A fighter that has gone largely unnoticed until recently is Jeff Curran. Curran has gained experience, but has always seemed to come up short when he faced opponents that would take him to the next level. Curran just hired Monte Cox to be his manager in order to add direction to his career. This year with the exception of his first fight of the year, Curran is on a roll. He picked up wins against, Max Marin, Bao Quach and he just beat Ryan Ackerman in the Ironheart Crown and Todd Lally in the WFA. The win that brought him the most notoriety has to be his knock out victory over another young fighter that has quickly made a name for himself, Baret Yoshida. Curran went in as an underdog, but proved that he had the skills and ability to change his strategy in mid-fight to pull out the victory. Now Curran is riding the wave of success. Offers are rolling in like crazy and fighters are all of a sudden pulling out of fights with Curran at just about the same pace. It is well past time to get to know more about Jeff Curran. Hell, he is even getting a documentary made about him.

FCF: Let's start off with your background?
JC: Well, when I was around 12 years old I started boxing with my Grandpa. He was a boxer in the military. I remember when I was very young, my Grandpa came after me and he told me to box with him. He threw all these punches and if I covered up, I got hit from all these punches and I couldn't run away. I was running and crying and he would say, "A man doesn't run. A man doesn't cry. A man's got to fight. Keep your hands up." There was nowhere to go, the more I turned my back, the more he wrapped around my back and brought me closer. When my mother found out about that [incident] and that my Grandpa signed me up for Junior Golden Gloves or something similar, she just flipped and pulled me out of boxing right away. That was my first fight. [laughs] He passed away about 10 years ago, but basically that was the beginning of me getting interested in any kind of fighting. Boxing led to wrestling, wrestling led to Karate and by the time I hit high school, I ended up getting involved in Thai boxing, which kind of led to Jiu-Jitsu. And from there on it was pretty much Jiu-Jitsu all the way through.

FCF: You are currently affiliated with the Pedro Sauer team. How and why did you choose to affiliate yourself with Pedro Sauer?
JC: I met Pedro through Frank Cucci. Basically at the time I met Pedro I was actually training at the Carlson Gracie Jr. school down in Chicago and it was a little too much of a drive. I really didn't have any direction in my training. I didn't know where I was going and didn't know who really to trust because Jiu-Jitsu was so new around here. I was just trying to get together with a bunch of people and that led me to going to a seminar with Frank Cucci down in Chicago. I went out to Virginia Beach to train with him and take a Pedro Sauer seminar. Once I met Pedro, he took an immediate interest in me and I think that more than anything my natural motivation for Jiu-Jitsu was something that I think he saw and thought he could build on. After that I just started traveling around and trying to train with him as much as possible, bringing him out for seminars, saving my money just to get together, etc. That was pretty much how that started.

FCF: And that grew into you opening the Linx Academy of Martial Arts.
JC: Yeah, Frank Cucci is the one that actually invited me to use the name Linx. The name Linx was his idea and something that he started in Virginia Beach. He ran that academy. And he had a few other people using that name and running a school like his. He kind of helped me organize the business, helped me with what I needed to do in order to teach the general public, the styles that we taught, which were Thai boxing, Jiu-Jitsu and so on. He organized that for me by throwing his literature my way. The Linx name is definitely not something that I developed. I was granted permission by Frank Cucci to use it, so I took it.

FCF: So you are a satellite school?
JC: I am an affiliate of Frank Cucci, just like I am with Pedro Sauer. It's just that the Linx system is, I think, more appealing to the general public. It is a lot more organized and broken down as far as curriculum goes, so I just kind of took that and taught my staff how to teach that program and we kept our Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu stuff different. I have three full-time employees, plus myself running the school and about three or four part-time guys. And we are up to about 120 students and growing, so we are doing very well as far as a business is concerned.

FCF: That was my next question, do you just train and teach full-time?
JC: About four months ago, when I decided to go to Monte Cox to start managing me again, agreed to give me the open time slots for me to train and take off a lot of the business stress off of me. The money that I make fighting has been an essential key to our survival as a business at this point because we are so new.

FCF: You also still actively compete in BJJ and other sports (boxing, submission grappling). You were supposed to have an exhibition against Jens Pulver (at the Greater Midwest Submission Wrestling Championship Nov. 1-3). Did that go on?
JC: The match with Jens never went through, but I ended up competing against one of Dave Menne's students. I forgot his name, but I ended up winning the match 2-0. It was a real conservative fight.

FCF: Are you still competing in boxing and BJJ or have you stopped that because your MMA career is taking off or do you feel those competitions are keeping you sharp?
JC: I will always compete in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu as long as my body allows it to. I might have to compete less, but I'll never let NHB take over that [BJJ] because that is a passion of mine. As far as boxing goes, I did some amateur stuff that went well, but I decided that I am not going to continue to amateur box, but if I get an opportunity to take a good pro fight, I might do that. In fact I am still training for that, but as far as the amateur circuit goes, I am really not going to get involved with that. I am just focusing on my NHB career and seeing where it goes and so far so good.

