 There have been a ton of interviews that take the voice of a fighter and that focuses on everything from their trials and tribulations to their personal goals. When you think of it though, that fighter didn’t get there on his/her own. There’s always a team of people behind him/her that have assisted in the success. A huge factor to a fighter’s success is their trainer--the one person who continues to motivate the competitor when the body is feeling broken down or when the mental capabilities are simply lagging. The trainer is that little (big) voice in the fighter’s mind that never stops aiding in the focus of the day. I like to think of a trainer as a knife sharpener. It’s the trainer’s job to keep the fighter’s mind and body sharp at all times. So, what kind of an individual does it take to become a successful trainer who produces champions? Would it have to be that drill sergeant who consistently yells out "what is your malfunction?" Or does this person have to sound like a broken record, constantly slewing out redundancies and annoying clichés? Could it be possible that this person has to be slightly crazier than the fighter because he/she always has to be one step ahead of whomever he or she is training? It’s almost as if the trainer has to have a strong sense of determination. What does it take a fighter to respect a trainer? Does the trainer have to have a resume that marvels years of successful competition or does the fighter just have to be around the sport for so many years, that there’s a ton of knowledge just waiting to get out? Whatever it takes, I do feel that the person has to have certain strong characteristics in order to be somewhat of a guide in a fighter’s career. They do seem to possess eyes in the back of their heads, they do have a ton of patience, and mostly, they have to believe, not only in what they’re doing but whom they’re training. When I think of trainers, there are so many names that come to mind, but if I had to pick one that really stood out in my mind because of the intense dedication and maybe even the slight possibility that this trainer may be a bit on the crazy side (in a good way), the name that rings a true bell is Bob Cook or better known as "Crazy" Bob Cook. So, the million dollar question would be--why do they call him "Crazy Bob?" According to Bob, "if you knew where I lived, I think it would make more sense. I live three hours away from the gym. When I first started doing this, I was driving every day, to and from, and I also worked a full time job. So, that was kind of the main reason for the name." And if you’re wondering what his full time job was, it happened to be timber falling, otherwise known as logging. He still makes that commute from Norfolk, California. It’s up in the mountains, in the Sierra’s above Fresno, but only on Monday’s and Thursdays now.
Bob Cook, after his UFC win, showing off his battle scars with teammate Dave Velasquez.
So, what was it that made "Crazy" Bob, who was sure to dominate his weight class, stop competing? There were a couple of reasons as told in his own words. "I had a couple of nagging injuries that persisted on. Second, my fighting was very goal oriented so the injuries started to become more of an issue and then also, one of my goals was to go to the big show and do well and I felt that I did that." From here on, "Crazy" Bob took on a new role in MMA and that was to switch sides from being on the inside of the fence to being on the outside. He had proven himself and felt that what he had set out to accomplish, was accomplished without a hitch. Now, his role as a trainer/coach would become a new challenge and bring out some interesting experiences along the way. Currently, Bob has made a name for himself as a trainer/coach at one of the most prestigious MMA schools--American Kickboxing Academy (AKA) owned by Javier Mendez. Some famous names that have come out of AKA are the likes of Frank Shamrock, B.J. Penn, Bobby Southworth, Brian Johnston and many more. Some of the fighters that Bob currently trains or have helped train are a list of names such as Josh Thomson, Kelly Dullanty, Eric Duus, Rich Crunkleton, Paul Buentello, Bobby Southworth, Dave Velasquez and so many more. He also helps Frank too. Furthermore, for Bob, "I help out with the guys on Team Fresno when I can but I’ve been super busy lately and have been gone almost every weekend, which makes it tough to be with the family as well." With all this on his plate now, you’re probably wondering why the transition from somewhat simple to hectic? His transition from fighter to trainer started, according to Bob when, "Frank moved down to L.A. and I was kind of left in charge of what was Team Shamrock. It started growing from there. Before Frank left, there was Team Shamrock. We weren’t all really working together but when Frank left it kind of brought Bobby together and Bobby brought in J.D. (B.J.’s brother), who brought in B.J. We kind of made it a fuller circle. And when Frank came back, he became a part of that also." When asked about "Crazy" Bob Cook as a trainer from the words of Javier Mendez, "when he started cornering people, he didn’t know what he was doing, I had to give him pointers, but he picked it up real quick and went above what I do sometimes. He learned from me. He didn’t know a lot of things--the preparation beforehand. Now, he’s really exceptional. He’s a great student in whatever he gets involved. The biggest thing is his love for the fighters. He sacrifices himself for his fighters. Where I won’t, he will. He’ll do things for them that don’t necessarily make it right for him but he’ll do it. For instance, B.J. didn’t want to go out and I was trying to get Bob to go out, not wanting to leave him, Bob basically stayed with B.J. cause he didn’t want to leave his side. When I go to the fights now, I just tell Bob to take over. I used to do all those things, and now, he does everything. He does it right. He does everything right. The most important thing is his love for the fighters. He sacrifices his family situation for his fighters. Another thing he does is no matter what decisions he makes, he always goes through me, always asks. He’s extremely respectful and is not full of himself. He doesn’t have the attitude as if he knows everything. He asks and knows his weaknesses and is not afraid to admit his weaknesses. He’s humble. He’s not doing what he’s doing to become a great coach. He’s doing it because he cares about people. He wants to make sure they’re going to be okay. Another example, Eric Duus gets knocked out and they wanted him to fight again. Bob comes to me to ask--"should he be fighting so soon?" I said "no"--too soon, regardless if there’s no commission there, cause that would never happen in Nevada. He asked me one time, and learned from it. Now, he probably knows more about coaching fighters than most coaches. He has the fighter’s trust in him."
