James Haskell talks only to Sky Sports about his surprising glimpse to the world of MMA, his lifestyle at rugby and the future…
“MMA is a single game, and you are simply pushing yourself to become as dangerous as you can be in a quarter hour. . .anything can happen.” – retired MMA fighter, Tim Kennedy.
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“Martial arts is like a hill. You find the top. And you hike and you climb, and you finally reach the summit, and you realise it was a false summit, also in front of you lies an whole new mountain range.” – Robert Owens, MMA and Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu instructor.
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“I hope to God you develop prepared, because in the event you do not I’m going to beat you in living death.” – Ken Shamrock
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Professional sportspeople have attempted to alter disciplines. It has been completed. But very few, if any, have succeeded.
Michael Jordan spent a year playing baseball prior to return to the NBA. Dwain Chambers tried and failed to make it following his GB athletics career in Rugby League and football. Andrew Flintoff fought once in a boxing career which is widely viewed following his cricketing achievements as more than a publicity stunt.
There are exceptions. Before committing to a first-class cricket career sir Ian Botham was a footballer with Scunthorpe. All Blacks centre Sonny Bill Williams and a current set of 7-0 have competed. Olympic medal winning fisherman Victoria Pendleton evolved into an amateur jockey. Biking paraolympian Dame Sarah Story began as a swimmer.
However, to master two sports at the highest level is hopeless. To master toil on an athlete’s body, close unthinkable.
However England rugby James Haskell sits at a darkened editing suite on a Thursday morning on Sky Sports News with supported his intentions to try just this, mulling on his appearance: that the 34-year-old is focusing on a career in MMA with Bellator.
If rugby is regarded as a game played by guys at a level of ferocious intensity and physicality MMA is a subject.
Images of knees and elbows connecting together with unprotected heads, of repeated sacrifices to opponents, of fighters showing instincts to rush in and assault counterparts such as animals instead of retreat, have noticed the game portrayed negatively.
It brutal. For many, enough and barbaric to evoke revulsion. For others, a demonstration of ability courage and willpower.
Fighting is a different world – and it’s one in. A beginner in this universe of distinctively organised savagery, haskell , freely admits to this feeling of trepidation which frequently comes .
“There is a huge element of fear in this for me personally,” he states, laced with the sort of straight-talking honesty he’s become famed for over social media. “Unless you have got a mental flaw, there are a component of fear for anyone entering this.
“There’s an element of testing yourself and also steeling yourself to go into conflict and cope with this.
“it is a contact sport and the idea is to knock the other bloke out and get the win. It’s the exact same in rugby: you have to challenge your self. But that’s where the comparison ends. They are not, although A great deal of individuals talk about these being sports that are comparable.
“If you are demanding at rugby, it doesn’t mean that you’re any good at battling and everybody has a strategy – to – mention a famous quote – till you get banged in the face.
“I’d done a while for Bellator – some comment and TV – and has been contacted through my agent to go to get a meeting. I thought they wanted me to do more work, some coverage and punditry, but a man named David Green who functions for Bellator explained:’No, we want you to fight.’
“I laughed nervously as you would imagine and then said:’Right, exactly what exactly does that imply?’ We had a conversation about everything and I moved away and talked to my partner, who believed I was an idiot.
“I thought to myself, you only get one chance at life. I’m always up for trying new chances, why do I not wish provide it and to do this? Wherever it happens personally, it will be fascinating.
“The most important thing is the training and performing what my trainers say until I get into the cage, as you find some of these’actors’ go and struggle and it’s like they’ve never accepted a punch earlier never been anywhere close to that.
“Shootfighters health club is a different world to this. Their own fighters are prepared by them in a manner that is suitable, they think in sparring that is tough that first occasion arises I’d have been at a place that is good.
“I’m obsessed with people who possess the abilities to battle. Sometimes people think that they’re tough but then you meet somebody who knows what they’re doing and is tough and it is a different kettle of fish. Watching people become dismantled is fascinating for me.
“I am just excited by it. I believe I’m going to learn a lot on myself, a great deal about what I can’t take and could take, but that is the whole point of life.
“What’s the purpose of constantly sitting at a room and thinking:’I can do this, I can do this.’ We are likely to figure out for real now.”
Having confirmed his retirement from rugby was due to chronic ankle and toe difficulties restricting the frequency and intensity with which he desired to train, there is almost a part of irony to the truth that Haskell has entered to what many think is the most reckless game on earth.
The former back-row admits to being anxious prior to retirement – harbouring normal and standard concerns within the unknown and what’s next – but has, in fact.
1 minute he has been DJ-ing alongside Craig David the next, at Ibiza. Some days he has taken part in a golfing occasion together with David Haye, others he is fight training or doing the following DJ set.
“You will find really low intervals [in retirement] and there were low periods when it comes to when I saw rugby or bits and pieces across the sport. I would get very depression,” he says.
