Jon Merz is the coauthor of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ultimate Fighting which he and UFC fighter Rich Franklin wrote together earlier this year. It’s a little over three hundred pages and available now in paperback.
Caleb: Jon how are you doing?
Jon: Good, thanks for having me.
Caleb: No problem, we’re happy to have you on. Why don’t you take a moment to introduce the book to folks who may not be too familiar with it yet.
Jon: The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ultimate Fighting is really a great source of information for folks that are pretty new to MMA and also to the UFC. It was originally supposed to be the Complete Idiot’s Guide to MMA, which we thought was pretty cool because it would really encompass all the organizations. Then the publisher decided they wanted to get the UFC behind it and quickly we had to retool the focus on the project to make it more about the UFC. But we’re pretty happy with how it turned out anyway.
Caleb: You know you just took away a question I had for later (laughs).
Jon: Oh I’m sorry! Jumping the gun on you there.
Caleb: No no problem at all. Take a moment and tell us why it was written.
Jon: I’d been talking to the editor about a few other martial arts projects . Coincidentally enough in some of the promo pieces they used for The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ultimate Fighting, they really highlight my ninjitsu background that I have, and I guess their PR people took that from another proposal that I’d written for them, which has thrown a couple of MMA folks for a loop, saying “Jeez what’s this guy with a ninjitsu background doing writing an MMA book?” I’ve got a pretty broad spectrum of martial arts training under my belt. I’ve done jiu-jitsu, some wrestling in high school, judo, and all that good stuff, so it was pretty funny when it came out. I had to talk to the editor and say, “Don’t highlight the ninjitsu stuff! We want to make it as broad as possible!” He said, “Oh yeah I’ll get right on that,” and of course it stayed the way it was and they hadn’t made the corrections. But anyway I’d been talking with him and he said that they had this book on MMA that they wanted to do and asked me if I’d be interested in doing it. I said, “Well yeah that’d be great. I have this friend out in Vegas who trains some fighters named Wrath James White. Do you want me to get him involved?” And they came back and said that they really want somebody that’s pretty big in MMA. “We’re talking with Rich Franklin. Do you know him?” And I said, “Well sure, I watch The Ultimate Fighter.” And they said that it looks like he’s going to come on board, and we signed the paperwork, and we were off!
Caleb: Tell us about the time frame that this happened. When did it actually start and when did you wrap things up?
Jon: Well it was probably about this time last year that we actually started. It was throughout the course of the summer that we’d been batting balls back and forth and probably about this time we started talking content for the book. And it was a little challenging for Rich to be as completely involved at the start as he wanted to be. He was training for a number of fights, but we managed to make it work.
Caleb: Where are you based exactly? Are you anywhere near him there in Ohio ?
Jon: Actually no, I am based outside of Boston, Massachussetts and he’s out in Ohio. it involved a lot of telephone conversations, and a lot of email.
Caleb: Aside from the virtual collaboration like that, I assume at some point you got together and hammered out basically the structure of the book… tell us a little more about the process.
Jon: We went through a number of drafts on the table of contents. The interesting thing is that as I’m a martial artist - I’ve been doing martial arts for over twenty years myself - and Rich is phenomenal in the MMA world, we both had different ideas. I sketched out a table of contents and Rich came back and he said, “Well, I’m not sure if this is really applicable to MMA.” Sometimes it’s almost like I have too much garbage rattling around there inside my skull (laughs), so Rich was there to be really good and helpful and said, “Let’s narrow the focus here, let’s take out this part, let’s keep it really geared towards the MMA”. He actually came up with the perspective for the book. That being, for new readers and new viewers of MMA, what is going on, like what the two fighters are trying to accomplish, especially in the ground fighting part. What the top-positioned fighter is trying to do and what the bottom fighter can look to try to do in order to improve his own position in the fight. So that was all Rich. It speaks to the incredible amount of expertise that he has in MMA.
Caleb: I didn’t think about this before our call but now that you mention it, it makes perfect sense. I think it’s very easy to grasp the concept of one guy kicking his opponent or one fighter punching the other in the face. We all get that. But I think for the newer fans of the sport, you may get things at live events like fans screaming for things to be stood up thinking that things are getting boring, when if you’ve been around the sport a while, the submission game is really one of the sweeter pieces of the puzzle, isn’t it.
Jon: Absolutely, the problem being with folks that are new to the art, is that they’re watching it on TV, and they see these guys clamoring around on the ground, and maybe one’s in the ground and pound, and the other guy’s trying to get a kimura on him, and [the fan] just sees a mass of bodies writhing around and somebody’s getting hit, and somebody’s looking for a joint lock, and you got Joe Rogan calling it out as fast as it happens. It’s almost too much to really take in. So when we worked on the ground part of the book especially, it was pretty important to highlight the most likely holds and locks and positions that both fighters are going to be looking for.
Caleb: You mention the ground section of the book. Real quickly give us the skeleton of what we would see if we were looking at the table of contents.
Jon: Oh jeez, you’re going to start off looking at where it progresses from when the two fighters enter the ring. Actually first it starts off with a bit of history of the UFC, then it has a smattering about the rules - what’s allowed, what’s not allowed - where some of the different styles come from. You know we looked at some of the different paths of Brazilian jiu-jitsu, traditional Japanese jiu-jitsu, the wrestling game, the guys who come in with the tae kwon do or karate backgrounds, and then we get right into the ring, so to speak. What the fighter’s going to be looking to do as soon as they step into the ring. The jab, the jab-cross, roundhouse kicks, front kicks, and then we move into the clinch, and again what the fighter’s going to be looking to do, like double underhooks, overhooks, what they’re looking to use to set up the takedown, and then we move right into the ground game. And then towards the end of the book we touch a little bit on training and nutrition. The publisher wanted to stay away from too much detail on that just because it’s such a subjective thing. Everybody’s got their own take on what you should be doing to gain muscle mass, for endurance, and so on, so we kept that pretty basic.
