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NWFS: Man! Absolute Domination.
How do you feel?
Quarry: Yeah, I'm feeling good. My elbow's a little swollen, but other than that doing pretty good.
NWFS:
In reading before the fight, it seemed like everyone
thought that the second it'd hit the ground that it would be over. Lot of people were kind of counting you out. How did that feel for you going into the fight when everyone was kind of saying you were pretty much the underdog?
Quarry: You know, I don't really listen to what people say about me, especially the negative things that people say. I've got a great team around me and the people who have trained with me know that my ground game is really not that bad. Just when you fight someone like Demian Maia who is one of the best in the world, those things are going to happen. I've been doing jiu-jitsu myself for about 13 years now... I'm never going to pretend to be the best in the world at it but I do know a little about it. I'm aware of jiu-jitsu.
 
NWFS: So when it did hit the ground you felt completely comfortable.
Quarry: Yeah and my game plan for the whole fight was just to fight. It wasn't necessarily to knock him out, to knee him in the clinch, or take him down. It was just to fight. And I knew that no matter where the fight went I would be prepared...
You know, just do my thing.
NWFS: Now when you cut him and knew that he was cut, did you get that sense, that feeling of smelling the blood,
it was time for the kill?
Quarry: Very much so. Soon as I dinged him up with the first elbow and he started bleeding a little bit, I knew that as soon as that blood got into his eyes, he wouldn't be able to see me as well and that would be the time to pick it up. So I'm that type of guy, you'll see it in all my fights, that when the opponent is stunned or time to go, I come tenfold and look to finish the fight. I'm not ever going to be one of those guys who lands a combination and stands there and looks at the guy, lets them regain their strength and then gives them another shot.
NWFS: After your
tough loss to Maia, did you change anything in your
training to prepare for MacDonald who is a pretty good jiu-jitsu guy,
though definitely not in the same category as Maia?
Quarry: I didn't change a whole lot. Kept on training. I think mentally I probably changed a few things. When I fought Maia, I was looking at that as, OK this is a culmination of my training, this big fight. And when I was getting ready for this fight I said, you know what, I'm just going to train. I'm going to continue training, this isn't going to be the end of my career. I'm going to look at it as just another workout for me. So I'm just going to train hard and there's just going to be one week in my fighting schedule where I fight in Montreal and have a real good workout in front of a few thousand people and then I go home and go back to training.
NWFS:
You are no longer at Sports Lab anymore but at Next Level
MMA.
Tell us about
that.
Quarry: Yes, Sportslab is closed down. We had an opportunity to open up our own gym in Tigard and it's just incredible. We pretty much just took the program that was out there with Jeremy Wijers from Portland Muay Thai, Eban Kaneshiro from New Breed Jiu-jitsu, Greg Thompson doing the conditioning and the
MMA. It's just a great place to train. The attitude is incredible, the students are great, and the coaches are great. We really wanted to put together a program under one roof where you could come and just get what you wanted.
NWFS: Do you have some up and coming fighters
there we should look out for?
Quarry: Oh definitely. We got some really good amateurs that are coming together. Eddie Dahlen who is a champion for the
FCFF. We've got Tyrell Butikofer who is a big 85er, he's just turned 21. Just a big kid who loves to fight and wants to fight on every card. We've got just so many guys who are coming by the gym, wanting to find kind of a home, a good place to train. And as long as everyone's attitude is good, they're more than welcome to be there.
NWFS:
You had major surgery on your back a few years ago. How's your body holding up to all this?
Quarry: Oh, just incredibly. My back is an incredible source of strength where it used to be a weakness. So yeah, it's just good. I'm so lucky to have gotten together with a company like Nuvasive who had such an innovative procedure. It really made it so my recovery time is so much less than anything traditionally that would have been done. So I'm just very grateful that that technology was around and now I can reach out to people who are having the same problems and let them know that they don't have to suffer. And if they do get back surgery, their life isn't over. They'll be good to go in a very short period of time.
NWFS:
We interviewed you last year, you said you were able to be a full-time fighter due to sponsors and not have to
work. Are you still able to be a full-time fighter?
Quarry: Yes, yes I am. And it's been some very lean times... I had almost two years off between Franklin and Pete Sell, but having sponsors step up and living a very
spartan lifestyle, that has been a big key. I've never been the type of guy that has to wear the 80 dollar tee-shirt around or drive the brand-new vehicle. For me, following my goals and living my life the way I wanted to was the main priority. And I think as long as you accept you know, that I'm not going to be able to do this activity or that activity, it makes it all worthwhile. And you're able to do what you want to with your life. Oh, I've slept in people's basements. I've had people ask me to go to lunch and because I didn't have five dollars to my name, I'd have to say no. Go home and have my peanut butter and jelly sandwich. But it's all been worthwhile because when I wake up in the morning, I go and do what I want to do. I go hang out with my friends, train jiu-jitsu, go train Muay Thai, hang out with my coaches, just such a great place to be in. I like to show up half an hour early to practice just so I can hang out with my friends. And I can't imagine a better lifestyle, especially coming from just a blue-collar background, building houses, digging holes, those types of things. And now to be able to do this and travel to Montreal, and fight in front of almost 22,000 people is just incredible.
NWFS: Do you have hobbies you like to
do when you're not fighting or training?
Quarry: Oh Man, I think probably the biggest time sucker for me has been the Xbox 360.
NWFS:
What do you play?
