Interview with Nathan Kittredge

With Jacob Regar

10/13/08

JR: Where did you grow up?

NK: Vergennes, Vermont. I went to high school there, and I still live and work there.

JR: Did you go to college? If so, where did you attend?

NK: I did. I went to Plymouth State University, which is in Plymouth, New Hampshire. I wrestled there for four years… was a captain, and I received my degree in physical education and health.

JR: Which martial art have you been practicing the longest?

NK: Well I guess that depends on what you consider a martial art. If you consider wrestling a martial art…

JR: Absolutely.

NK: Yeah, well that’s it man, I was born and raised a wrestler. I started in second grade. But since I started doing MMA, probably jiu jitsu is definitely the biggest thing that we’ve been doing. We don’t do a lot of kicking- we should do more. But I’m only 5’8” so I don’t think I’ll be kicking a guy in the head.

JR: True, but if you get a little more flexible you never know.

NK: Yeah, it feels good to throw kicks.

JR:  When you guys work on kicking, do you practice any particular shin conditioning?

NK: I would say that where we train our knowledge in kicks is limited. We don’t do much conditioning in hitting shins. We’ll typically practice throwing hands and feet for a five minute round or just hands or feet on the pads. That would be our main conditioning for the feet.

JR: Fighting at the professional level, do you have any fear of checking leg kicks or throwing leg kicks and dinging your shins off of your opponent’s shins or knees?

NK: Definitely not. No fear when you’re out there. However, to be a good fighter, you have to be well-rounded. And maybe that’s something I’m lacking a little: just the knowledge of how to train correctly and stuff like that. But I think we make up for it in other aspects. I may not be able to kick as well, but our wrestling is going to be better than most.

The main thing we learned from the whole MMA thing is to keep your hands up. I don’t want to get kicked in the face- you know it ain’t going down like that. I mean it happens, you get tired and your hands drop and that’s our biggest goal to out-last our opponent. He may be a better technician but by that third round we’re going to be dragging his ass back to the middle of the mat.

JR: Given your solid wrestling background, have you found it necessary to adjust the style of your shots for your takedown attempts?

NK: Without a doubt. When you wrestle you come in with a lower stance, and when you’re doing MMA your stance is going to be a little higher; your stance is a little like a boxer’s with your hands high. Maybe you’ll come in with a jab or a one-two combination and then shoot your shot. But in typical wrestling you’ll come in and lock up or you’ll shoot an outside shot.

So in MMA, you have to change it up a bit. I don’t want to telegraph a shot and then come in and eat an uppercut and there’s my game gone out the window. So practicing my hands has been a big help for me. When I first started fighting I’d throw a jab, get the takedown and do some ground-and-pound. But since then I try to throw my hands and go toe-to-toe.

JR: I think a wrestler with good hands is one of the scariest types of opponents to face.

NK: I agree with you. If I’m confidant on my feet with my hands and then it goes to the ground, I’m not worried.

JR: How long have you trained jiu jitsu?

NK: Since 2005. When I graduated college I was the assistant wrestling coach at my college and I was doing MMA and practicing jiu jitsu.

JR: Have you done any gi training or have you practiced more of a submission grappling style?

NK: Definitely submission grappling. We’ve done a little work with the gi. Essentially, with the gi, you get a wicked work out because you sweat like a bastard with it on. And the gi slows it down for you.

There’s a tremendous amount more submissions with the gi than with pure MMA style. But the gi is a lot of fun, it’s a good workout. We don’t do a lot of grappling with the gi at our school. If we had some legit black belt jiu jitsu guys at our school we’d be doing more of that, but we’re essentially black belt wrestlers I guess you can say. And we’re as good as our wrestling background and everything else we just kind of pick up.

JR: One thing that training with the gi helps out a lot with is grip strength…

NK: That’s a good point. One of the first things I noticed after doing a good, hard gi jiu jitsu practice would be your hands would ache as well as your wrists but your grip was the first thing to improve. That’s the first thing I noticed that was weak. I mean, I have a good grip. But it’s two different kinds of grips: when you’re wrestling, you’re more like on your feet and you’re trying to secure wrist control, but in jiu jitsu it’s elbows in, hands in; it’s just a different type of grip.

