Fighting for Autism prides itself on not only raising Autism Awareness, but also striving for inclusion and acceptance for youngsters and adults living with autism and their family and friends too.
One of the initiatives Fighting for Autism has created is our Junior Ambassador Programme, where we have been joined by some amazing youngsters who are thriving through martial arts, boxing, motor racing or health and fitness, not only are these future champions helping to raise autism awareness at their respective clubs or at the competitions they compete in, a large number of the junior ambassadors are youngsters living with autism themselves, so including, involving and having their perspective on issues is incredibly important, particularly in what has been a challenging year to say the least.
Fighting for Autism has been so incredibly fortunate to have some amazing role models who have represented and competed at the highest level of sport or art that they represent, hearing a positive message of understanding, awareness and acceptance from these amazing people has made a significant difference, as not only does it get people talking or researching what autism is and changing opinions and challenging stigma, but it also has inspired youngsters and adults to try something new, learn new skills, build confidence, develop social skills and maintain a healthy lifestyle.
One of these amazing people that puts the heart in martial arts is Bas Rutten.
Sebastian “Bas” Rutten is a Dutch retired mixed martial artist (MMA), Karate and Taekwondo blackbelt, and Kickboxer. He was a UFC Heavyweight Champion, a three-time King of Pancrase world champion, and finished his career on a 22-fight unbeaten streak (21 wins, 1 draw) . Bas was inducted to the UFC Hall of Fame in 2015.
To say Bas' reputation in the martial arts community is second to none would be an understatement.
"El Guapo" - The Handsome One is renowned for delivering his trademark " liver shot" whether manifested via punch or kick often resulted in devastation to his opponent, also for "The Bas Jump" which is a jumping splits done in celebration to winning in competition.
Bas is also a world class coach, colour commentator, former professional wrestler, innovator/inventor of martial art and fitness training equipment -The Bas Rutten O2 Trainer, an actor, as well as inspiring the next genratio
Bas and other elite martial artists Joe Worden, Josh Sampo, Alex White, Jake Matthews and some amazing professionals gave their time, expertise and donations that were integral in assisting Head of Operations for Fighting for Autism (USA), Brian Higginbotham to launch the Fighting for Autism- No Contact Kickboxing Therapy sessions.
We asked some of our Junior Ambassadors who have been helping us to raise autism awareness if they would like to ask Bas a question, we received responses from around the globe, we think they asked some excellent questions, with Bas for providing some superb responses.
Junior Ambassador, Ethan Foreman, England
Junior Ambassador, Andre O'Leary, England
Ethan and Andre ask Bas : Which was your best fight and who has been your toughest opponent?
"Ethan and Andre, both my best fight and toughest opponent, my rematch against Funaki, he was the first person who beat me, my third fight, with a move I didn’t even know because I just started MMA. After my last loss by submission, I forced myself to learn the ground game and suddenly I fell in love with it, started doing it all day every day, never lost a fight again after that fight, actually won my next 8 fights (after my last loss by SUB) by way of submission. So, the second time I fought him I was a different fighter. I had to knock him down 4 times, the final one was a knee to the head as hard as I could and thankfully, he stayed down that time. They said it was my best performance, but also Funaki’s best performance because he kept standing up and fighting. It was a crazy fight".
Junior Ambassador, Lorcan Lacey, England
Lorcan asks Bas: If you could have one dream bout with anyone, who would it be against and why?
"Lorcan, when I was still competing, I wanted to fight Rickson Gracie because they said he was the best, people thought I didn’t like him but that’s not true, I respected the heck out of him because I saw his BJJ was insanely good. So just wanted to fight him and see if I could stay out of his submissions, which of course, I totally believed I could (I had an ego at the time, you HAVE to because you can’t go into a fight thinking you might lose, that’s not a healthy thought)".
Junior Ambassador, Adam Mumin, England.
Adam asks Bas: What do you find harder? Mixed Martial Arts, Professional Wrestling or Acting?