When a fighter makes that transition from fighter to trainer, it’s usually pretty hard not to get motivated to want to get in and compete once again. "Crazy" Bob seemed to have his ways of dealing with the occasional void of not fighting and just training competitors to do the work. "Occasionally, I miss fighting. When they do well, it’s easy for me because I’m proud of them and it kind of fulfills that but when they lose or don’t do so well, and it seems obvious to me what needs to be done in the ring, then it’s hard and I want to be like "hey, let me show you." So, what does he do to condition that mind to stay in trainer mode? "Crazy" Bob claims that the best way is to "stay out of shape. If I’m in good shape then I want to fight if I’m out of shape and I’m training with those guys and they’re kicking my butt and I’m gasping for wind, then I say "okay, I don’t want to fight." When asked about the likelihood of Frank Shamrock fighting again and if he would help him train for it, he responds "Well, if he fights again, I’ll definitely be helping him with that. It’s not like there’s one specific trainer at our gym. There’s a bunch of us and we all have ideas and we all add to it. You know, I have my areas; Javier has his areas, Bobby and so on. Everyone has their areas that they’re really good at and we all kind of pull together." The big question was if he thought that Frank would ever fight again as many have all ready asked. Bob "suspects yes. I don’t know when. There’ll probably be a time when we’ll see him in the ring again." If Bob had to give props to some of his up and coming fighters, it would be because they possess some unique qualities or skills that he feels we should be aware of. One that really took him by surprise was "Pat. It’s not that I didn’t expect him to do well it’s just that I didn’t expect to see him do as well as he did. He’s got 2 fights--one, a three second KO and the other one right at 5 minutes by KO. As his confident level grows with each fight, I think he’ll do well at 170lbs. He needs some more experience. And then of course there’s Mike, Eric, Josh, Rich and all the other guys that deserve recognition cause they’re all up and coming. The fighter that he feels has the most discipline would be "in the off-season, Bobby Southworth. He trains the hardest out of any of the fighters when he has nothing planned or scheduled. When a fight is coming on, Bobby of course trains consistently but Frank trains like a mad man and Josh Thomson does also, when he has a fight coming on. The rest of the time, it’s like pulling teeth with Josh but when he has an actual date, I have to tell him to stop. And then, of course, myself." Josh Thomson testifies that as a trainer "Crazy" Bob is "Crazy Bob is the fucking man! As a trainer he’s awesome. He can always put the beat down on anyone of us at anytime. For an old man, he still moves pretty good. He raised my level a lot about on how to be patient and work for position and kind of slowly go where you need to go. I look up to him in some way as a mentor. Despite the age difference, we’re more like best friends. We’re really good friends. You can tell that other fighters respect him. You can see it when you go to other events. They say "hey, that’s Crazy Bob." He’s the guy that trained us and brought us up. He’s earned respect and therefore his fighters have earned respect. He’s tough as a trainer; he’s firm but fair. He doesn’t crack the whip. As long as you do your business, he’ll get you a fight. But you have to show it in training, that you’re putting in the work. He’s like the guy from "King of the Hill," cause he’s kind of the boss but he’s one of the guys too. The one quirky thing he does is he never takes any nice clothes. His idea of nice clothes is a pair of four-year old wranglers, his flip-flops, and his cowboy wrangler shirt with the silver buttons and a silver lining. He wears the really tight jeans. He doesn’t wear the cowboy shirt very often but he does wear the wrangler jeans. Bob is mountain man Bob. He’s just Bob. I always have to bring nice clothes for him and dress him up to go out. He always asks me "what slacks am I wearing or do I have a belt." He even wears my shoes, socks, the only thing he doesn’t wear is the underwear." All in all, training fighters is something Bob enjoys doing but it also seems to be growing into managing fighters. "It just seems to be easier for me to do it then have a second party do it." When people hear the name "Crazy" Bob, they for some reason associate him with what they call a "shit-eating grin." When asked about this so-called smirk or grin, he simply replied that he’s not trying to tell us something and it’s not on his face for any particular reason, "it’s a Crazy Bob signature." His training partner Bobby Southworth, when asked to choose a cartoon character that best marvels "Crazy" Bob best describes that smirk. According to Bobby "As a cartoon character, "Snoopy" best represents Bob. Snoopy always plays it off that he doesn’t know anything but he actually does. Bob always tries to play the dumb country bumpkin but he’s really not. That’s why he always has that smirk on his face." It doesn’t stop