What happened to Gray Maynard
Gray Maynard: “You never want to look back and say you left too early. And you never want to look back and say you left too late.”
On January 1, 2011, Gray Maynard was undefeated as he went into a title fight with UFC lightweight champion Frankie Edgar. He was coming off an incredible string of wins, over Dennis Siver, Edgar, Rich Clementi, Jim Miller, Roger Huerta, Nate Diaz, and Kenny Florian. In the first round he beat Edgar silly. Edgar survived the round, and ended up with a razor thin draw.
Maynard lost the rematch, beat Clay Guida, and has since lost to TJ Grant, Nate Diaz, and Ross Pearson, in a combined 11 minutes.
ESPN’s Brett Okamoto details why. Maynard started at Xtreme Couture with the likes of Forrest Griffin, John Alessio, Tyson Griffin, and Couture himself.
As time went on, however, the dynamic of the gym changed. Coaches started bickering with one another and preached conflicting ideas.
“About a month before (the Edgar rematch) I left,” said Maynard. “It was more about respect than disrespect. I knew win or lose, I was gone. If I won the belt, I didn’t want it to be like I had become a champion and bailed on my team. If I lost, I didn’t want it to look I was blaming it on Couture’s. So, I left.”
“When I go through it in my head, one thing that actually drove me out of Xtreme Couture was Edgar. His camp was so tight and organized. That week before we fought to a draw, I watched them the whole time. Everything was about him. I was talking to his boxing coach and he said, ‘I’d die for Frankie.’ I thought, ‘Damn, that’s a pretty tight team.’ I guess I was in search of that.”
The bulk of Maynard’s preparation for the second title fight against Edgar took place in a small gym he rented out a month before the fight.
After that fight, Maynard moved to Northern California and began working with American Kickboxing Academy.
Maynard didn’t move into a one-bedroom apartment right next to the gym. He bought a house that required a remodeling and was located in a beach town an hourlong drive from the AKA mats. In 2013, he became a father to a girl, Estella.
He worked out at AKA but he was never really an AKA “guy.”
Before his last fight, a TKO loss to Ross Pearson in August, he switched camps again, electing to do a one-off fight preparation at Power MMA in Arizona.
“It was a lot of, ‘I want to try this out, I want to try that out,'” Maynard said. “I wanted to try a sprint coach. I wanted to try a kickboxing coach. I was more of a guinea pig than anything, just trying a little bit of everything.”
Maynard has returned to the reborn facility under coach Robert Follis, who he describes as “the best all-around MMA coach I’ve ever had.” Still, Maynard understands that at 35, despite passing a full comprehensive medical checkup requested by UFC president Dana White, that the secret to a long life is knowing when it’s time to go.
“There’s life after this, and I’ve always known that,” said Maynard said. “I’m a realist that this isn’t forever. People aren’t going to be running up to me 20 years from now, asking for my autograph. That’s not going to be making me money.
“You’ve got the pro athletes who are aware of that — who know, ‘I have to take care of my body and brain because I have to produce after this.’ Then you’ve got the guys who say, ‘F— it.’
“You never want to look back and say you left too early. And you never want to look back and say you left too late.”
“I don’t want to be the person that stayed too late, but also, as an athlete, I feel like I’m still there. Let’s start putting it together. I’ve literally never given myself a chance. I want to give myself a chance.”
Gray Maynard fights Alexander Yakovlev on the UFC Fight Night prelim card on Saturday in Fairfax, Virginia.