FCF: Any notable titles or tournaments have you won in BJJ that you would like to mention?
JC: My most recent gold medal would be as a purple belt in the Relson Gracie Nationals. Let's see…I have a silver medal in the International Pro-Ams as a purple belt. I think that after that last gold medal in the Nationals, I kind of quit competing in BJJ and started getting ready for more fights.

FCF: Getting back to you MMA career, it seems like you had a number of disappointing losses at seemingly the worst possible times. You racked up 3 wins and then you lost to Phil Johns. Then you racked up 2 more wins and a draw only to lose to Anthony Hamlett. Now you are on a win streak, any worries at this point?
JC: The losses on my record, I don't feel held me back. Honestly the most upsetting one was when I fought Anthony Hamlett for the HOOKnSHOOT title at 145lbs last year. I threw like two punches, he shot in for a single leg and I climbed up on him for a guillotine and when he slammed me to the ground, I was unconscious. It was like an 11 second fight. I really didn't think that I would get knocked out. I have been slammed many times and I thought that I had the opportunity for the choke so [I went for it]. That one kind of upset me because I really didn't get a chance to fight him. That loss has kind of haunted me, but my most recent loss was against Ivan Menjivar and that was my first fight under Monte's management. That fight was at 155lbs weight class and I lost a decision that night, mainly because I don't think my strategy or my game was played right with him. He was throwing a lot of punches and I didn't really throw back enough. But since then I have been on a roll and I have been trying to take smart fights. Fights that are going to help my career. Now we have five fights in four months, so it's time to slow down a bit and really think about our plan.

FCF: Speaking of Monte, you recently hired Monte Cox as your manager. With Monte's resume, this seems like a wise decision. Tell us the reasons why at this point that you signed on with Monte?
JC: When I first started fighting in MMA and I fought in Monte's Extreme Challenge Trials and I won. That led me to my first pro fight, which was Extreme Challenge 13. I fought under his guidance for a while at the beginning, but the problem was that some of the people that were training with me, who I took a lot of advice from because they were kind of like my coaches, didn't know Monte and they saw him holding events and putting guys in the ring and fights weren't paying that much, so they started convincing me that Monte was out to take advantage of me and everyone else and I actually started to believe it. So I pulled away from Monte completely and decided that I am not going to trust managers or promoters. At the time, I didn't think that Monte was managing me. He was just hooking me up with fights and I guess that I thought or believed that I was not on his top priority list. As time went on, I sat down and about six months ago, I decided with some guys that I have been working with for the last year and a half, that if I wanted to make a career of this, I needed a manager and I asked who should I call? I felt like I should call the guy who got me started, Monte Cox. I mean, he is doing really well with Jens and Matt and everybody. And they said, "do you trust him?" And I said, " I think I should have trusted him a lot time ago." I wrote him a letter and Monte called me back and we kind of let the past be the past and we built a little bit of a plan. I give him full trust and go with my career and I will just be ready to fight when he can hook it up. Ever since then, that has probably been the best choice I made with my career.

FCF: The fight that brought you the most attention was when you pulled off what many thought to be an upset over Baret Yoshida. What did that win mean to your career?
JC: That win probably opened up a lot of people's eyes, making them think, that Curran can punch, not just wrestle because I never really won a fight by striking. I think with Baret's reputable status and who is was and is, and what he has done in the fight world and Jiu-Jitsu community, it couldn't have even hurt for me to lose to him. So, the fight overall was a good thing for me and what it did was make me a target for some other people who might want to get a shot at someone who beat someone like Baret Yoshida. I am happy about the fight for that reason. As far as that fight, I really look forward to Baret and I getting a chance to go at it again. I mean, when I lose a fight, I always want another shot and that would be a good fight, so I look forward to doing that some day for something bigger.

FCF: At one point you were scheduled to fight 3 BJJ black belts (Baret Yoshida, Wagney Fabiano and Soneca Moreira) all within a month's time or there about. After the victory over the first BJJ black belt, Yoshida, you were scheduled to fight Helio "Soneca" Moreira at the Ironheart Crown. Why did that fight fall through?
JC: I don't know exactly. I believe initially Pedro [Sauer] and Helio Gracie, himself were pretty upset against the fact that I was taking a fight with another Gracie representative. I explained to them that I had already had the fight set up and that he was a replacement that agreed to fight me. I know that from his days of competition, he has some injuries, but whether or not he was actually injured in the knee, which was what ended up being the final reason for him pulling out, I don't know exactly. It's almost one of those controversial things where, as far as I'm concerned, I am glad the fight did not go on because I probably would have gotten a black eye from the Jiu-Jitsu community. For that reason alone, I probably should not have taken the fight. It's good for that reason, but I think it would have been a good fight and I was ready for it, but I think it was out of my control, out of Soneca's control. Soneca wasn't informed that I was a Pedro Sauer student and a Jiu-Jitsu guy, so I think a little bit of everything added up on their end, definitely not on my end, someone on their end definitely didn't want that fight to happen. That's my final word commenting on the subject.

