'. And you could spend the whole day explaining it or I could just quickly say, ‘well, some people call it cage-fighting.' As soon as you say that, the face just crumples up like a piece of paper. And they're like, ‘How can you do that? That's so brutal. You're a Neanderthal.' And they start to treat you differently straight away.

So now I don't want to have a conversation with people about what I do because I have to spend that fifteen minutes trying to explain it to them. And when they leave, they still leave with the same impression. They can't really argue with you, because they have no information. So they can't argue a point, they can only say what they feel. They don't have the facts. They will often just smile and pretend to lose the argument. They'll leave there with an impression of the sport and you can't really change that impression.

The only way to change that [impression] is for them to come and train with me. Come and meet the guys who I train with and realise that these guys are actually gentlemen. We know that they don't want to go out there and, in fact, on the street they don't even act like fighters. They're so playful, they behave completely the opposite. They don't walk around in the tight T-shirts, puffing their chest out just to try and pick a fight with people. They actually walk around and they want to have fun. They might wear a TapOut T-shirt or something like that but that's just because they love the sport. But they're not going out there to get in any hard-man competitions.

Absolutely. I just wanted to discuss that issue with you. Going back to the start of your career; I read on your website about your first professional fight. You competed at heavyweight against a much larger opponent…

Neil Grove.

Yeah, and you slammed him to the mat and broke the cage. Is that true?

I had my doubts about the whole cage breaking but one of the photographers who takes photos for UCMMA, he was working for that promotion which I fought Neil Grove on [UKMMAC] and he was the guy who was actually fixing the cage. I remember him fixing it, but it took them about four or five minutes. I've got a videotape of it, or a DVD of it, where they cut the DVD off during that break. So for a whole five minutes, I was there waiting to fight again, even though I smashed him in the first round.

I picked him up twice in the first round, and slammed him twice. I jumped on him and was beating the crap out of him when I got him down at the end of the first round. He walked away and he was crumpled over in his corner, sucking for air because, obviously the bigger you are the more air you need. And I was tired as well but I recovered within 30 seconds, and he was still there sucking air. And in my head, at the time, I was sort of pissed off because I know he was overweight. For one, he was supposed to turn up at 120 kilos (264lbs) because it was a heavyweight fight. The cut off for that is 120 kilos. He turned up at 135 kilos (297lbs) and they said to me, ‘It's not a heavyweight fight. It's a super-heavyweight fight." Which, there's no such thing in MMA. You know, the UFC cuts off at 120 kilos. So for me I was like, ‘That's a bit dodgy' but it was the nature of the business at that time, it was still a new sport. Everyone around was trying to build a brand. They're trying to get a bunch of nutcases in to fight and then build up certain guys' careers so they can get in to the UFC. I'm not saying that the fighter himself is guilty, I'm saying that the promoters at that time were a bit more dodgy.




You think they were taking advantage of you?

Yeah. But I have no regrets in that fight because that's the fight that kind of inspired me to get to where I am now. That I was able to stand up against this guy, I've beaten him in the first round. Yeah he's come back and he kept his mind and he smashed me.

That was what I was going to ask next actually; because Neil Grove is a big opponent, a tough opponent and to, not just hold your own against him, but to beat him up in that first round must have given you so much confidence.

Yeah definitely. Like I said, after the first round, I know I was beating him. And had they started the fight one minute later then I would have finished the fight. But what happens, happens. I don't moan about that fight because the bottom line is; he kept his focus.

Used his experience?

Yeah he was like, ‘Fuck, this little guy is beating me up.' And everybody is loving the fight because the little guy, the underdog, is winning. People love that, they love the underdog. In the second round he just came out and he absolutely knocked the shit out of me. He was messing me up but I didn't feel anything.

After a couple of weeks I was right back on training and hungry for the next fight because I was thinking to myself if I can survive in there with that guy and beat him for the first round then I can definitely beat somebody my size. And I had a few more fights at heavyweight, I never lost any, and then I dropped to light-heavy and wasn't losing any there either. Now I've lost a couple at middleweight but it just fuels me to go on. Every loss was usually my fault. Like, I was taking the fight too lightly or I wasn't focussed enough. Hence why at a certain point in my career I went and got a mind coach. Just to get some mental drills to keep me focussed.

Like a sports psychologist?