there as Bobby Southworth tell us a little story that would help us have a better understanding of "Crazy" Bob. "My definition of Crazy Bob--why he is Crazy Bob to me is because he was never raised like us. He was raised on a boat (growing up) for the first 14-15 years of his life, sailing from island to island. He’s like one of those guys that you read about in history, trying to conquer the four corners of the world. The term "jack of all trades, master of none" doesn’t apply to Bob. Bob is the "king of all trades," cause he’s mastered pretty much everything he’s ever done. He feels that he missed out cause he doesn’t have an education, but the stuff that most people learned in books, Bob accomplished hands on. They should call him "Super Bob" not "Crazy" Bob. He’s more like pioneer. In MMA, he’s a pioneer, 2nd generation, along with Frank Shamrock. He’s really the first guy to come out of that system, that line from the Lion’s Den. No one else really came out of there except for Frank and then, Bob. My association with him has helped my career. He became my manager and I’m definitely staying busy thanks to him. My plate is really full. He’s so much more involved in what I’m doing. He’s there to see what our style is and our strengths."
Bob with Frank Shamrock and Ryan Bow at AKA.
Training some of the top fighters of today, Bob has had the insight on things the rest of us could only guess on. Helping train the likes of B.J. Penn has been a positive experience, despite the outcome of his title shot. The question here is, will B.J. be coming back to AKA to train? As Bob states, "I don’t think so. They have a ring in their place now in Hawaii and he’s got a bunch of good guys to train with from home. I think they learned how to train for what they needed to do. Other than, if he just wants to come back to San Jose to train for a while, but I don’t think there’s any real reason why he needs to. I think he has most of what he needs in Hawaii. I don’t believe he’s blaming us for his loss. Everybody reacts to a loss differently and it’s hard to really know, but of course I’d like to see him back in the gym because I like him as a friend and as a training partner, he’s a lot of fun." Of course, a lot of people would dread to have to be B.J.’s next opponent for reasons other than him coming off a not-so-anticipated loss. Bob’s comments on that were pretty clear that it doesn’t matter, "whether you’re the next opponent or an opponent in general. It’s not going to be easy treatment."
American Kickboxing Academy has made a name of itself for being the ideal training facility in MMA. Team AKA seems to have grown steadily throughout the years, stemming from Team Shamrock to a combination of fighters becoming one solid team, representing AKA. As more fighters come through those training doors, it’s almost as if there has to be some type of quality control based on the level of fighters that want to be a part of the team. So, what does one do when facing situations like this--have tryouts or continue to accept walk-ins that want to be a part of an elite team? Bob’s answer is simple, "we do both. And even if you walked in with the skill, one way or another, you’re going to get some kind of tryout whether it’s informal or formal. For a formal tryout, they have to go through a bunch of conditioning and cardiovascular, which breaks the bodies down and then at the end of it, they have to do the fighting aspect of it, wrestling, kickboxing, boxing, no holds barred. Mainly the tryout in the past has been more geared to checking their heart and motivation in terms of how bad they want it. As times have changed, that’s pretty much no longer enough. Now, you need to come in with heart, with desire, and the skills. Because it takes too much a time investment to train someone from zero at this point and time. Hopefully, you’re coming in with an existing background." So, for all you potential hopefuls looking to be a part of a rocking team, be prepared! There’s always that element of some sort of initiation for newcomers. As "Crazy" Bob states, we don’t have anything formal. Informally, they seem to end up unconscious a lot and I don’t know whether that’s on purpose or part of the learning curve." Bobby Southworth is considered one of the veterans at AKA and is also the jiu jitsu instructor at AKA. Unfortunately, he suffered a loss that was considered quite an upset. Most people classified that knockout a "lucky punch." In Bob Cook’s mind, a lucky punch is defined as "Bobby got caught and he was hit hard and was knocked clean out and there was no recovery. But on the other hand, I don’t think he has anywhere near the stand up where he could hang with Bobby so I guess with that definition, he did get lucky." On a recap of his match, Bob wouldn’t classify it as a "lucky punch" because "luck doesn’t happen by accident. I saw his opponent shooting and throwing the overhand right when he was warming up. So, obviously it was something in his arsenal that he was planning on using. It did catch Bobby by surprise but at the same time, I would say those guys could probably fight 10 times in a row and I’d be surprised if that happened one out of ten times." At