Aaron Simpson: From Wrestling to MMA

Aaron “A Train” Simpson is a world-class wrestler. Before fighting MMA, he placed in the US Olympic Trials for wrestling in 2000 and 2004. Simpson spent 9 years serving as an Assistant Wrestling Coach at ASU, coaching future MMA stars Ryan Bader, Cain Velasquez and CB Dolloway. Simpson has a phenomenal skill set, with all five of his wins coming by way of knockout. Like many of his training partners at Arizona Combat Sports, Simpson is currently undefeated in MMA.

You’ve been doing some really high-level wrestling for a long time. How is the vibe of MMA different than high-level wrestling?

Well, it’s definitely marketed differently. To me, if someone’s at the highest level of MMA they’re obviously doing something correctly. And it’s an exciting sport. It’s easy to understand. It’s almost like basketball is an easy game for people to understand; you throw a ball in the hoop and you get points, and then there’s some exciting stuff that happens. To people who really know the in-depth stuff that’s going on with basketball , and the plays and different things, that’s really exciting for them, too. And I think it’s the same in MMA. There’s so much going with a fight, It’s not just two guys trying to knock each other out, there’s so much more going on, especially with the jiu jitsu aspect of it, and the high level wrestling and the kickboxing, boxing, knees, all that… and that aspect of it for the really educated fan is very exciting.

Wrestling at a higher level has been awesome, it’s been an awesome experience and has really helped develop my ability to be fast in certain situations, to be strong in certain situations. So they go hand in hand, wrestling and fighting. In my opinion, and of course it’s biased, but I think it’s the best sport to have a background in if you can compete at the highest level. I mean. it takes a lifetime to become great at wrestling whereas a lot of fighters that jump in the game, if they’ve done high level wrestling they can kind of pick the other stuff up and be pretty successful. But being a great boxer jumping into the MMA game, it’s really hard to be successful because there’s so much involved with wrestling and grappling. So wrestling is kind of a nice background to have.

What do you think are the biggest disadvantages for wrestlers competing in MMA, or areas they need to work on the most?

I think the biggest disadvantages are wrestlers who believe they need to stop training wrestling because they’ve done it for so long. Anyone who’s been in that sport for a long time, once they start jumping into MMA and they start learning other aspects, they kind forget where they came from and what got them there.

And in my opinion you’ve got to still wrestle, you’ve got to keep that background. Of course you’ve got to stand up and you’ve got to strike and you’ve got work on the ground game, but you can’t forget about what got you there. And I think a lot of wrestlers, once they get into in the higher levels, have cut that aspect of their training out because they think they need to concentrate solely on kickboxing. boxing or solely on jiu jitsu. And you still have to wrestle. I’m adamant about that. I look at guys like GSP who include wrestling in their workout. And he doesn’t have a great wrestling background but still sees the importance of wrestling and I think other wrestlers should too.

I was looking at your high school wrestling record of 162-1, and I was wondering who your 1 loss was to?

That came my freshman year of high school. I don’t quite remember the kid’s name. It was a semifinal of a tournament and I think I lost by a point or something like that. But I’d lost before, in freestyle wrestling, so it wasn’t a shock or anything to lose. I mean I don’t want to lose, I try my best to win. But you’re going to lose, it’s just how good you get after you lose.

You train with a lot of high-level MMA guys who you’ve previously coached in wrestling. How is that different, to have guys as training partners that you used to coach?

I train with CB and Bader and there’s a respect level, and I think there was a respect level as a coach for them. I think they had that respect for me when I was coaching for them. They would do anything I asked them and knew that I had their best interest in mind. Now I feel like there’s a respect level across the board, not as a coach but as a training partner, and with that comes that respect for not taking it easy on each other.

Jesse Forbes and I sparred a couple days ago, boxing, and we were going 3-minute rounds, but we didn’t stop. And I called Jesse out and said, “We’re not stopping until you quit,” and he said, “I’m not quitting, you’re quitting.” And we sparred, sparred, sparred… He’s left handed so all I did was jabs and hooks, left handed jabs and hooks. All I used was one hand and we sparred for over an hour, three-minute rounds, with a one-minute break in between, and it was one of those things that we called each other out on. I wanted to get the best out of him. I wanted him to quit, I wanted to break him and he wasn’t going to let me do that, and it was out of respect for each other. I mean we talked smack a little bit and tried to play head games with each other, but at the same time, we each got better in that hour. We pushed each other to the point where a lot of people would have stopped after several rounds and say just call it a day. It was more of a mental practice, and my jab got so much better since that’s all i could do. I had to work on motion, I had to work on movement and setting things up.

That’s the kind of the respect level we have with our training partners at this level. We all can push each other and we all should be calling each other out. If someone’s having a bad day or someone’s giving a half-assed performance in training, we’re there to make that guy step up. I think we all have that ability to bring out the best in each other.

So what happened?

I got a blister the size of a silver dollar on the bottom of my foot. He said, “you quit,” and I said, “I didn’t quit, I have an injury default!” I’m hobbling around; I’m missing so much skin on the bottom of my foot now…

You mentioned training with CB. I actually got to meet him briefly at Jamie Varner’s charity seminar and I just thought he was so nice… Do you think he’s been misrepresented?