"Adam, everything is hard in the beginning, my fighting started to become very good once I started fighting in Japan, but it takes a bunch of fights. Pro wrestling was the easiest because it was “strong style” wrestling, meaning, they used real submission moves (In Japan), since I was already a champ in MMA, that was pretty easy for me. Note: I received more injuries from pro wrestling in my first three matches than in my entire MMA career. These guys are TOUGH, all the falling and craziness, it’s real, sure you know who wins, but they do that 220 times a year? It’s crazy, I have the utmost respect for these guys. Acting is hard as well, if I would be in more movies, I would have gotten used to it, but I didn’t do a lot of movies. I really enjoy it, but it’s very hard to be natural on screen, it takes works, this is not as easy as when you practice in front of a mirror, everybody can do that. Doing it with three cameras in your face and you can’t mess u and have to say the lines EXACTLY as they are in the script, that’s a lot of pressure. Preparation is the key to success to calm your nerves in whatever you do, so prepare, prepare, prepare. Hopefully I can do more movies and get completely relaxed".
Ayub Mumin - (on the left with his brother Adam) England
Ayub asks Bas: What do you enjoy more? Mixed Martial Arts, Professional Wrestling or Acting?
"Ayub, when I was fighting, I only wanted to fight, when I was pro wrestling, I only wanted to do that, when I was acting, I only wanted to do that. So for me they came in a perfect order, first fighting, I retired, than pro wrestling, and stopped with that, and now acting. Acting I LOVE, especially doing comedy, fighting and pro wrestling I can’t do anymore because I had three neck surgeries".
Junior Ambassador Tamara Addison, Scotland
Tamara asks Bas: How did you manage to transfer from Fighting to Acting?
"Tamara, when I came to the States in 1997, within a month I was taking acting classes, because I knew I wanted to do something in the “acting field” after I retired from fighting. I also knew that acting is very hard to do, that’s why I started taking classes. What really helped me as well was commentating, because it’s live, if you open a show, you have to do it on camera (live) and you can’t make a mistake. So, you learn how to deal with pressure. Anything in the world, if you can do it like you do it in a relaxed atmosphere, you will be good. But that’s hard. I know fighters who are better than current world Champions and beat them up in training, but when they fight, they can’t deal with the pressure. Everybody in the gym thinks they can fight, the test is, doing the same under pressure. You master that, you will do good. Imagine you are a lawyer and you are preparing an opening statement for a person who could get the death penalty. At home, that speech is easy in front of the mirror, but in the full court room, and somebody's life is depending on it, it’s much harder. My acting coach told me:” Once people say you are the same onscreen as you are in real life, that’s when you become a good actor”.
And thankfully I got that response from people after the movie Here Comes the Boom. But I still need a lot of work".
Junior Ambassador, Leo Curtis, England.
Leo asks Bas: Bas you are an inspiration to us all and I have heard you use the saying."The longer it travels the stronger it gets." please explain why you say this and what it means?
"Leo, I am talking about strikes when I say that. Like a punch, if I stand one foot away from my opponent (30 CM) and I want to give him a straight punch, I can’t extend my arm, so there will be not a lot of power in that punch, when I step back and give that straight punch ”room”, so I can use the entire length of my arm, the punch becomes powerful. This counts for every strike.
But I like that you thought it was something deeper, and when I read that line it CAN have a deeper meaning. It would mean that “time (travel) gives you knowledge”, because the more time you have, the more knowledge you can gather (knowledge is power or “stronger”). I love it, thank you, because I am going to use that now as well, haha"!
Junior Ambassador, James Wright, USA
James asks Bas: What advice would you give to those who want to become Mixed Martial Artists.
"You have to let go of everything else in life, no time to party, or eat what you want, or hanging out with your partner all the time, having “fun” Holidays because you can’t eat what you want. Going through all the injuries and still keep training because you have to. Write everything down, is what I did, so you can train harder every single workout, but only increase little tiny bits each time. If you go all the way, all the time, you burn out. Make sure what to eat, so do your homework and make sure you don’t get injured, always stretching before you start. So, set a goal and a path, and don’t let anything take you away from that path. Also, understand the mechanics of everything you do, everybody knows what a kimura looks like, but they don’t understand the mechanics because I see pro’s not able to finish people with a kimura sometimes? But if you understand the mechanics, that will help you a lot. Same as in striking, you have to set up combinations, there is an art to it, but when you do it well, you will knock your opponent out. Most of the times when I stopped somebody, it was with combination I worked on before the fight, whether it was a KO or SUB. My house was filled with “post it notes”, with combinations and set ups to combinations, it was the only thing I did. And once you do that, you simply become good because you put in more time than others do. Last thing, STAMINA is your best friend, every fighter who fought their first fights will tell you they were NOT in shape. Take this one to the heart, train as much stamina as you can and you will win all your first fights, because 90% doesn’t do it, trust me, I have trained a LOT of guys, I know. The stamina you have in your gym before you fight, will be immediately cut in half when you fight, nerves will do that for you. So do NOT be like that, get a boat load of stamina".
