Interview with UFC Fighter Mike Swick

Photo: Ulti­mate Fighter Cham­pi­onship fighter Mike Swick demon­strates var­i­ous moves used to sub­mit oppo­nents at an undis­closed loca­tion in South­west Asia on April 04, 2010.

Recently the Fight­life TV crew vis­ited Amer­i­can Kick­box­ing Acad­emy in San Jose, Cal­i­for­nia, home of the cur­rent UFC Heavy­weight Champ, Cain Velasquez, and peren­nial wel­ter­weight con­tenders John Fitch, Josh Koshchek, and Mike Swick. Mike was busy get­ting ready for the UFC’s Fight for the Troops event on Jan­u­ary 22nd, 2011. We were treated to Mike and John going toe to toe for sev­eral rounds of spar­ring, hit­ting the pads with their strik­ing coaches and grap­pling with Strike­force fight­ers Daniel Cormier and Her­schel Walker. After the work­out, we talked with Mike about his relent­less pur­suit of fight­ing excel­lence, and his tire­less sup­port of the troops. He’s been to 9 coun­tries on tours of bases from Ger­many to Iraq, taught MMA sem­i­nars and been out on the shoot­ing range with sol­diers. I ask him about his tours and what he finds most impres­sive about the men and women of our fight­ing forces.

Unfor­tu­nately, just before the New Year, Mike’s fight was scratched due to an injury to his oppo­nent. Since Mike has also been deal­ing with a med­ical issue of his own, he opted not to accept a replace­ment oppo­nent. Here is Mike’s state­ment from his Face­book page: “Not fight­ing on Jan­u­ary 22nd. I got the call yes­ter­day that David Mitchell backed out due to an injury and con­sid­er­ing my cur­rent sit­u­a­tion we opted to put off the fight all together. I have been deal­ing with with my esophageal con­di­tion this whole camp and its taken a toll on my body. I will need more time to seek bet­ter treat­ment to ensure I can com­pete at this level.”

Mike has been respon­si­ble for some of the quick­est fin­ishes in UFC his­tory and is an elec­tri­fy­ing ath­lete with the full com­ple­ment of mma fight­ing skills and the men­tal for­ti­tude to go along with them. We wish the best for Mike, and hope that he is able to get a han­dle on this issue and resume his fight­ing career as soon as pos­si­ble. To learn more about Mike, check out his Youtube chan­nel with numer­ous videos of mil­i­tary tours, adven­tures in Thai­land train­ing with Roger Huerta, and other exploits. Mike is also an entre­pre­neur, he’s cre­ated a line of apparel called Com­bat Life, and a screen print­ing shop in his home town of San Jose called Spar­tan Screen Print­ing. You’ll see a cou­ple of his shirt designs in the video, in the inter­view and in footage from Iraq. Stay tuned for more infor­ma­tion on the fights and the ben­e­fit pro­gram Mike men­tions, The Intre­pid Fallen Heroes Fund. Learn more about their mis­sion and ser­vices by going to www​.fal​l​en​heroes​fund​.org.

Tags: featured injury ufc