a recent event, Team AKA competed as a team against Chris Brennan’s team. Bob states that "we did well. We had two wins and one loss. The part that I thought would be the for sure win ended up being the loss. Eric Duus got cracked on the feet and that was the fight. They were mixing it up and Eric got a couple of takedowns. I thought all three fights were competitive. Pat’s fight was good. Once he got his confidence in the ring, he just smashed his opponent. Rich’s fight was awesome from beginning to end. They had a war. Bobby was supposed to fight but that wasn’t part of the team bouts. But then the riots broke out and Bobby didn’t get to fight." As a trainer, it’s essential to know what they’re training regime is all about. For Bob, "I try to look at each fighter as an individual and there’s not one set formula, that this fighter needs to do a, b, and c and then, they’ll be ready. I look at it as well, we may be able to pick up d, e, and f and that would make them complete. I try to do everything according to their body type, skill level and not one style of fighting. We have a large variety of fighters in our gym. We have professional kickboxers, boxers, and of course MMA specialists, jiu jitsu people at our gym, and submissions people at our gym. We also have Muay Thai kickboxing as well. We can utilize it all." Bob hopes people "continue to keep an eye on our guys and I hope we have a few more champions out of our gym. Of course, B.J. would be the first choice. He was real close to getting it the last time. I think the next opportunity he gets at the title, he’ll take it. As for the rest of the guys, they have a bit of fighting to do before they’re looking at a title shot. I know B.J. will get to see another title shot pretty quickly." "Crazy" Bob is referred to in more ways than one. However, it seems to be the general consensus that he is a man of true selfless dedication, determination, patients, a big heart, and definitely a bit crazy. His compassion for the sport and for others is best summed up by his longtime friend and teammate--Frank Shamrock:
"He’s one of the best trainers in the world because he always gives 100% of himself, including his body. Originally he came to me at the Lion’s Den and he was one of my first students. When I left, he was my first student in San Jose. He helped me find the school (co-found it) and he is the lead trainer of our fighting team. As a student he picked things up really fast. He trained in Martial Arts his whole life. His dad was a black belt under Ed Parker and his granddad was a professional boxer. He all ready had 20 years of martial arts training when he came to me. So, he was a very ready student. He searched me out. I fought in the UFC’s and he literally called me on the phone one day and I told him to come on down and he showed up in his logging stuff. His Levis was covered in sap. He looked like he just crawled out of a meat grinder. He drove a giant truck and had his steel toed boots. He never said anything he just came and trained and left. He was a traditional student in that way. I found out what he was doing later on. Bob is a real mountain man. He carved his house out of a side of a mountain. He carved a road. It’s amazing. A funny story that I’ll never forget is when we went to Washington at an event out there. We only had one hotel room to share between the three of us--Kelly, me, and Bob. We were the first athletes that arrived. We were really tired and we just wanted to crash--get a nap. I got a bed to myself and Bob and Kelly had one bed to share. They were too tired to care. They crashed out and I woke up cause I was hungry and the funny thing was I saw Bob had Kelly perfectly spooned (not touching him or anything), dead asleep. I started laughing really loud and they woke up and they looked at me, looked at each other, and then crashed back down. They looked like husband and wife. Let me tell you about just how compassionate he is. We had a fighter named "Joe Walsh." He was prepping Bob for a fight--sparring. I was giving Bob advice on what to do and he completely knocked him out to the point where he was out for several minutes--kicked him in the neck. I said "Bob--what the hell are you doing?" He immediately became highly emotional. I ended up consoling Bob. You could see it in his eyes that he was completely traumatized. He felt absolutely terrible. Shows you the compassion inside the man. Instead of gloating and having a power trip, he was traumatized. Me, I’d be dancing around the guy. When I saw that, I realized how compassionate he was. He didn’t mean to hurt him. "Crazy" Bob does this for the essence of the sport, certainly not for the money cause he’s not making any." Today, you’ll find Bob Cook training K-1 and Pride fighters flown over from Japan, his own team of fighters from AKA, or submission class to the beginners on any given night. Cook is a trainer, a fighter, and one of the greatest all around human beings in the sport of MMA who is giving back to the discipline every day that he’s not on the road home to his wife in the mountains of Central California. Bob is still "Crazy".
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