Pat Barry: Secretly a Ninja
Written by Dom Velando
Friday, 26 December 2008 09:17
Earlier this month, WCL and K-1 veteran Pat “Get Hype” Barry spoke with Wisconsin Combat Sports about his UFC debut against Dan Evensen on Saturday. Barry has trained full-time with legendary kick boxer Ernesto Hoost, but most recently relocated to train with Duke Roufus and Eric “Red” Schafer at Roufusport in Milwaukee, WI. Barry shared with us some insight into his true ninja identity, his nickname and the time he kicked part of Gary Goodridge’s face clean off.
Wisconsin Combat Sports: The funny thing about your nickname is there is, in fact, a lot of hype behind your debut because of the striking level you bring to the UFC. You really don’t see that in the UFC right now. There are plenty of wrestlers in the UFC, that’s for sure, and eventually, if you fight a few times, you’re gonna get taken down. Are you going to use jiujutsu or are you just going to spring back up, or what’s your plan?
Pat Barry: Ever since I made the transition to MMA six months ago, we've been focusing a lot on wrestling and jiu-jutsu more than actually striking...We’ve based my wrestling and jiu-jutsu on anti-wrestling, anti-jiu-jutsu.
WCS: How do you match up with everybody in the gym? I understand you go down and train with [Pat] Miletich as well?
PB: We've gone down to Pat Miletich's gym to train with my teammate, Ben Rothwell, when he fought on the [Adrenaline] show. We’ve done some training with Tim Sylvia. But in our home-gym, we've got “Red” Schafer, who is the man, we've got Scott Huston who's one of the best GI jiu-jutsu guys in the country, we've got Rob Smith, who's a world class wrestler, we've got “Big Papi“, Paul Martinez...we've tall guys, small guys, short guys, big guys…We’ve got boxers, we got kick boxers, we’ve got wrestlers, we’ve got jiu-jutsu guys -- we've got anybody you can think of in the fight game all in one gym.
WCS: What brought you to Milwaukee in the first place?
PB: Duke Roufus is the man. I’ve been all over the planet, I've trained at different gyms with different people -- there’s just something about that man that is just…he's trustworthy. He's honest. He knows the game. He studies the game all day and night. He knows the fight sport better than anybody I've ever met. And he' not just a cookie cutter coach where other coaches I’ve been to train everybody the same whether you’re tall, short, six-ten or five-eleven, they train everybody the exact same away. Duke Roufus has been in the sport for so long that actually designs a strategy depending on what type of athlete you are.
WCS: This is a little early, but I mean, you're short for the division; is there any consideration for you to get down to 205 [lbs]?
PB: I can get down to 205. I mean, it would take some time. I haven't been 205 since was in high school. That was 11 years ago… Yeah, I am five-eleven and a half… mark that: five-eleven and a half, and at 235, I’m a powerful, explosive, quick heavyweight. I'm a pretty small heavyweight in comparison to guys like Ben Rothwell, but Fedor Emeliainenko is the same size as I am and he's the greatest in the world. He's the same size as me. When saw him in person, that changed my whole idea of going down to 205.
WCS: Speaking of high school, I read that you didn't start training until you were 21. Did you any sports or compete in anything in school?
PB: I started training when I was 23, actually, so October 1 made six years since I put my first pair of gloves on, threw my very first punch. When was a kid, I was a gymnast. In high school, I was on the bowling team, and didn't do anything through college, and that's it. I've been a Van Damme fanatic and Ninja Turtles [fan], playing Street Fighter the video game non-stop, all day and night.
WCS: So in that six years, the amount of competing you've done is pretty much insane in my opinion. What is your motivation behind your competitive drive?
PB: I mean, I've secretly been a ninja my entire life. I was a ninja every year for Halloween, I was a Street Fighter, Ninjas Turtles fanatic…All I've ever wanted to do was be a hand-to-hand combat-video game-movie character. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do since I was a kid…Um, just lot of training. I mean, that's what the whole “hype or die” thing is. Either you get hype or you die trying. If you're not giving me 100 percent, then what's the point? I am an extremist. If we're gonna drive fast, I’m gonna drive the fastest. If we're gonna eat a lot, I'm gonna eat the most. If we’re gonna lift something, I'm lifting more than anybody else. That's part of…the reason for the fast growth I’ve made in this sport: I've given 6000 percent. I’ve made every sacrifice possible I've done nothing but commitment to it since day one.
WCS: As far as going into the UFC, so you've only been doing MMA for 6 months. You’ve been doing striking your whole career. There is some money to be made in K-1, but what made you decide to get into MMA?
PB: Well, MMA is the way of the future. If you follow fight sports at all, MMA is taking over… There is money to be made in K-1, but I mean, Duke told me when I first got into town, "Why go eat somewhere else when you can eat at your house?" You know? Why go kick box all over the planet when you can do what you’ve been doing and use it here at home? And I'm a homebody. I like my mom and my brother. I don't like living in other countries non-stop, I like being here in the states.
WCS: What is the most badass ninja move that you've ever pulled off in competition?
PB: I did a front flip and kicked a guy in the head once. It was in practice though, it wasn’t in a fight. In a competition? I kicked the memory out of a guy's head. I've kicked a guy in the head so hard that every time I see him, he introduces himself to me. That was in my earlier career… I would have to say Gary Goodridge, that's my trophy. Gary Goodrige’s right eyebrow was stuck on my left shin after I kicked him in the head. The fight was stopped, he had hole in his head. I looked down, and his eyebrow was on my leg... And that was my most memorable moment.
WCS: Tell me just a little bit more about “hype” and how you discovered that movement.
PB: That's something that my brother and my cousin and I came up with. [We] started on a road trip in 2002, 2003... We drove from New Orleans to New York to San Francisco, back to Michigan. We drove around the country for a month. In a car, on the road for a long time, you start thinking about all types of different things...and we’ve had a lot of different thoughts about our lives and the way things have gone and what caused certain things to happen, and that's all it was: we had a revelation. We unplugged ourselves from the “matrix” on the road. We just unplugged ourselves and realized that, you know what? It doesn't matter what you do, if you give it everything you’ve got, 10,000 percent, you're gonna be great at it. I made more money delivering pizza than I did kickboxing, and I only worked two days a week, and I went to work every day amped up with the thought in mind that “I'm gonna make a million dollars doing this“… As human beings, we’re supernatural. We just don’t know it. We're superhuman. We can do anything if we just put everything into it, and I've given everything to this sport. And that's what “hype or die” is. Either you get hype, or you just die, man. You either give me everything you've got, or just take your gloves off and get outta my face.
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Originally Posted by Yung Apprentice