JR: You’ve been wrestling for a long time; do you have any notable wrestling achievements?

NK: In high school, I was a Vermont State Champ. In college (division three), my record was 105 wins and 21 losses in four years. It’s pretty tough to have 100 wins at a college level. I’d say for a college wrestler, if you get 25 matches in one season, you’re doing pretty well. I’m sure people get more depending on your where you are.

I was a decent high school wrestler; I pulled off a state championship. I didn’t come from a real strong high school. I just worked real hard in the summers to improve. I think my work ethic took me to the next level.

In college, I was a three year captain. I won a conference tournament and qualified for NCAA twice. My senior year I wrestled the national champ in the first round of the NCAA tournament and I lost a close match, but I was somewhat injured so I was mentally kind of out of it.

JR: How did you become interested in fighting?

NK: In my junior and senior years of college some of my peers were fighting professionally in the New England area. They were having success in the sport and they would tell me to do it because they thought I would do well. But I didn’t really have the heart for it at the time. But as the sport grew, I thought maybe I can do this. I’ll do a fight, what’s one fight?

The first two fights were like wrestling. I’d go in there and take them down. I haven’t really taken any real hard punches. I mean I have, but nothing that’s really stunned me yet. I don’t fear getting hit.

JR: Have you always been a fan of the sport?

NK: Oh yeah. I mean just like any other kid growing up, we’d get the UFC fights. It was always something we thought was awesome. I never thought I’d be the one to do it, but it worked out.

JR: What were your goals when you began fighting?

NK: To win, I imagine. You didn’t do it for the money around here [New England] when you first started out. My first fight, I probably made just enough money to pay all of my doctor’s bills just to get my [pre-fight] medical bills done. And then hopefully you don’t get hurt.

It was more or less the love of wrestling. I wrestled all of my life and all of a sudden it’s coming to an end- and sure, I’m probably going to coach forever- but competitively, it’s done. And here are my friends that are fighting and making money at it. But I didn’t start fighting for the money; I did it for the love of competition. It’s just a perk now that you can actually make a dollar.

The team I fight for, “The Green Mountain Boys,” doesn’t really fight for money. We fight for the love of the sport because we’re all wrestling background. But the money helps; it puts pads on the wall and buys you gear.

JR: What is your MMA record?

NK: I am 8-1. I have one loss by disqualification because I ended up doing an illegal elbow (12-to-6) to his rib that broke his rib and he couldn’t continue.

But a week later they passed a law providing that you can do pretty much any kind of elbows you want. So it [the loss] probably should have been thrown out… should have been a “no contest.” It was the first round, I took that guy down and was dropping bombs on him, and it honestly should have been an easy win for me. I guess I wasn’t that smart about it [the elbow]. They said it was straight down (12-to-6) to the ribs. But I hit him three times before the referee stepped in.

You learn from your mistakes. I learn more from a loss than from a win.

JR: Which victory is the most important to you and why?

NK: I hold two belts for two different organizations. One of them is from a promotion called “Reality Fighting,” run by Kipp Kollar. The other belt is from “Full Force Productions,” run by Mike Littlefield.

I would say my last fight probably because I want to improve. My last opponent [Gabrial Santos] wasn’t that good of a striker but he was really good on the ground; he’s a black belt in jiu jitsu out of Team Link. The game plan was to try and stay on my feet and it worked and I did everything I think I needed to do to win.

Probably right now, each fight I fight is the most important one to me, as long has I win. But I’m never really 100% satisfied with the way I fight. I’m never going to be the style guy that throws the kick to the head; I’m going to be the bull that gets the job done. I’m not going to quit until the final bell. I wish I had a little more style, a little more pizzazz, realistically to get that shot to get to the next level.

I tried out for “The Ultimate Fighter.” I met Dana White, this was in Newark, New Jersey. It was very interesting, there were about four or five hundred people and we were all in like one room and they call you in about fifty-at-a-time and Dana White and Rashad Evans were there and a bunch of people I didn’t know, who were probably big-wigs.

