'Razor' Radach Feels Sharp After Layoff

Benji “Razor” Radach knows all about long layoffs.

Earlier in his career, he spent nearly three years away from MMA after suffering a broken jaw in 2004 at the heavy hands of Chris Leben. It was the first in a long string of, well, crippling physical ailments that had Radach wondering if some higher power was trying to tell him to find another line of work.

So the fact that his fight Saturday for EliteXC against its former middleweight champion, Murilo“Ninja” Rua, will be his first in nine months is the proverbial piece of cake. If anything, Radach said, rather than being mentally or physically challenging, the layoff has actually been a good thing, following, as it did, a very fight-stacked 2007.

“I think it’s really been therapeutic,” Radach, 29, said. “Cause I fought a lot last year. Six times. So it was just cram-packed with training hard and beating my body up. And you know, you have to heal up from everything. And I really needed a break just to get the hunger back. Now, I’m going to go into this fight healthy and strong and ready to win.”

Whatever adversity Radach has faced in the cage -- and of 21 professional fights, he’s only suffered four losses -- pales in comparison to a very trying period from June 2004 to February 2007 that is the stuff of fighters’ bad dreams.

“It was pretty much injury after injury,” Radach recalled. “I had the broken jaw. Then I had a herniated disc in my neck and lost all this muscle in my right pec and right tricep. It was like I was paralyzed. I couldn’t even do a pushup. It was pretty bad.

“And then I injured the ACL on my right leg and I ended up tearing my meniscus. Then I had a bad staph infection and was fighting that for three months. I had a catheter in my arm all the way to my heart. I was in the hospital for like three weeks with a 104 temperature. It was real bad.

“It was just one down thing after another after another,” he said. “I definitely thought that maybe someone was trying to tell me, maybe a higher power, that I need to find something else to do.”

But as Nietzsche famously noted, that which does not kill us makes us stronger, right?

Dave Mandel/Sherdog.com

Muilo "Ninja" Rua (left) stands in
Radach's way of a big payday.

“I didn’t know how to take it all,” Radach said. “Do I keep on trucking and there would be light at the end of the tunnel? And I just kept on trucking, man. And the light came cause I really did good last year.”

Radach returned triumphantly to the ring for the IFL on Feb. 2, 2007, stopping Ryan McGivern, then followed that with four more wins. In his sixth fight back, last Dec. 29, he lost via KO to Matt Horwich. His match against Rua will be his first since that defeat.

“To have a really cool first year back, stepping into the ring with a tough opponent (McGivern) right off the bat and fought him and beat him and it was just a huge accomplishment for me,” Radach said.

Radach’s bout with Rua (16-8-1) is his first under a three-fight deal he signed with EliteXC in the wake of the IFL’s demise.

“He’s very tough,” Radach said of the well-rounded 28-year-old Brazilian, a muay Thai and jiu-jitsu specialist. “He’s got good boxing. He’s got a good ground game. Pretty much my goal in this fight is not to be on the bottom. If there’s any kind of clinch game, I’m taking him down. I want to be on top, implementing my game.

“I’m not gonna be on my back, cause he’s dangerous on top, and if he takes me down, I’m right back on my feet. And I’m gonna be swinging for the fences with him on the feet,” said Radach, who, despite coming from a strong wrestling background, has become a knockout artist, racking up 15 of his 17 victories by way of strikes.

Radach’s training regiment hasn’t exactly been orthodox, involving, as it does, driving hundreds of miles all over Southern California to various MMA gyms from his home base in Santa Ana, where he holds down a corporate job as director of instructor training for LA Boxing.

“I’ve really been bouncing around,” he said, to Bas Rutten’s Elite MMA in Thousand Oaks (a 140-mile round trip from Santa Ana), Dan Henderson’s Team Quest in Murietta (a 120-mile round trip), and HB Ultimate Training Center in Huntington Beach (a mere 30-mile round trip).

At the latter gym, Radach’s been fortunate enough to train with a steady stream of A-list fighters who just happened to be in town, including Michael Bisping and Josh Thomson. He’s also trained with Huntington Beach’s resident bad-ass, Tito Ortiz.

“So it’s sorta been hit and miss, but thank God all those guys were coming through at the right time, cause without them on an everyday basis there, there’s not really guys my weight there,” Radach said. “And they’re there to push me. Also, I push myself pretty hard.”

Indeed. He even trains at LA Boxing’s corporate offices every morning before work.

“Get a killer workout in the morning on the heavy bag and a TRX suspension system, take a shower here at the office, then sit here trying to find instructors in different parts of the world,” Radach said. “They’re (LA Boxing) getting something from all the publicity of me fighting and stuff, so they’re allowing me to train and stay in shape. So it’s really working out cool, man.”

Heath Sims, who co-owns Team Quest’s Murietta gym, said Radach’s training is going well, especially considering he took the Rua fight on just five weeks’ notice.

“He’s really been getting back up to speed and getting his conditioning up and getting his weight down, coming in training with all our good guys, so I think he’s going to be ready,” Sims said.

Sean McCully, an LA Boxing founder who coaches Radach’s standup, said he’d prefer for Radach to have more of a traditional, less gas-guzzling training routine.

“But he’s young and he’s motivated, so he’s trying to get as much good training and good information as possible,” McCully said. “Benji’s a real hard worker and he’s been training really hard for the fight and he’s gotten in really great shape over the last month or so.”

Radach too would rather train at one gym.

“Because you get more rest,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about driving, getting back late, trying to get some sleep and going to work the next day. I was spoiled last year training (solely at American Top Team in Florida), doing it full time, fighting all year long.

“But you know, I got a cool job that I gotta hold on to. I’m not getting rich from fighting right now, so I have to make sure I have something for after.”

If he beats Rua on CBS this Saturday, though, Radach could take a big step toward better paydays and a brighter future in MMA. Bas Rutten, who has worked with Radach, believes he can beat Rua and any other middleweight.

"Benji's one of those guys, who if he's 100 percent in shape, I'll bet him against Anderson Silva, and I really mean this,” Rutten said. “People don't realize how much force and violence he can bring. It's really sick, the way he hits the focus pad. Benji's wrestling is sick. He's got submissions. The only thing is, when he gets tired, he lets himself open and sometimes he gets hit. So the way he's training now is, he's really working hard on his cardio. He's in shape, let me tell you."