“I’d be right down, and I couldn’t really watch lots of England games since it reminded me of playing. I, however, couldn’t reconcile that although I wished to be there, I couldn’t have completed.
“I went to the England camp another day and it was very pleasant and cathartic for me. I set a lot of stuff to people that are educated, break and thought:’You know what, I am done for this’
“With regards to my worries about money and earning, bizarrely I’ve never been busier. It’s been weird and lovely, and very mad. It has wrecked my mind a little.
“What I enjoy about consenting to the fight stuff is the fact that it’s set an anchor down and I have got some discipline , while also giving me the freedom to pursue other things as I’m not peaking physically every week.
“Rugby and combating are extremely different disciplines. My requirements rugby were the capacity to run, accelerate, change direction. Footwork was essential and that I could not do it with toe and my ankle. I don’t have any of the component in combating.
“Look, I’m a 34-year-old retired rugby player, there are pitfalls in whatever you do, but because of me personally, I’ve always kept myself in good shape and I hope the guys training me to put me in the best shape.
“They’d never set me into a cage or risk me when I was not ready. It is a demanding sport and you’ve got to get prepared for that.”
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Born since the oldest of two boys in Windsor, Maidenhead demonstrated the atmosphere for the childhood of Haskell with father Jonathan a entrepreneur and mom Susie from the corporate gift enterprise.
Growing up alongside brother Edward, a profession in MMA wasn’t something that spanned the thoughts of Haskell. But then again, despite finishing as the third England back-row of all time behind Joe Worsley and Lawrence Dallaglio, neither has been a lifetime in rugby.
“I’ve always joked that I wished to be a digger driver. I wished to push streets and a JCB daily. And then I wanted to maintain the SAS,” Haskell says chuckling.
“However, I do not believe I’d have got into the SAS and also my mum was convinced that I would get shot. With the public school instruction I’d been given, I don’t believe if I snapped a JCB all day, I would have necessarily repaid my parents, even though it’s a very skilled job. I think they had aspirations.
“Rugby caused by accident. Since I moved to a school that had that type of vulnerability I had a trial for England U16’s. I discovered it dreadful and upsetting and didn’t get in. I sack it off entirely or decided that I would possibly give it one more move.
“A family friend was a personal trainer, I started training with them in something somewhat like a Rocky montage and went in a skinny, lanky, unfit bloke to, at the words of other teammates at the moment, a small freak at 18.
“I deferred my college entrance with the aim of giving it a try for a single year, and 18 decades later I was doing it.
“The fighting is just another thing where a few folks are enthusiastic, some individuals have written me off, however, it is a personal journey and I will place the job in. I’ll flog myself to the floor to be able to do it.”
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At a career that took him from Wasps to Stade Francis at France, the Ricoh Black Rams at Japan, Highlanders in New Zealand, back to Wasps and then fellow-Premiership club Northampton Saints, Haskell has got the awards to point to some stellar two years in the game.
As a kid coming through with Wasps, he made the holy grail of this club match in the kind of a European Cup trophy off the seat in 2007, even though he celebrated a Premiership title a year later in 2008 – successes he admits today to have taken for granted at the age of just 22 and 23.
Together with England, Grand Slam Six Nations success arrived in 2016, as did a memorable 3-0 excursion success in Australia once Haskell was crowned Man of the String – performances possibly where Haskell was at his finest but also suffered the foot injury which could ultimately set in motion the start of the end.
“It is hard because we went to Australia and did something nobody had completed before. In other games I had performances but individuals are looking to be complimentary, in case you’ve got a win and individuals will hype up that, in the event the group is in a good location.
“I played a game against South Africa after where I put 33 tackles in and I think that it was the greatest defensive display of my own life, but certain journalists gave me 5/10 and said I didn’t play well.
“Australia was the perfect storm, in which I had played very nicely, was on the ball, felt quite sure and Eddie Jones had backed me.
“A lot of trainers don’t know the power of confidence and financing your players. What Jones did with me was not rocket science, so he treated me like a grownup, like I had been precious and I would have run through walls .”
British & Irish Lions recognition adopted in 2017, however in a career of several highs, there have been lows too, with his treatment from Wasps after 13 seasons of service, something that especially rankles.
“Leaving Wasps, once all the time I had given themwas a certain low point: that the club not providing me a contract offer and sacking me off essentially, before I found an wonderful new house in Northampton.
“That was a very emotional time period for me for certain because we think in rugby and sport about devotion, but it’s sort of a little nonsense all that things.
“It is company and they thought they’d find a better deal enrolling people from abroad, did not want me and didn’t feel that I had that worth.
“I regret not having the ability to get to the World Cup. I feel sad that I didn’t get to finish because I would want to, and I sort of faded out of this Test picture.
“I got my {l
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