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MB667
04-06-2008, 10:41
Lucia Rijker on fighting Gina Carano, what made Bas Rutten and Rob Kaman so great, why the Dutch are so good, and much more! (http://mmayou.com/news-and-exclusive-interviews-with-mmayou/37-fighters/181-lucia-rijker-on-fighting-gina-carano-what-made-bas-rutten-and-rob-kaman-so-great-why-the-dutch-are-so-good-and-much-more)

Lucia Rijker on fighting Gina Carano, what made Bas Rutten and Rob Kaman so great, why the Dutch are so good, and much more!
MMAyou.com had the pleasure of speaking with “The Most Dangerous Woman in the World” Lucia Rijker. Check out what Rijker has to say about fighting female sensation Gina Carano, her thoughts on why the Dutch are so good at kickboxing, what makes Rob Kaman and Bas Rutten so good, and much more.


For our readers not familiar with Lucia Rijker, Rijker is a four time undefeated kickboxing world champion with an amazing 37-0 (25 KO’s) record. She is also the former WIBF world champion in boxing sporting an incredible 17-0 (14 KO’s) record.

MMAyou.com: First, how are you doing?

Rijker: I’m great.

MMAyou.com: That’s good. What would it take for you to fight Gina Carano?

Rijker: A lot of money.

MMAyou.com: Hopefully somebody can come up with that. If you fought MMA, who would you train Jiu Jitsu with?

Rijker: I would go to Dr. Dan (Editor’s note: Rijker is referring to world renown martial artist Dan Inosanto) or Dr. Pete and ask him.

MMAyou.com: Who was your toughest opponent in boxing and in kickboxing?

Rijker: You know that has always been a really hard question. I’ve broken my cheek bone during a fight against a French girl, I think it was in the South of France, no it was actually in Holland that I fought her. I fought her in Holland. And that affected my eye muscle which made me see double.

She hit me with a left hook in the second or third round and I had to fight seven rounds with that. I just remembered that I had to guess where to hit her for five more rounds. And that was a challenge. That was a challenge.

I’ve also had my ear drum punctured twice in a fight which also affected my vision but also my balance. So I had to trust in my senses in a different way. So that was also a challenge.

I’ve never really seen necessarily people as a challenge because you’re in different places at different times and you grow as a fighter. Some fighters might have been a challenge at one point in your career. At another point they were not. So I never really thought about that question.

I think I’ve been my own toughest opponent to be honest with you.

MMAyou.com: Why are Dutch fighters so good at kickboxing?

Rijker: (laughs) Why are Dutch fighters so good at kickboxing? My philosophy is one; they have the best trainers. Two; they’re so down to earth that the moment they are a champion or a legend, they are still normal people like you or me. They don’t become celebrities, they don’t become stars. They don’t let the money and the fame get to their heads.

There was one fighter; Semmy Schilts, he won the K-1 and I hosted “It’s Showtime!” which was part of the K-1 in the Netherlands last month. he was in the corner of one of his fighters. And it wasn’t necessarily his fighter, it was his trainer’s fighters so he right away rolls up his sleeves. He’s the type of guy that goes to work the weekend after his fight and does what needs to be done.

They don’t seem to live off the high of the winning. They go back to the gym and either they teach their classes or they go back to their job, if they have a part-time job, and go to work.

I think the humbleness helps a fighter to stay real. They also train in a group with recreational people, a competition team, but they don’t segregate themselves from the normal people. I think that’s the number one thing. When I go to a press conference in the Netherlands, I meet all the legends like normal people and we just talk normal things. There’s no bodyguards, there’s no entourage, there’s none of that rock star image that can come sometimes with certain champions that doesn’t come with the Dutch people, because our mentality is very down to earth and very, they call it realistic.

I’m not sure if it’s realistic because people who become champions really work really hard at it but there’s a part of our culture that says so what?

MMAyou.com: Why is the left hook to the liver so underutilized by fighters outside of Dutch kick boxers and Mexican boxers?

Rijker: Well I think I’m the wrong person to ask. Maybe you should ask a person who’s not Dutch and not Mexican. (both laugh). I think that, personally, it use to be my favorite punch. I was raised with the liver shot and I love to drop people on the liver shot. That was my expertise until I came to this country. Then I became more of a head hunter. I’ve only knocked out one girl with a liver shot and I use to drop people all the time in the gym with my liver shot.

I perfected it because in my perspective it was the least amount of damage with the most effect. So punching to the head hurts brain cells unnecessarily. Brain cells are not remade after they starve. They die, they’re gone. The liver, you will recuperate unless you’re, you know, you get hit there every day. Maybe the sound effect of the person on the receiving end is good, I don’t know. (laughs)

MMAyou.com: Who are your role models?

