Australia’s Jake Matthews started training BJJ at 15-years-old to stay in shape during the Aussie rules football off-season. By this time he was already no stranger to hard work. He was helping his father and brother do construction on their house when he was just a kid.
After starting his BJJ training he found a passion for MMA, said goodbye to football and has never looked back. Jake has multiple titles in BJJ and at 18 won the Australian and East Coast Welterweight MMA titles.
Coached by his father, Matthews made his way to TUF Nations where he tasted defeat for his first time; however, the other contestants had been rumored to pick him to win the show.
Jake is coming of a spectacular finish of Vagner Rocha by modified Rear Naked Choke. The choke was finished with no hooks in, which shows the young Australians strength. The win in Brazil brings him to 8-0, and has people believing that we may be looking at the first Aussie UFC belt holder.
I sat down with Jake and talked with him about winning his last fight, and why he believes he is having this success.
Aaron Robbins: Hey Jake thanks for talking with me, how are you feeling after your fight?
Jake Matthews: “I feel great, you know. I’m very pleased with my performance. Any time you can get a win in the UFC it’s a massive deal, so I’m very happy. I took a couple of days off to let my body recuperate and I’m already back to training.”
AR: Could you give the fans a little look at your history, and how you were led to MMA?
JM: “I boxed since I was about 12. I was playing Aussie rules football for about nine years, and I was reaching a high level, playing for representative teams. My dad told me because my football was getting serious I was going to have to do something in the off- season to stay in shape. I had a friend who was doing kick-boxing at the time, so I went along and joined the class. I started with Jiu Jitsu at that time and I fell in love with that. There was a point where I was playing football and training MMA for about a year, then I had my first amateur fight. I won by head-kick knock out and that’s when I decided fighting is what I wanted to do. I gave the football away and just stuck with MMA.”
AR: Your father is your head coach. Where does he get his experience from?
JM: “Dad has been training martial arts pretty much his whole life. He trains different disciplines and was in the first ever Australian BJJ seminar. He’s an Australian Taekwondo champion, and he’s done some boxing. My dad is just really smart when it comes to fighting. He’s good at game-planning, and looking at opponents to see where they are weak. Its common sense to him, he’ll look at a move or a submission and how to defend it is just common sense for him. He doesn’t have much more experience than I do, but the way he looks at the sport makes him a great coach. We call him the Greg Jackson of Australia.”
AR: Does it give you a sense of comfort to have your father in your corner?
JM: “Absolutely and you can see that’s evident in my fight against Olivier in The Ultimate Fighter. That was the first fight I ever had without dad in my corner, and was probably the worst fight I’ve ever had. Who do you want to fight for more than you dad or your family? It motivates me. A lot of the time the father-son team thing doesn’t work, but he and I have made it work well.”
AR: From what I understand the guys in the fighter house had you pegged as a phenom. I have heard that they had you winning the whole thing. Can you give us some insight into the fighter house?
JM: “Yeah I was one of the favorites to win the show, and I feel that I could’ve even now. It’s just a different environment. I’m not making any excuses, I lost the fight and that’s that, Olivier fought better. It’s just a different environment; there is no crowd, no walk-out music. You walk into the gym and it’s dead quiet. There are cameras all around; there is no audience just a couple people sitting in chairs around the octagon. It was my first time in a cage as well; all of my previous fights had been in a boxing ring. It was nerve-racking, but I still believe that if I had the mind-set that I do now I would’ve won the show.”
AR: It still had to be helpful to be in that environment thought, right?
JM: “Oh absolutely. You have to learn to adapt. You never know what’s going to happen in a fight. Something might change in your corner, or they might not have your walk-out music. Little things like that can throw fighters off. You might not be able to find your lucky fight short, you know? It’s good to fight in a different environment to show yourself that you don’t need all that superstitious stuff.”
AR: Where do you do your training?
JM: “I try to do most of my training in Melbourne. I just opened my own gym about ten weeks ago. Before the fight with Dashon I was training in my backyard. I would go to my wrestling club, and my Jiu Jitsu club, and the rest of my training was at home. That was the limit to my training, and my main training partner was my little brother. I didn’t have any sparring partners. I wasn’t doing any sparring. I only started sparring before the Dashon Johnson fight, I was really limited on my training, but we made it work. Now with my own gym I’ve got good training partners coming down like Daniel Kelly, who got his first win in Sydney as well. My training has stepped up and it showed in my last fight. It’s just going to keep progressing from here.”
AR: Please take this the right way, but you are a physical freak. What do you attribute your apparent strength to?
JM: “Ever since I was seven years old we have been working on extensions to our house. I’ve dug a lot of dirt and hauled it away. I’ve dug a ridiculous amount of dirt. Every weekend all I did was my brothers was dig dirt, fill up buckets, and carry the buckets to the trailer and tip them out. That was for years and years that we would do that every weekend. I’ve also played several sports. I’ve swam. I played football from a young age, and I think helps build that foundation. Some of it is my age. I have a lot of energy, and I can outwork any fighter. I reckon that my conditioning is second to none, that has a lot to do with it. It’s also my size, I cut weight very easily. I cut about 14 kilos; I think that works out to about thirty pounds. I put a lot of that back on before the fight. I try to use that size to bully my opponents.”
AR: Besides your size, you seem to have a great deal of maturity. Does that come from other sports or from mom and dad?
JM: “That’s just part of my personality. It comes from the way I was brought up. We were taught to be humble. I can’t be like to the Conor McGregors and Chael Sonnens of the sport. I can’t do it, and it wouldn’t look natural if I did. I’m just very humble. I do like to have fun in the cage and play to the crowd. I feel very comfortable in the Octagon.”
AR: Let’s go back a minute and focus on your size. You say you cut about thirty pounds to fight. At only 20-years-old do you think you will eventually have to go up a weight-class?
JM: “I walk around at about 185, but it only takes me about three weeks of cutting out the bad, fatty food to drop about half of the extra weight. The rest is just water weight, and jumping in a salt-bath and sauna takes care of that. I cut weight really easily. I can’t answer the weight-class question until I age a little more. I’ve done a lot of filling out naturally over the last couple of years. If that continues to happen and I have to go up to Welterweight then it happens, but I want to get as many fight at Lightweight as I can. I like being at Lightweight, I think I’m one of the biggest guys in the division. Standing around the hotel with them it’s evident that I outsize them. If I stay at Lightweight, perfect, if I have to go to Welterweight that’s ok because GSP is my favorite fighter and when I was younger I wanted to be a Welterweight. I’m fine with it either way.”
AR: Your win over Vagner Rocha is being called a Technical Rear Naked Choke, I believe it’s because it wasn’t from the back-mount position, is that how you understand it?
JM: “Yeah no hooks in. It takes a lot more strength to finish the choke that way. I was putting every ounce of energy I had into that choke, and like I said you don’t have your legs to help stretch their body, so it’s all arms. I knew it was sunk in, and I knew he wasn’t going to tap. I just put everything I had into it, and it doesn’t sound good, but I was hoping he would go to sleep. I thought I felt him go limp, but I wasn’t sure so I held on. I felt him moving a bit, but it was the ref pulling his leg to see if he was out.”
AR: Now a quick note before we close. I’m not sure if all of your fans are aware of this, but the cage is banned in Victoria. This is up for legislation soon. If it becomes legal how will that change things for you?
JM: “Yeah there is an election at the end of this month and if Labor wins the cage will be legal in Victoria. It will be awesome to have the cage in Victoria so we can have an UFC event down here. The biggest UFC following is definitely in Victoria, so it would allow the fans to stay right at home and watch.”
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