Fighter Ambassador, Maximus Jolly,USA.
Maximus asks Bas: What is your strength and conditioning regimen?
"Maximus, yeah that’s too much to write down, I write a bit, in a nutshell, power training consists of 12 exercises, a pushing and pulling exercise one after another, meaning, bench press, then pull cable to your chest, triceps and biceps, neck press, neck pull down, dips and pull ups hands close together, so every exercise works a different muscle than the one before. 12 exercises, 50 seconds each exercise, 10 seconds to get to the next station. 35 seconds is when lactic acid hits you (around there), then you push harder for 15 sec and up to the next exercise. One whole round 1 min break, then two more rounds of the same, so a 38 min workout. If you push yourself, which I always did, it’s a killer routine. I would write every amount of reps down and what weight, every week increase either in weight or reps. So, write everything down. Main rule, once I increased weight or reps, I can NEVER go back anymore. Only, of course, when you don’t train for 3 months, then you have to build up, but during training camp, never.
I write ONE conditioning exercise down. 15 one-minute rounds on a bag, as HARD as you can. Find 8 combo’s, so you can repeat the cycle after round 8. I make a combo, beat (no more than a sec), then same combo plus an extra punch. Example, cross hook cross, (beat), cross hook cross livershot OR left right left hook to the body (beat), same plus right left hook to the head. Again, every single punch is to kill, otherwise this is easy.
If you are 8 weeks out for a fight, you increase every week your worktime by 5 sec and take 5 sec away from your rest. So second week, 1:05 with 55 sec rest, then 1:10m with 50 sec rest, etc, until you hit 1:30m with 30 sec rest (after 7 weeks). This, when you do it the way I do it, is insane! This is how I prepared for my 30 min matches in Japan (one round 30 min, no breaks), my last punches and kicks, are as hard as the ones I started with, everything100% power, not 99%. There is a difference when I do it or I see other people doing it, you need to be able to push yourself extremely hard. Also, this way you don’t over-train, because you let your body gradually get used to throwing out more power every week. All these routines are done AFTER I had a normal workout"
Junior Ambassador, Noah Waddell, Scotland
Noah asks Bas: My Opa (granpa) is Dutch and his favourite Dutch fighters are Bas Rutten and Ramon Dekkers, who is your favourite Dutch fighter?
"I love your Opa Noah! Badass name by the way, “Noah”. I am with your opa, Ramon Dekkers was somebody I looked up to, I trained at the same gym. My style of fighting is much different than others, and based on Mike Tyson and Ramon Dekkers. It’s an open stance which will give you almost equal power in your right and left hands plus legs. Ramon was still “blading” a little bit, but way more “open” than others. I am just a freak when it comes to training, I want to have the very best style possible. So I have been obsessed with making it perfect and I 100% believe it IS the best way to fight. Of course, people can throw in their own “flairs”, but as base, nobody can deny that you can develop the most power and that you have equal movement to the left, right, front and back, its physics, can’t deny it.
When I got inducted into the UFC HOF in 2015, Fight Metrics said that till this day I hold the highest striking accuracy in entire MMA, 70.6%, to give you an idea, Anderson Silva has 60.2% is the highest in his weight class, so I am extremely proud of that, but it is because of my fighting style, so more people can do it, and probably do it better"!
On behalf of everyone at Fighting for Autism, we wanted to say a humongous "Thank You" To Bas Rutten for time out of his hectic schedule and giving some amazing youngsters a fantastic interview, and for the kindness he has shown to Fighting for Autism. For more information on Bas, his website is www.BasRutten.com
Also Thank You to Junior Ambassadors Noah, Adam, Ayub, Tamara, Maximus, James, Lorcan, Ethan, Andre and Leo that took part and asked questions to Bas. As Christmas rapidly approaches we would like to take this opportunity to wish each and every one of you a very Merry Christmas and we hope that the New Year brings Health and Happiness.
If you'd like more information on Fighting For Autism and how you can get involved our website is www.FightingForAutismEurope.org or we can be found on social media
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