THE CANADIAN PRESS
Ryo Chonan may not have done himself any favours by calling UFC 78 opponent Karo (The Heat) Parisyan crazy.
"Well I guess he’ll really find out how crazy I am when I get in the damn cage with him," Parisyan said of his mixed martial arts opponent Saturday night in Newark, N.J.
In Chonan’s defence, the Japanese fighter prefaced the comment on the UFC website with a compliment.
"He is a strong fighter with good judo skills. I saw him on the show `The Ultimate Fighter’ and thought he was crazy," Chonan was quoted as saying.
Some might agree with Chonan after seeing the Parisyan meltdown on Season 5 of the reality TV show. Parisyan, whose cousin Manny Gamburyan ended up the losing finalist on the show, made a cameo as a guest coach and was shown in a spat with eventual winner Nate Diaz.
"He tried to show disrespect," Parisyan explained in an interview. "I guess he had it bottled up inside since I beat his brother (Nate Diaz, at UFC 49 in August 2004). But I don’t take anything from anybody, man, especially freaking Nate Diaz. Give me a freaking break."
Parisyan explained the beef started when others on Gamburyan’s team got in the way of his coaching his cousin against Matt Wiman by getting in Gamburyan’s ear. Parisyan reckoned it should have been him doing the talking, reasoning no one knew his cousin like he did and no one else could speak Armenian.
Diaz suggested he shut it, according to Parisyan. It may have started as a joke but soon escalated into trash-talking and threats of violence. Parisyan ended up having to be pulled away.
While he doesn’t consider the incident worth revisiting, he still has strong opinions about Nate Diaz.
"He’s a little bitch. Just like his brother."
Parisyan, who was six when he came to the U.S. from Armenia via Russia, is big on respect. He’s also clearly not afraid of confrontation, although he is as engaging outside the ring as he is dangerous in it.
The 25-year-old welterweight carries a chip on his shoulder and dares other fighters to knock it off. Not many have managed to do so. Parisyan’s only losses in nine UFC fights are to Canadian Georges St. Pierre and Diego Sanchez.
He believes Josh Burkman, his last opponent, took him lightly after some uninspired Parisyan performances at a shared training camp in Big Bear, Calif., following his August 2006 loss to Sanchez.
"People sometimes take you very lightly and I love that," Parisyan said.
Burkman admits he came into their UFC 71 fight thinking he could knock Parisyan out. Instead it was the judo expert who put on a clinical striking display en route to a unanimous decision.
"These guys don’t understand when you fight, it’s a whole new ball game," Parisyan said. "I’m going balls out when I fight. Basically I just went in there and I just shocked all of them."
Parisyan showed his mettle against Drew Fickett in December 2006. When Fickett’s elbow opened a ditch-like cut under his eye, Parisyan just got mad.
Suddenly the fight got personal for Parisyan, who promptly returned the favour by carving open Fickett’s face.
"`Oh man you have no idea what you just did. You really really pissed me off,"’ he recalled thinking. "And I love it when guys try to hurt me and hit me. It just makes me very upset and I just go after them."
Parisyan needed 20 stitches after the win. He has the scar to prove it.
The knock on Parisyan at times is he has not trained as well as he should. He says he has not had the best training partners in the past, although he has moved to fix that by spending time at Randy Couture’s gym in Las Vegas.
"There’s nobody that’s going to touch me at 170, if I’m in shape," he says.
Still Parisyan has distractions. He shares his home with family, for example.
"That is a downfall in a certain way, because there’s so much stuff going around you that you have to take care of yourself."
Prior to this fight, his schedule included buying a new home. Single, Parisyan will have four other family members living with him.
Parisyan’s sense of injustice is also fuelled by a title shot against Matt Hughes that went by the boards because of injury. He points to the UFC giving St. Pierre time to recover from an injury so a Hughes-St. Pierre rematch could come off at UFC 65.
"Karo Parisyan got injured, Karo Parisyan had to come back and start climbing the ladder again." Parisyan said.
Adding to his sense of injustice is the fact that he beat Matt Serra, the current welterweight champion, at UFC 53 in June 2005. But still he has to wait behind St. Pierre, who is due to meet the winner of a Serra-Hughes December bout.
"It is what it is. What can I do? … Actions speak louder than words. I think time will come around and people will figure out that I need my damn title shot."
Parisyan’s immediate future is Chonan, whose nickname has evolved from Shark to Piranha over the years.
"I’m expecting a very tough fight and I’m expecting him to come out and come after me," Parisyan said. "He’s a tough guy, he’s a very tough guy. He’s good at everything not really great at anything. He’s a very tricky opponent. Bottom line, he’s a very tough guy."
Chonan, 31, usually fights at 185 pounds, but has moved down to 170 for this fight. His 14-7 record includes a rare win over current UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva and former welterweight champion Carlos Newton of Newmarket, Ont. It also includes a crushing KO at the hands of Dan Henderson, who took care of Chonan in 22 seconds at a 2005 Pride show.
Sherdog.com, which tracks fighters’ records, lists Parisyan at 17-5 but he says his record is actually 25-4.
He says he was 14 when he first fought, against a 23-year-old in Mexico. "I kicked his butt for five rounds." His first 10 fights were for free — and sometimes he did twice in a day.
"I fought a guy and I fought his coach. Just for the pride," he said. "Just for my name."
Notes : Cameroon’s Rameau Thierry Sokoudjou will make his UFC debut against unbeaten light-heavyweight Lyoto Machida at UFC 79 on Dec. 29. Known as The African Assassin, Sokoudjou holds wins over Ricardo Arona and Antonio Rogerio Nogueira. The 23-year-old, who trains with Team Quest in California, is 4-1 while Machida is 11-0. The Brazilian has beaten B.J. Penn, Rich Franklin, and Stephan Bonnar.