Quarry: Jeez, I'm the type of guy I don't go out, especially due to my cheapness, I don't go out and buy every game that comes out. I'll usually buy one and play it for about three months until I'm completely bored and then something else will come out. So recently I've been playing Resident Evil 5 which has just been a great game, although it plays a little bit slow, and the game I've been playing before that which I really love is Left
4 Dead. And that game itself is not really deep, you're not going to find all sorts of hidden things, treasures and all this, but it's just so fun. It's just a blast to play and you're playing with other guys online. And so if you kill somebody it's like Yeah! I just killed that nerd in his Mom's basement across the country. In a month, the UFC game comes out and I'm going to be on that. And what I'm excited about that is that's all online play too. So I'm going to be able to play as myself against other guys around the country so I'm thinking about, I don't know, putting my word out there that I'll play some of the fans online head to head.
NWFS: Well that sounds like a good idea. So how did that work out when you did that. Did you have to go in and suit up for doing certain things for getting your body movement to be in the game or did they just tell you that you're going to be in the game and sign it away?
Quarry: Well it was funny. I didn't even know what was going on until I talked to someone else's agent and he said, hey did you get your sponsors on the game. And I said no, I've never even heard of that. And he said Man, here's the number to call. And I called the number and the guys making the game were such fans that they were like anything that we can do to help you out. So I was able to get my sponsors on there: Sprawl,
AND1, Nuvasive, and Metabolic Adaptation. So it looks like I'm showing up for a fight in the game. I think mainly they just took my picture off the fighting and everything. And just this weekend, the UFC they took a whole bunch more pictures of the 2nd UFC fighting game which will be out where I'm kind of a teacher.
NWFS: Do they have
favorite finishing moves or something like that for each
fighter?
Quarry: Man, I don't know. They haven't told me anything yet. I asked if the put in
"The Rock Hammer" but no they didn't, which kind of bummed me out. I thought that would have been cool.
NWFS:
In the NW, we got a lot of guys coming up... What advice would you
give to the up and coming amateur who would really like to fight in the UFC?
Quarry: It's really just the amount of dedication and sacrifice...
I started training when I was 24 years old, so I've been training for about 13 years now, and when I first started training, I had no experience whatsoever. No boxing, no jiu-jitsu, nothing. I joined a gym that in retrospect wasn't that good a gym. It was more beatings than coaching. But the big key of it, the one thing
that made me more successful is that I just showed up every day. I just continued to train and I just wanted to get better. And I put everything on hold. I made all the sacrifices. I wasn't going out partying and drinking. Friends of mine would say "oh you're so boring. You don't go out with us anymore." And I'd just say Hey, this is what I'm doing now. I'm training for this. I don't know what's going to happen or where it's going to take me, but this is what I'm doing. And I saw so many guys who were so much more talented than I was, just fall by the wayside. And it was all because they couldn't resist the lifestyle, they didn't have the dedication and the work ethic to show up. And even they didn't think about what they were doing. I learned a long time ago, I remember I had a teacher in high school. There's two people who will never amount to anything... Those who can't do what they are told, and those who only do what they are told. And I saw so many people who wouldn't show up to practice, who wouldn't train. All they would do is just go to that one gym and train, and never open their mind and never question
Why am I learning this? What's the next step? What could I be doing better? And I think that's the big thing. Look at your gym. See what kind of coaches you
got, what kind of training partners you got, what's their issue
there. Is it the type of gym where you just have to be the toughest guy cause that will just self-destruct. You have to find a place where you're happy to go train. Everybody is a family together and you take your job seriously but at the same time you're having a good time. And then just dedicate your life to it. Because if you're not going to give it 100 percent man, you're going to just take some unnecessary beatings before you fall by the wayside.
NWFS: What's next for
Nate Quarry? Have you talked to [UFC Matchmaker] Joe Silva
about what your future holds?
Quarry: No, I haven't talked to Joe at all about it. This is the few days where I can not think about fighting and not feel guilty about it. I can just kind of relax for a little while and look forward to getting back in the gym. I don't want to get out of shape and I feel that things are really coming together for me. Having such great coaches at Next Level Martial Arts, and jiu-jitsu and everything like that. I'm thinking about doing some more jiu-jitsu tournaments. I did them way back in the day. And for me jiu-jitsu is more of a vacation. I don't care about what weight class I compete in as long as I don't get injured. Don't care if I win or lose, I just think it would be a good time. So I'm just looking forward to things like that. Just having fun.
NWFS:
Do you have any fights that you want in the future?
Quarry: You know. I haven't really thought that much about it. There's so many good guys out there, the last thing I want to do is call somebody out and piss them off at me so they want to hit me in the face harder. I prefer to be the nice guy so when they're hitting me they're like Oh he's such a nice guy, I don't want to hit him that
hard...
NWFS: Do you have any sponsors you'd like to give a shout out to?
Quarry: The big one is Nuvasive for making my back strong and getting me back in the ring again. And
AND1 Basketball Shoes really stepped up and helped me out, and have reached out to a whole other area no one thought would ever happen. Sprawl Shorts for always keeping me geared up. And I had a really cool new sponsor for this fight, Artic Solo Sail. If you go to that website,
ArticSoloSail.com, it's my buddy Ken Birdwell who is one of the owners of Valve Software who makes Left
4 Dead, Team Fortress and all those. And he's got a project where he's funding a guy who's the first person to sail the Northern Passage above Canada. And it's just an incredible thing he's doing and it's just exciting to know somebody who's doing something like that.
UFC
Fighters Chris Wilson & Nate Quarry
NWFS would like to thank Nate for taking the time to
speak with us.
Fans can visit Nate online at nathanquarry.com
and
myspace.com/rockquarry.
Visit
the gym where Nathan trains at nextlevelmma.com.
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