FCF: Some have said that Soneca's replacement, Ryan Ackerman gave you a war that night. I read in a previous interview that you said that you fought conservatively. Did you underestimate him or did the last minute change of opponents affect you?
JC: I definitely didn't underestimate him. I knew that where he was from in Wisconsin and I knew that he had a good fighting spirit and a good background as far as that goes. Going into the fight, I remember being in the locker room and I said, "Guys, all my training was to stay on my feet and not go to the ground. I know my ground is better than this guy and I don't want to risk getting hurt. At the time I already had another fight scheduled, coming up right after that fight. So I decided that I really wasn't going to throw any punches. I threw maybe two punches standing up that were worth looking at and I am not even happy with that. I dropped my hands on purpose. I leaned back on purpose. I kind of wanted to draw him towards me, so we could be clinched up. He was really aggressive and he was not stopping, but as far as the fight goes, I had no problem with it. I just wanted to make sure that I came out of it unscathed. I knew that if I dominated on the ground and worked on the ground 90% of the time, then I win, especially if I am getting all the take downs and making him bleed. I just kind of treated like a Jiu-Jitsu match.

FCF: Help give our readers the life through the eyes of a fighter. Briefly go over all the offers that were put on the table only to be taken away or changed?
JC: Well, all of that started heating up after I fought Baret. I was scheduled to fight Soneca and I also knew that I was supposed to fight Wagney Fabiano. And if I won that fight then I would fight for the world title at the UCC. And I agreed to take the super bout with Leo Xavier just because it was for a good cause. That ended up falling through and for my opponent at the IHC falling through, it started becoming a stressful week. Here I am on the phone with Monte every other hour and Monte's on the phone with the promoter every other hour and we are just trying to get something straight, you know? That, more that anything, starts to stress you out, but I expect it and you try to keep focus and keep working.

FCF: I think a lot of people do not realize how many matches are set up and then fall through and how this affects a fighter. How does this affect you? Does it affect your training or your mental focus?
JC: Yeah, it definitely affects the training. My advice for anyone fighting is when it gets like that, I just tell myself to stick to the basics. I run, I jump rope, I grapple, I box and I try to keep my mind clear on any specific opponent. I learned that a long time ago, probably about four years ago, that I am not going to set my sights too high on fighting one person because the bottom of these things always fall out the day of the show. Where now a days, if the bottom falls out on the day of the show, we are going to have to renegotiate a lot more than just money. It does mess with my mind. It does mess with my training. It messes with my whole love for the sport, I guess. Everything gets challenged a little. I expected it to happen, so when it does happen, it feels like everything goes smoothly.

FCF: Where do you go from here? What do you have coming up?
JC: I am guaranteed my title shot for the UCC 145lbs world title. That is set for January 18th or January 24th. They are supposed to give us the deciding date this week. As far as opponents go, they are still looking. I know that I have seen my name in articles with Cole Escovido. The guy is like 7-0 and he's on a rampage and he is kicking butt, so I hope to fight those guys, who are doing well and getting some exposure because they deserve a shot at me and I deserve somebody that isn't losing and is doing well in the sport. As far who I am fighting for the world title, I just hope it is a tough guy and it's a good fight.

FCF: Obviously you are looking for fighters that will help your career and do not want to take any fights that would be set backs, but can a 145lber afford to be picky with his fights?
JC: Well, I think that I have a little bit of right to be picky at this weight because, like I said, I fought five guys in the past four months. I know some guys who fought twice in the past year. I have had six fights. I can keep busy. I can also fight at 155lbs, which I would rather not, but as far as who I fight and when I fight, I am going to leave that up to my manager. That's why I have him. He gets a fight that he thinks is good for me, then we will discuss it and I will give my opinion, but I will trust his judgment. I do need to think about paying the bills too, so if a fight comes through and it is for good money, I have to take it and even though there is a little more risk, like with a guy like Ackerman at the Ironheart, that fight was a fight that really wasn't going to do me much good. I won the title, but if I lost, I lost to a guy who's record, everyone knows is like 3-1. So I will take the fight, I just would rather not because I am doing well at this point and I want to build from there.

FCF: Anything you would like to say to FCF's readers?
JC: I guess I would like to make a little bit of a mention of a documentary on me by a private filmmaker by the name of John Berger out of Chicago, who is a friend of one of my students. He is doing a documentary of a day in the life of a mixed martial artist, but more so, my personal life, my business life, things like I talked previously in the interview. He has been getting a little bit of everything for the past few months. He has been traveling with me. He will be traveling with me all the way to Canada and get all the behind the scenes stuff there and everything that takes place between now and the world title match. And that's basically where it is going to end. It's going to be kind of a "Road to the Title" thing. I look forward to that. I think that a lot of people, whether they are veteran fighters or people just looking to get into it or just fans will take interest in seeing the documentary just because I think it is going to give a little bit of perspective on what mixed martial arts is all about. Not to mention that they will get to know me pretty well. [laughs]

FCF: When is the documentary scheduled to be released?
JC: We will be done filming it by the end of January and I think he needs about three months to prepare it and edit it. From there, he wants to release it to some film festivals and stuff like that, but I will probably make it available as soon as possible through whatever magazines and web sites that I can. So I look forward to that.

FCF: Thank you.
JC: Thanks. I appreciate it.