Rijker: Who are my role models? I’m assuming you’re asking me role models in the sport or in life?

MMAyou.com: Either or, whatever works for you.

Rijker: There’s a gentleman called Nichiren Daishonin and he use to be a 12th century monk. He was a fighter for the freedom of people to basically be who they are. Who they truly are! Not who they are conditioned to be. So we could make choices from a place of freedom instead of being conditioned by society, our culture, our upbringing. So he’s a gentleman I really respect.

There’s a gentleman called now Mr. Goenga. He’s the Vipassana meditation teacher, a Buddhist meditation, and he teaches balance of the mind. And he teaches not to judge, and he teaches to learn to use the body as if it is your mind cause he believes the mind lives through the body, through body sensations. Like when people say “I had a gut feeling” or “I had a chill”, those are signals that interpret things. And he believes, according to my interpretation, that the mind lives in the body. So the more you connect with your body, the more access you have to your mind.

He’s a person I really respect because I got a training with him, a ten day silent training. There was no speaking, no fighting, no eye contact, only physically no interaction with the outside world only reflecting within through silent meditation, and through observing body sensations. Also fighting related, if you judge a punch that hits you hard, if you take the word hard out, the punch has a lesser effect on your focus and on your game. But the moment you judge the punch or the sensation that the punch gives you as bad, or as hard, or the word damaging, then that punch affects your focus and your game.

So he had something really interesting to say about body sensation and how to interpret body sensation because it’s just a sensation and it’s up to us how to interpret it. So I used in my game to interpret the sensations in a way that serves my game, so that kept me focused. So he’s been instrumental in my focus.

MMAyou.com: Wow, good answer. I’m gonna change gears for a second. What made Rob Kaman such a successful fighter?

Rijker: I can only give you my perspective because of course everyone has a perspective on Rob Kaman’s success. I think that Rob was a very gifted fighter. Very driven because he had a tremendous drive to be noticed. Besides his gift as a talented athlete, he had a martial arts background. I believe he did Pentjak Silat before he started kickboxing and I think when you have a background in an art form like karate, or kung fu, or Penchak Silat, that it gives you a basis to build from.

On top of that he was with an amazing trainer; Jan Plas and in his time Jan Plas was a forerunner and one of the first together with two other legendary trainers from the Netherlands to establish contact in Japan and to bring his fighters to Japan to build that bridge so to speak. Also, Rob was a legend in France so he was one of the first great fighters and one of the great fighters that traveled the world competing and beating everyone on his legendary low kick. His left hook and his right low kick became almost like a signature for Mejiro Gym, which was the name of Jan Plas his gym.

What else made Rob Kaman a great legend? He was handsome. He was (laughs) so handsome, I think he was adored by men and women in his younger years. He had tremendous determination and drive to succeed and a wonderful trainer. And he was an independent thinker. He was never a group person according to my observation and he was a visionary man. He was willing to dream for himself and to take risks and I think that has gotten him in his kickboxing career where he has gone. He didnt seem to relly on other building the connections for him. In my perpective on the European side he was the greatest of his time era, and I think the connection between the world and Japan opened up after he retired and so many other great fighters were able to get the exposure and the marketing that he established for most of them.

MMAyou.com: In closing is there anything you would like to say to your fans?

Rijker: To my fans? Interesting. I don’t know if I just want to speak to my fans. I’d like to speak to everyone who reads this.

MMAyou.com: I should say then, “to our readers, what would you like to say?”.

Rijker: Yeah because I’m not an active fighter so I don’t know how much a fan can be a fan of someone who doesn’t compete.

This game is not for everyone. In this game, only the strong survive. In this game you create your own reality based on your own ideas of what you think it’s worth and what you believe you can do. So no matter what anyone says you can or can’t do, if you truly on a deeper level believe you can, you’re able to envision it and dream it, you have a bigger chance of succeeding then with talent only.

MMAyou.com: That makes sense. As you said that it kind of reminded me of your friend and mine Bas Rutten and how he started later in life. I think he was twenty-seven or twenty-eight when he went into Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) and everybody had kind of already written him off as being done with fighting before he ended up making a name for himself.

Rijker: Yeah, he’s also a very different type of a man and a different fighter then Rob. Bas is brilliant as a person. Comitted, humble, hardworking, highly gifted, visionary, and very very driven to succeed, while supporting others in anything, not just in the ring. I think that fighting was just a platform to be noticed and to bring out all his other gifts as a performer. He absolutely is one of the fighters that through determination and really hard work and believing in himself has come as far as he has come.

For more information on Lucia you can check out her website at Lucia Rijker :: Official Website (http://www.luciarijker.net).



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Marco
04-06-2008, 11:01
leuk artikel, wijze vrouw onze Loes !

marcelt
04-06-2008, 23:55
dank en reps.