Not so much. It's a little bit like hypnotherapy and, at the same time, having drills that you do from time to time. Like, walking from the gym room to the ring. You can end up thinking a lot about stuff that you shouldn't be thinking about. So it just gives me little drills that keep me focussed. There is no more nerves in a fight, you just get on with it. That's fine, it's the stuff leading up to the fight. So what I do is I get little drills to keep me distracted or focussed. It's two things; to keep me distracted from the crowd and my students there, my family there, my friends. And so I can stay focussed on just getting in there and doing a job. So once the fight starts I don't need any of that anymore, I just get in there and get on with it. Once you get punched that first time, it's fight on. You don't have time to think about anything else because it's real now. So the mental coach will help you get through your preparation. My mental coach, Alan Whitman his name is, helps me to – it's little things like, in sparring if you hit a sweet combo and everything lands perfectly, he'll be like ‘Just ask your partner to stop' and you close your eyes and visualise yourself doing that same technique again. Just to make that little memory last so it's a more solid memory. And that's what I will do. So he helps me in training. I get in the fight and I become like superman. If you train your body, you need to train your mind as well.

How did your nickname "Mad Max" come about?

Okay, obviously my name is Denniston but my full name is Denniston Max Sutherland. And growing up anything like disaster movies, end of the world type stuff I'd be well in to and Mad Max was one of those films. And I've been getting called ‘Mad Max' since I was a kid. So it just stuck and when I got in to the sport, ironically everybody just called me ‘Mad Max'. It wasn't because of something I did in the ring that was flash, it was just that. I wish it was. It's something I've been getting called, on and off, since day one.

So, just to wrap things up, I know we've touched on them already but to summarise; what are your targets for the future?

Two things. One; get in the UFC and smash my way up to the title. I mean, I'm looking for fights that end awfully. I don't want a nice technical fight, I'm looking to be brutal and to make a name for myself. I prefer that kind of fight than a technical three rounder. I don't like that one. I like to finish fights quickly; the point of a fight to me, is to end it. So that's the first goal, get in the UFC. And the second goal is to be known as the pound for pound best in the sport, at some point before I retire.

So how many more years do you think you can compete for?

I get this question a lot and I look at Randy Couture. He was still doing it, and he's like ten years older than me. And I feel I can do it until I'm his age. I'm giving myself until I'm 45. So, I've got a good six or seven years yet. But, saying that, life comes first; kids and family. If I get to a point where my kid can't handle it… I mean, that's probably the only person that I would give it up for. I hope I never have to make that choice because she's 6 now, and she doesn't like to see me get hit but she doesn't mind me hitting the other guy. Funny that, eh?

But I don't want to be that guy who gets close to the top and not quite get there. So I want to keep going and I will upset a few people, family included, to get what I want. Or until the body gives up on me. If I get to the point where I have to take 10 different tablets in the morning just to get going then it's time to give up. At the moment, I don't take any tablets. I don't do anything like that, I don't like the idea of it. People say ‘It's okay man, it's clean. Go for it.' I'm like ‘No' because it's a slippery slope; before you know it, you need it. You can't wake up without it. I don't want to go down that road.

Are there any sponsors or people you'd like to thank?

Yes. It's mainly my coaches, because at the moment I haven't got any sponsors who are one hundred percent. They're there for the big fights but they're not really there for the smaller fights. So I'd most like to thank my coaches; Tom Richards, David Lee, Dave Scarborough. Past coaches as well; Mark Chen, Dave Waters, Winston Scott. Martin, my jiu-jitsu coach. My judo coach Steve Morrison. I spent some time at the Minotaur gym with Chris Knowles so thanks to him too. And all of the guys who I spar with and my students. Mainly the guys who revolve around the sport, because I've studied everything and taken little bits from everywhere. I spar with people who can't spar and people who can just wipe the floor with me. Everybody I spar with, I learn from. Plus, Izzy at Halo-PR and my manager Wad Allemaddine. So, all of the above.

Thanks a lot for the time Denniston and good luck with both of the fights. And good luck with getting to the UFC because I think you deserve to be there.

Appreciate it man. Thank you so much.



Denniston defends his UCMMA Middleweight title against Jake Bostwick at UCMMA 25: The Beat Down. The event takes place on December 3rd at the Troxy in London, England. Thanks to Denniston for taking the time to chat with us.