Robbie Lawler stopped sparring for six years

Mixed martial arts is a hurting game; there is no way to hide that, and no reason to. With a growing awareness of the dangers of chronic traumatic encephalopathy, many gyms are reducing the amount of sparring that takes place.

However, the ideal amount of sparring is not zero. There is a sport with zero head contact. It is called Tennis, not fighting.

Robbie Lawler recently spoke with Ben Fowlkes for MMAJunkie, ahead of his fight Saturday night with UFC welterweight champion Johny Hendricks. “Ruthless” detailed how he gave up sparring for years, and how his career flourished since he returned to it, albeit judiciously.

Lawler went from going 3-5 in Strikeforce, to 5-1 in the UFC losing only a fight-of-the-year-candidate title shot, by dropping a division, and by training at ATT under Ricardo Liborio, which involves a fair amount of sparring.

In 2006 Lawler, then at Miletich Martial Arts, took a shot in training.

It wasn’t anything too hard, said Lawler. But when we went straight from sparring to grappling and I laid down on my back, the room started spinning.

The room kept spinning for weeks. Luckily the fight with Joey Villasenor at Pride 32 was over in just 22 seconds. For six years, Lawler stopped sparring.

Guys would make fun of me, said Lawler. Tim Sylvia would be like, ‘Get in here and spar.’ I’d just tell him, ‘Nah, I’m good.’ I thought, you know, I know how to fight.

Lawler, now 32, thinks the no sparring for so many years prolonged his career, but led him to lose some fights, too.

I think I had to go through those things, said Lawler. I had to live and learn, and that’s probably the best way to do it.

Lawler has gone through a Goldilocks and the The Bears situation for MMA. This training had too much head contact, and this training had no head contact at all, but the training at ATT is just right.

We will find out Saturday if that takes him to the world title.