You’re sitting around this mat and they call two people at a time. Then I shook Dana’s hand and he asked me if I was 5-0 and I said, “yeah, I’m 5-0.” He said “you fight at 185 lbs, you look pretty short, you could probably fight at 170 lbs.” I told him I was 5-0 at 185 lbs and I’ve wrestled my whole life and in college at that weight and yeah, I’m kind of short, but hey whatever, I pack a punch. He said, “hey, good luck.”

They make you start out on your knees and it’s a thirty second go for grappling. And Dana said “I don’t care if you get submitted, I want you to do everything you can for thirty seconds.” And he told us to start and this guy just grabs a hold around of my knees, just shaking, kind of locked up, I couldn’t really get out of it, and eventually I snapped him down and spun around and put the hooks in, and “time.”

I thought, “oh whoa.” Dana said “thanks for coming out.” They [UFC] picks about two or three guys from each group of fifty and those guys go onto the next round, which is hands and they want to watch you hit pads. And then the third round is an interview. If you make it into the interview then you probably get a ride out to California to get your medicals done.

Unfortunately, thirty seconds is not going to show who Nate Kittredge is. Because there were guys that were ripping their shirts off and were very cut-up and had a bunch of tattoos and that’s fine, because that’s going to sell TV… you know attitude. But, if you’re looking for hard-nose fighters—that’s me. I just don’t think I got to show them a great representation of me.

There’s another try out for 170 lbs and 185 lbs classes, so I’m going to show them a before and after of me.

JR: Do you fight professionally full time?

NK: No, at my local high school, I’m the prevention coordinator for our school district. So like tobacco, alcohol, and drugs, I just work with at-risk youth. It’s probably like 30-40 hours a week. So my schedule is pretty flexible. If I want to take a fight and make weight it’s not a problem. I work at a school where if I come in with black and blue eyes, it’s going to be a conversation piece. I mean everyone there knows I fight.

But I carry myself in a pretty professional manner. I coach wrestling at the same school. They know I take fighting very seriously. I try to shed a good light on fighting, letting people know that street fighting is bad and you’re not going to get anywhere with that. Dedicate your time to something positive.

JR: What do you like to do for fun outside of training and work?

NK: I’ve been a carpenter all of my life, pretty much that’s what I grew up doing with my parents. I like building stuff. I pretty much play every sport, like pick-up soccer. I like to fish and hike.

I coach a high school team and we have a summer club which has sixty-plus wrestlers from our area so we’re traveling to tournaments. So I’m pretty busy with the sport of wrestling.

JR: What are your thoughts on Women’s MMA?

I think it’s cool. There are definitely some tough women out there. We’ve had a few come through our doors with 100% wrestling background and I feel they’d be a great fighter but they don’t fight as of yet. I think if women are interested in doing it, then hell yeah. It’s the same point of view I have on women’s wrestling because that’s always a topic of interest: should women be allowed to wrestle? Hell yeah, why not?

JR: What is your favorite way to win a fight?

NK: Knock out, man. You got to train to be the last one standing. I train really hard to go the distance every time and if I can get a first round knock out… I think a first round submission would probably be the best one because I train a lot of submissions, but when I get out there to fight, technique sometimes takes a backseat to brutality.

So I prefer to punch the guy if can go for the arm bar. But I don’t like to be on my back if I’m going for an arm bar because if my opponent gets out of it, I don’t want to be in a bad position. So if I go for a submission it’s going to be one that if it doesn’t work, I’m not going to put myself in jeopardy.

JR: What are your future goals in MMA?

If I can make some decent money and put it back into the sport and bring some better people in to coach me. There’s no doubt in my mind I can be a better fighter than I am, so if I could train full time, I think I could be as good as I could be.

JR: Any shout outs?

NK:  My manager, John Hagopian. He lines me up with the fights. He’s a great guy and a great friend. As far as I go in this sport is as far as we’re going to go together. Another guy I’d like to shout out is one of my best friends, Glenn Brown. We grew up together. He’s a 155 lbs fighter and someone to look out for.

Jacob Regar, is a law school graduate and is the independent lead writer for American Stand Up. He is also a practicing martial artist with a blue belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu. He co-writes a weekly blog for MMAJunkie.com about Ken Hahn’s experience as an assistant coach for “Team Mir” on Spike TV’s “TUF8.”