Caleb: And what would be the balance between pictures and text?
Jon: We got a lot of pictures in there! I think it’s fairly fifty-fifty. The front of the book is going to be heavier text with regard to the history, but when you get into the technique section, it’s pretty picture-heavy, with not a lot of description underneath the photographs. That was a conscious decision that was made, to let the pictures speak for themselves as much as possible and stay away from the tendency to almost over-analyze what’s going on inside the picture. [We wanted to] give the fans the ability to see it happening in the photographs and maybe transfer that the next time they watch a match on TV.
Caleb: Is there anything that was excluded or omitted from the book that you wish made it in there?
Jon: It’s tough when you’re brought in to write on a project because obviously the publisher has the final say on what goes in to the book. Personally, speaking for myself - and this is no slam against the UFC - I enjoyed it when it was the The Complete Idiot’s Guide to MMA. I thought it was much more inclusive. I’ve seen some of the comments online about the fact that the book is called The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ultimate Fighting, and how it’s a bit like saying instead of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Basketball, it’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the NBA for example. I tend to agree with that. I wish that we had been more inclusive about stuff. It was one of those things that was really out of my hands. You do the best you can, and hope that people that aren’t huge fans of the UFC will pick up the book anyway, and see it for hopefully the valuable addition to the community that it is, and that it can hopefully turn on some new viewers to the world of MMA. I think that’s a good thing. It’s not necessarily about, “Oh well [the book] is only about the UFC, I don’t like the UFC and I’m not going to buy the book”. Yeah, it’s about the UFC and there’s a lot of stuff in there that’s transferable to any MMA platform and it still can be appreciated.
Caleb: Could you describe the intended audience for the book? Would you say it’s probably someone who’s been into MMA for the last ten years, or…?
Jon: It depends. You know, I’m a martial arts junkie. I’ll pick up any book on martial arts even though I’ve seen a ton of styles since I’ve been studying. I love any and all resources on martial arts, so I’m like that. And if there are MMA people that have been around in the art forever sort of like me, they’d love to pick up the book too. It’s something to have, it’s something to look at… Rich Franklin is a great fighter, I’ve seen him certainly take some hits, some slams out there on the message boards, but I still think he’s a great fighter and he’s part of the legacy. I think the book is good to have for that. I think the folks that have seen, maybe on the 60 Minutes episode they ran last year and then just a month and a half ago and maybe haven’t experienced MMA to the fullest point that other folks have, I think they would really get a charge out of it because it is really good for the person that is new to MMA, that isn’t quite sure what they’re seeing. It’s a great compass for them. Diehard MMA people who maybe don’t particularly care for the UFC, yeah, maybe they’re not going to pick up the book. To each his own. I think that it’s a great book for folks that are into MMA, the UFC, and martial arts in general. I train constantly and currently, and I’m telling everybody that they ought to pick it up just because it’s always great to have an open mind about stuff. You can always learn something [from what’s out there], even the arts that you don’t necessarily train in. There’s still something that you can pick up from it. MMA fighters are an amazing breed of athlete. I tell people, “Don’t be so quick to judge! Don’t be so quick to say, ‘Oh that’d never work out on the street.’” I mean I sure as hell wouldn’t want to climb in the ring with these guys, they’re amazing. I’m thirty-eight years old, so my body does heal the way it used to! (laughs). So yeah, I think the martial arts junkies and the newbies would have a great time with the book.
Caleb: I imagine it’s not unlikely that we’re going to see a spike in sales as we get towards the holidays, because it seems like a great gift for friends and those who are aspiring to learn more. You must be excited about Rich Franklin’s upcoming fight though, with Anderson Silva next month, I mean that’s going to drive some sales…
Jon: I hope so! I gotta be honest with you - when last October’s fight [against Anderson Silva] came on, and I saw how that ended, I put my head in my hands and I went, “Oh jeez, there go the book sales!” (laughs) So yeah, I’m looking forward to it. I mean Rich is a great guy. We’ve had some great conversations. [He’s a] really laid back, humble guy, and I hope he does really great. Anderson Silva’s a lot of fun to watch though too, I have to be honest with you (laughs), so yeah I’m going to be rooting for that, definitely.
Caleb: Well Jon, do you have any closing comments for the folks out there?
Jon: Yeah I got a little bit of a scoop… A new MMA project that myself and author Joe Nassise are working on. We’re getting ready to go out to publishers with it: we are working with the International Fight League to bring out a series of action adventure novels that will feature a fictitious IFL team called the Boston Marauders. It’ll blend MMA action with the fact that all the team fighters are all former special ops and intelligence operatives. So it’ll be a whole bunch of popcorn fun and excitement. That’s brewing right now. We’re going out with some publishers shortly, probably in the next day or so. Hopefully we’ll have a big deal to talk about with that, and we’ll get those out on the shelves soon.
Caleb: Jon, thank you very much for being with us and I hope you’ll keep in touch with us as we’ll be keeping an eye on your stuff for sure.
Jon: Great! Thanks very much, Caleb.
- Caleb 
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