I love CB. Ithink everyone in this gym does. CB’s a good athlete because of his attitude, and because of his wrestling, because he’s pretty good and can beat people up. But he’s a great guy. He got a bad rap off that show; I think he came off from that show like he was a little conceited and spoke about himself in third person a little bit. And of course we give him shit about that; that’s kind of the running joke around the gym, but he kind of came off as a villain on that show and it’s too bad. I mean, it is what it is because some people love to hate you, or they love you. And he’s going to have a great career regardless. He’s a great fighter and he’s going to beat a lot of people because he’s such an athlete, and and he does know how to throw punches, and he knows how to kick and he knows how to win. And I think hopefully people will respect that aspect. Maybe eventually people will see CB and  see him as the person he realize is and realize he’s a good person. He’s got a good heart and he’s a great guy.

I noticed he really went out of his way to help everybody, and I thought he was really really cool. But I’m biased because he’s one of my favorite fighters.

That’s good to hear. He gets down because he doesn’t like to not be liked. Everybody wants to be liked, regardless of what they say. Sometimes Tito Ortiz is hated, or Josh Koschek, and they’re both my friends and they say they don’t give a shit, but they’re good guys…deep down inside, they’re really good guys.

It’s kind of bullshit because you put people on a show and try to get people to have this super-macho persona, and then when they do they tear them apart for it. I guess that’s my biggest beef with it.

Bader came off that show looking like this all-American kid, and everyone was behind him for the most part. And rightfully so; he’s a great guy. He’s kind and he’s polite, and he’s good out in public and speaks well and treats people fairly. But CB came off that show looking a little worse than he really is I think.

Do you miss coaching ever?

Yeah, I do. There’s a couple of guys at the ASU program that I’m still impressed with and that I care about, and I knew them in high school a little bit and was hoping to get the chance to coach them at ASU. I had kind of a falling out with the head coach and obviously ended up not being part of the program and that was kind of hard, and I hope to get back to coaching some day at the college level when I’m done fighting. Hopefully we’ll have programs by that time and universities aren’t dropping programs.

Do you know who you’re fighting next?

I’m hearing September, but I don’t know who and I don’t know where. I know there’s a September 26th fight in the UK. Am I going to be on that card? I kind of heard I was, but I’m not sure. And I hear there could be a fight night , possibly in Arizona, but it’s still up in the air. I still have time, so we’ll see. I’ve been doing a lot of lifting but obviously not as hardcore as I will 2 months out.

So you have a wrestling background, but you’ve won all your fights by knockout. Does that just fit more with your style or is it because you finish fights so quickly before you can finish them on the ground?

I think fighting is fighting. Fighting is throwing your fists; it’s not wrestling. It’s good to have a background in a sport that really helped me to become a better fighter, but if I’m not mistaken fighting is going out there and actually punching someone in the face, and that’s what I plan on doing every time I have a fight. It depends on what happens at the time. If I have to, I’ll wrestle a guy, I’ll do that but I’ll still emphasize striking. There’s a lot of great strikers around at my gym that I can emulate and learn from.

When you fought for Bodog, there were a lot of female fights in that promotion. What’s your opinion on female fighters in MMA?

I am a fan. To me it’s like women in wrestling. Female wrestling is getting big now. It’s in the Olympics. Actually my wife’s cousin is 3rd on the Olympic ladder. To me it makes no difference. It’s getting better; it’s getting more competitive and ten to fifteen years down the road we probably won’t be having this discussion. It’s like women’s basketball in the 1960s. In the 60s women could only play half-court basketball because they’d get too tired or some crazy shit to keep them back. But women can fight. If women want to fight then so be it. There are some great ones out there. There are some that have some phenomenal skills, and obviously Gina is the face of women’s MMA but there are so many women out there that are really competitive. And I have no problem with it, and I think people want to see it. Obviously there are some that say, “ahh, i don’t want to see women fight,” but if you look at it as a sport, the technical aspects, like how i was describing MMA and basketball, those who really appreciate the technique behind it know it’s good, that there are good female fighters.

Why did you go to Journalism school and then go on to get a Master’s degree in education? Were you planning on using that?

When I got my undergrad degree, it was kind of up in the air. I knew I wanted to do something along the lines of communication, and I feel comfortable speaking in front of people and I’m a pretty good writer so I thought it might be something I wanted to pursue. But I was coaching wrestling more after I earned that degree. And then several years after that, I was at ASU and it was pretty much free to earn a Master’s and Iwanted to do something in the lines of administration. I was thinking I wanted to be an
athletic director, or a coach, to help out in that area and make a push for athletics at  hat level and that’s kind of why I got a higher education degree. But I don’t really use it now. It’s just sitting on my wall at home. I have a Master’s degree because my brother has one, my mom and dad both have their Master’s and my wife has her Master’s and I was the only guy with the undergrad degree and I kind of felt like I needed to do more.

What do you think is your biggest challenge in training MMA?

My biggest challenge is having a family. I love to train. I’m a gym rat. When I’m scrapping I’m into it. I mean, that’s what my focus is. Having to balance that with, at my house, I have my wife, we have twin babies and we have a 16-yr old daughter that we adopted at 13 so there’s some things going on in my life that really take precedence; that I want to be a part of. I want to be there to play with my babies and change their diapers and help however I can with my wife, because she busts her ass with these kids and with our daughter. And that to me is the pretty big challenge. There’s only 24 hours a day and part of that I have to sleep and part of that I have to train and part of that I have to eat and I also have to be there for my family.

Check out Aaron Simpson’s website and watch for him in September!