M-1 Global champ Guram Gugenishvili training stateside, preparing to ‘hunt people’ | MMAjunkie
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By MMAjunkie Staff	October 14, 2011 5:00 pm	Follow @MMAjunkie
After much anticipation, super-prospect Guram Gugenishvili (11-0) finally came to America. Well, sort of.
The 25-year-old M-1 Global heavyweight champion did fly to Las Vegas to train at Xtreme Couture three weeks prior to his stateside MMA debut and was planning on putting his title on the line in a rematch against Kenny Garner at M-1 Challenge 27. That was until he got hurt in training and had to pull out of the fight.
Now his “coming to America” moment (and his injured elbow) will have to be put on ice, and a light-heavyweight title fight Vinny Magalhaes and Mikhail Zayats has been promoted to the card’s main event.
Meanwhile, Garner and Maxim Grishin fight for the interim heavyweight crown for the right to face Gugenishvili at a later date and time. The event takes place Friday night at the Grand Canyon University Arena in Phoenix, Ariz. and airs live on Showtime.
“It’s elbow ligaments,” Gugenishvili told MMAjunkie.com Radio (www.mmajunkie.com/radio) through his interpreter. “It’s serious enough I was forced to cancel this fight, to say no. It was a stupid injury. We were wrestling and that’s how it happened. Now I’m forced to be out of competition.”
A timeframe for his return has not yet been established.
“Unfortunately, I’m not Nostradamus,” Gugenishvili said. “I can’t expect when I will come back, but the thing that I know, as soon as my doctors allow me to train and to compete I will go get back and train twice more than I was training.”
It wasn’t that long ago when the 25-year-old Gugenishvili wasn’t even involved with the sport of MMA. As a kid growing up in the country of Georgia, he competed in a wide range of activities including swimming, bodybuilding, and hunting.
Gugenishvili joked that’s how he learned to “hunt people.”
Soccer was his main passion, however, and he eventually went on to play forward on the Georgian junior national soccer team where the 6-foot-5, 250-pound Gugenishvili said he was “looking down to the other guys on the field.”
It was his cousin, a former world and European arm-wrestling champion, who initially got him involved in sports.
“Then I started to watch MMA a little bit,” Gugenishvili said. “Little by little, step by step that’s how I realized that I really like it and I really want to go and try it myself.”
Competing in Russia, Ukraine, and the Netherlands, Gugenishvili promptly racked up 11 wins in a row (although he claims it’s actually 13).
His biggest career highlight to date came in October 2010, when he defeated Garner by second-round guillotine choke to capture the M-1 Global heavyweight crown. His first title defense came six months later, when he defeated Grishin by first-round rear-naked choke. He now has 10 submission finishes in eleven career fights.
While he’s demonstrated very good skills as a grappler and imposed his physicality on opponents thus far, Gugenishvili’s game remains in constant evolution. His standup, most noticeably, still needs refining. The trek to Sin City to train at former UFC heavyweight and light-heavyweight champion Randy Couture’s gym was a no-brainer.
“I came to Vegas because I wanted to train at Xtreme Couture, and I know Vinny Magalhaes,” Gugenishvili said. “It’s always good if possible to come to the place where you are going to fight and to prepare to get some time for adaptation.”
Gugenishvili immediately began to notice differences in the training compared to what he’s been used to at Aris Sport Club in the Ukraine.
“I can tell there are a lot of small things in the warm-ups and everything, some small differences,” Gugenishvili said. “But what really caught my attention is that all the American fighters they are all very physically prepared, very good stamina, very good physical condition.
“In Georgia, maybe we don’t have enough good gyms to prepare for the big fights so that’s why I always, if I have the possibility, I always choose the possibility to go to Russia, to Ukraine, now U.S. to get some new things, to prepare better. That’s what I always do.”
As a general rule, anytime a prospect from outside North America can train in the continent it’s likely to be in his best interest. The landscape is littered with high-level gyms, and the talent is more concentrated than it is in most parts of the world.
And while the bright lights and hustle and bustle of Las Vegas initially took Gugenishvili aback, he slowly warmed to his temporary home.
“I really like the city,” he said. “It’s very well known. It’s a beautiful city. I was amazed.”
Maybe, just maybe, he’ll finally get to fight there one day.
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