This is the interview I conducted with Paul Lazenby, MMA, Muay Thai, and pro wrestling.
MM: When and where were you born?
PL: I was born on June 7, 1968 in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada.
MM: What type of childhood did you have/type of child were you?
PL: I wasn't the most happy or popular kid. I basically spent every day getting the tar pounded out of me at school, then coming home and getting the same treatment there. My only enjoyment came from reading and eating, so I did both to excess and got pretty obese (210 lbs at age 12) and stayed that way until I turned 17.
MM: Earliest fighting memory?
PL: My earliest fighting memory (aside from getting beaten up all the time) was when I was in high school gym class at age 15. Our teacher was taking us through the basics of amatuer wrestling, and he paired me up with a guy who had been bullying me pretty consistently for the past year. Unbeknownst to me, I had a natural aptitude for grappling and pretty much dominated the guy without even knowing what I was doing. He left me alone after that day. Unfortunetely, I didn't choose to persue competitive grappling until over ten years later.
MM: Favourite fight so far?
PL: My favourite fight would have to be either my first Canadian Muay Thai title win on September 9, 2000 or my bid to unify the CMT and WKA Muay Thai titles on February 8, 2003. Prior to the 2000 bout I had been a competitive power lifter, and my failure to listen to my coach's advice had cost me a national championship in 1991. Since then, it had always bothered me that I could have been a Canadian champ, so to finally fulfill that gaol in Muay Thai felt reall good. The 2003 fight was to determine the undisputed Canadian champion, and after being dropped with an illegal knee to the face five seconds into the first round I found myself in serious trouble. I had a mile concussion and had torn my right ankle up pretty good when I fell. In the thrid round, I felt a muscle beneath my right bicep tear as well, but none of that stopped me from winning a unanimous decision and taking both titles home. That was my greatest Muay Thai victory, and it coincidentally kicked off the best year of my life.
MM: What is your fighting background?
PL: Believe it or not, prior to my professional career, the majority of my training came from pro wrestling. I never wanted to be a pro fighter, but at the same time felt the need to learn something, since I had heard that sometimes pro wrestling matches can degenerate into real fights. With that in mind, I began watching UWFI shootwrestling tapes (worked bouts, but at the time I thought they were real) and Pancrase bootlegs, all in the days before UFC. In 1995 I did a couple of months Muay Thai training before I tore a bicep and had to stop, and in 1996 I did nine or ten private sessions with a top-level Judoka. That's about the full extent of my background prior to entering Pancrase.
MM:Sweetest fighting memory?
PL: Sweetest fighting memory was probably my first kickboxing match against AMC Pankration's Dave Cook. Although it wasn't a competitive bout, since Dave, while tough, was a bulked-up middleweight, it felt really good to finally get my hand raised after losing the first six fights of my career.
MM:How did powerlifting change your life? Did it help you improve confidence, lose weight etc?
PL: Powerlifitng completely changed my life and set the stage for everything that I would accomplish in the years to follow. I started working out at age 17 and lost a lot of weight, but when I saw the late Dave Pasanella deadlifting on TV one day, I just knew that I'd found a new direction for my weight training. I was lucky to immediately fall under the tutelage of Dave Hoffman, a multi-time Candain superheavyweight champion, and Dave taught me a lot about proper training and technique. With Dave as my coach, I went on to win several regional contests, culmintaing with a silver medal at the Jr. Nationals (which would have been gold if I'd listened to Dave), and for the first time in my life felt proud of myself. Without Dave's guidance and my experiences on the powerlifting platform I wouldn't have had the confidence to pursue pro wrestling or MMA the way that I did.
MM: What prompted you to join the Canadian army?
PL: I was a less than enthusiastic student with no idea of what I wanted to do with my life, and my father was pushing me toward the military as a way of getting me out of the house after graduation. I joined the army as an infantryman in January 1988, and hated it instantly. In a way, it served as a kind of shock therapy and did me a lot of good, but I'm glad that I got released when I did as the lifestyle was just not a fit for me.
MM: When and how did you start with pro wrestling?
PL: I started wrestling in 1991, at which time I was working asa the assistant manager of a deprtment store and hating every minute of it. I saw an ad in the back of a wrestling magazine for the Hart Brothers pro wrestling camp, and my very good friends Carlos Leal and Kristel Vines leant me the money to move to Calgary and train there. Carlos even drove me clear across the country so that I wouldn't have to spend the money on a flight. I was lucky that my classes were taught by Lance Storm and Chris Jericho, since many other Hart Brothers classes were nothing more than scams where Bruce Hart would run the students ragged and make them quit so that he could take the rest of the summer off. Even though he was still a rookie himself, Lance gave us a great education and really got me off on the right foot. To this day I urge anyone with wrestling apirations to check out Lance's site (
www.stormwrestling.com).
MM: What was your favourite pro wrestling match?
PL: It would be hard to narrow it down to just one, but if I had to, I would say the best two out of three falls match that I had against Lenny "Dr Luther" Olson in Durban, South Africa. Lenny was workign as "The Atomic Punk" back then, and I was using the "Death Wolf" gimmick that would later become insanely popular in Detroit's Insane Championship Wrestling. Lenny and I had been doing jobs for pretty much the entire tour, and even though I screwed up a few spots, our match against one another was for me the best one on the tour. The crowd of over 5000 really ate it up, and I always smile when I think of that match.
MM: Who would you most like to wrestle?
PL: If I had a choice to wrestle one man, it would be Samoa Joe, but I'd want to train for a couple of months to prepare for it.
MM: Who are your top 5 wrestlers?
PL: Picking only 5 guys is tough. Samoa Joe and Kenta Kobashi are easy picks for one and two. Other favourites in no particular order are Dr Luther, Abbadon the Destroyer, Homicide, Chris Benoit, Christopher Daniels, Rhino, Alex Shelly, Nigel McGuinness, Minoru Suzuki, KENTA, Low Ki/Sen Shi, and of course Lance Storm. I'm sure that I'm forgetting a few names, but those guys are definetely some of the best in my eyes.
MM: Was meeting Phyllis Lee a pivitol turning point in your life?
PL: Meeting Phyllis was a huge turning point, because she's the one who made it possible for me to fight for Pancrase. I have had a big parting of the ways with Phyllis and consider her to be beyond unscrupulous in the way she represents her fighters, but I still can't deny that without her, I would never have had a career in pro fighting.
MM: How did you find the transition from pro wrestling to Pancrase?
PL: To be honest, I was terrified when I first competed in Pancrase. I had no idea what to expect, since I'd never had an actual sanctioned, competitive fight before-not even in a martial arts tournament or high school wrestling meet. By that point I had heard "worked shoots" and was half expecting someone to to come and give me the finish right up until the moment that I walked through the curtian. It was VERY different from pro wrestling, and in some ways a welcome change since I wasn't taking any big bumps during my matches!
MM: Favourite Pancrase match?
PL: My favourite Pancrase fight would have to be my first one, against Ryushi "Aji" Yanagisawa. Aji had been my favourite fighter before I'd ever even applied to Pancrase, and to fight him and not get completely slaughtered was ana ccomplishment for me. Even though I suffered a lost-points defeat (on the books as TKO), the crowd really liked my fighting spirit and all the Pancrase fighters were coming up and congratulating me after the fight. It was a performance that convinced Pancrase to bring me over to stay at their dojo for training, though I am sorry to say that I did not learn the "fighter's mind" quickly enough and my subsequent performances were disapointing to say the least.
Part two in an up-coming post
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