Boxing coach reflects on his history with the Brothers Diaz: 'They didn't mess around'
Richard Perez can't remember precisely when his father began teaching him to box, along with his older brothers. The elite boxing coach just knows that it was one of the very first things he ever learned.
"I don't remember [when I started boxing]. I was little," he tells FOXSports and the Deep Waters Podcast (below).
"That was one of the first things we learned and I didn't like it because I was the youngest, and I used to get beat up by my brothers. I used to cry and take my gloves off. My dad would get mad and say, 'Come on, you big baby!' (laughs)."
All those Fresno backyard sparring sessions with his older, bigger brothers at their father's prodding paid off for young Richard, however. Once he got his mitts on kids his own age and size, he realized that he'd learned a bit, developed a thick hide, and was now free to start enjoying boxing.
"Oh yeah, it really toughened me up," he says.
"I had the passion for it. Once I got to go out there and start sparring with people [I started to enjoy it]. As soon as I started, I took control. It was like walking in the park, a first. When you get a little more competitive, it gets harder, but still, I had a lot of experience, and it helped. When you spar with someone who is better than you, or bigger than you, it makes you stronger and more smart."
Once he became a coach, Perez took those lessons and applied them to how he trained his fighters, like UFC stars Nick and Nate Diaz. Despite being Brazilian jiu-jitsu-based fighters, the Brothers Diaz have become perhaps the best boxers in the sport of MMA under Perez's tutelage.
Perez began working with the elder Nick over a decade ago, before his UFC 47 bout against Robbie Lawler. Nick nolonger trains with Perez, but Nate does, and used his hands to great effect to beat Conor McGregor earlier this month at UFC 196.
"When you spar with someone better than you, it makes you stronger. That's what I try to do for my fighters. Like, with Nate, when he spars, we try and get him the best, so he can be on top of the game," he explains."
True enough, one of the Diaz's first sparring partners was Rodney Jones, the former super welterweight champion who Perez trained. Since those days, Nick and Nate have also worked with the likes of Olympic gold medalist and pro champ Andre Ward, who recently talked about how the Stockton brothers do more than hold their own against him in the boxing ring.
Perez recounts with great admiration how Nick and Nate asked him to spar with Jones long before he let them, and how even from the start they had a peerless gameness. "These guys would spar with anybody, even before I trained them," he remembers.
"They would just go out there and throw punches. They didn't care. They're tough kids. They didn't mess around. They would spar with heavyweights, and they only weighed 145 pounds, 150 pounds.
"I could see they had heart, and they were strong. They weren't scared. They weren't scared to get hit."
"I started Nick with Rodney Jones, he was one of my fighters. He had two world title belts - NABF, and NABO. Nick and Nate wanted to spar with Rodney, but Nathan was a little bit too young. So I started off with Nick," he says.
"After awhile, Rodney goes, 'man, Nick's getting good, Richard! You've really done a good job on him.' I said, 'I'm trying, you know?' That's when he knocked out Robbie Lawler. Nick learned real fast. A year, year and a half later, I started training Nathan."
To this day, Perez stays in his lane and says he strictly coaches MMA fighters like Nate Diaz in boxing, with the occassional reminder about the danger of kicks. He is no MMA expert, but Perez's boxing IQ, training methods with their focus on fundamentals and conditioning translates exceedingly well to MMA.
"[MMA} was totally new to me. I was watching and saying, 'what, these guys are going on the ground?' (laughs) I never experienced it all until watching them," he admits.
Nick and Nate's striking style has always featured volume, and accuracy, which have resulted in power. That is no coincidence, as Perez's philosophy is centered on volume and precision work.
"That's my technique - to throw a lot of punches, and be accurate," he says."
"That's just what's in me, what I learned from my dad and my brothers - throwing longer punches, and being accurate, and trying to slip through. Guys who have sparred with Nick and Nate tell me, 'they're like a spider! They've got a bunch of legs and they're throwing at me and I can't stop the punches because I can't get off.'
"A lot of people like to throw punches and then try and get away, kind of get a break. I don't let 'em. When I work mitts with them, I don't let 'em get a break. I push them. If they're going to stop, I'll throw punches and they can throw at me."
As for accuracy, Perez believes the difference between success and failure is concentration during training. "A lot of people just throw punches without even realizing where they're going," he laments.
"It's like shooting a bow and arrow - if you don't aim it, you're not going to hit it. So, they look at their targets at all times, aiming their shots while we do mitts."
After knocking out or wobbling the iron-chinned likes of Robbie Lawler and Conor McGregor, the MMA world may have finally gotten the false idea out of its collective head that the volume punchers Nick and Nate don't also have misleading power in their shots. Perez has heard the knock on his fighters that they don't have much pow in their peppering shots, for years.
Perez met Nick and Nate at a gym that had Brazilian jiu-jitsu, as well as boxing. The boxer didn't know anything about MMA before he started working with them, but Nick and Nate both impressed him with their fast progression and willingness to work.
He says people only think that until they've been hit by one of his fighters. According to the coach, Nick and Nate do, in fact, get their hips into their punches more than people realize, turn their punches over, as well as pair those with a pace and volume that can't be kept up with, and accuracy.
"It is everything you just said. It's the whole package. People think they don't hit hard, like with Rodney Jones," he chuckles.
"They'd say he couldn't hit hard, then a guy would come out of a fight with him and say, 'man that guy can punch!' It's the volume of punches we do. It doesn't look like they're hitting hard, but they are. They're setting punches up at the same time."
In the end, both Perez and the Brothers Diaz were quite fortunate to have found one another all those years ago. Though they are often perceived as thuggish guys with bad attitudes, those in the fight game know that Nick and Nate work as hard, if not harder, than anyone in MMA.
Perez's own style was borne of hard work, grit and toughness, which was a perfect fit for the hardworking Diaz brothers. Perez says that they have unmatched work ethics.
"Yes, they do," he concludes.
"That's what impressed me from the start. They are like energizers - they don't stop."
