Walker jumps full tilt into MMA career
By GREG STODA
Cox Newspapers
Jan. 13, 2010, 1:45PM
Former NFL player and Heisman Trophy winner Herschel Walker, left, will make his MMA debut Jan. 30.
MIAMI LAKES, Fla. — Herschel Walker is always looking for something to do.
He'll climb into a steel cage this time to try his hand — fists, actually, and just about anything else on his still-sculpted 47-year-old body — at mixed martial arts. This means Walker will have gone from ballet to bobsleds to brutality after winning the Heisman Trophy as a running back at the University of Georgia and a noteworthy pro football career, too.
He's nothing if not a restless and curious soul.
“People always say what you can't do instead of what you can,” Walker said in what serves as a mantra for his life. “This is the hardest thing I've ever done. Sometimes, you have to set your ego aside. I missed Christmas and New Year's (while training). You can tell I'm serious, because I love Santa Claus.”
He says his fight debut, scheduled for Jan. 30 at BankAtlantic Center, is no joke. Walker, in fact, said it was “an insult” to have watched unprepared former baseball star Jose Canseco embarrass himself in a mixed martial arts debacle.
If he's being fast-tracked in promotions by his Strikeforce handlers — and he absolutely is — Walker is a willing and fearless participant in the show.
“I'm not even a little bit afraid,” Walker said. “I've had great respect for this sport ever since I saw it for the first time and said to myself, ‘I want to do that.' That respect has helped me learn what I have to learn to do this.”
Walker, by the way, holds a fifth-degree black belt in tae kwon do, but said that particular discipline probably did him more harm than good when it came to training for mixed martial arts. Different movements, he said. Different lots of stuff, he said.
“I had to forget some things,” Walker said.
But he still looks good.
He's eating only one meal a day, as usual — no red meat, as usual — and getting through on “three or four hours” of sleep, as usual. His once-famous workout routine consisting of what he said was once 5,000 push ups and 5,000 sit-ups per day is all the way down to 1,500 push-ups and 2,500 sit-ups on heaviest daily duty.
“I can lift a bus,” Walker said.
Maybe he can.
He spars regularly with a kid who wasn't born when Walker won his Heisman Trophy in 1982. His trainer, Javier Mendez, went from thinking Walker was “ridiculous” for taking a fight while still an MMA novice to calling him a “one of a kind athlete.”
Walker, at 6-foot-1 and 216 pounds, said his body fat has been measured at 4 percent, and Dr. Allan Fields, a physician on hand for Tuesday's news conference, declared him a cardiovascular marvel.
“He's 47 going on 22 as far as physical conditioning,” Fields said.
Maybe he is.
It certainly figures to make for great theater, and Strikeforce hopes to sell out an arena configured to hold at least 10,000 fans. Walker is the draw, regardless of where he falls on a planned five-bout card.
Walker, who owns a business in the food industry, insists he doesn't need the money and called this undertaking a result of his desire for adventure, challenge and competition.
“I do so many crazy things,” he said.
Which, not long ago, he perhaps explained in his “Breaking Free” memoir. Walker revealed that he had suffered from dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder, and had contemplated suicide.
Though a serious matter, obviously, Walker can have some fun with it these days at his own expense. For example, he said he figures his involvement in mixed martial arts at such an advanced age is “one of my younger personalities” presenting itself.
Youth might help against his 26-year-old opponent, Greg Nagy, who's 6-3 and 215 pounds.
“I've seen him on film,” Walker said. “He gets hit and just keeps coming.”
Walker allowed himself the tightest of smiles at his own scouting report, and said he plans to hang around South Florida after the bout to play golf with Dan Marino and attend the Super Bowl.
“If I'm not too sore,” Walker said.
He has danced ballet in Texas and pushed a bobsled in the Olympics.
Now, ever restless and ever curious, a steel cage.