A number of fight factories are coming to the forefront as NHB is growing in popularity, but one of them that has become incredibly well-known even though they are not lead by one of the "superstars of NHB" is the Shark Tank in Rancho Cucamonga. The Shark Tank has consistently supplied top-notch fighters at a moments notice. And I know for a fact that the Shark Tank is thought of as promoter's blessing because they can call upon these guys to fill in any unexpected vacancies immediately. The Shark Tank is run by founding member, Eddie Millis. Don't get me wrong, Millis should be recognized, not only for his team of game fighters, but also because of his enthusiasm for teaching. Even the producer of the television show Battle Dome saw this in Millis and hired him on to train the warriors and contestants for this past season's shows. Millis can inspire someone to train harder from just a casual conversation. In fact, after this interview, I no longer felt like digging into a pint of highly addicting, Hagen Daz Coffee ice cream and I jogged all the way back to my car. All kidding aside, Millis is not only excited about the Shark Tank, but he is energized about NHB and training for NHB. He has a gift for making you even more ecstatic than you are already about NHB too. I caught up with Eddie Millis right after the Xtreme Shootout event in Hawaii.

FCF: I'm sitting here with Eddie Millis of the Shark Tank right after Xtreme Shootout, which should have been renamed to Team Shark Tank versus everyone else. Tell us about the fighters that you brought here?
Eddie Millis: I brought Preston Hartzog, one of my heavyweights, Jose Lopez, a young fighter, Jay Martinez, who won the last Super Brawl tournament here, John Alessio, who won the last Super Brawl tournament here, and Victor Hunsaker, who won last time here too. We also had one of our friends and training partner, Erik Paulson's student here with us, Jeremy Bennett. He represents Erik Paulson, but he is here with the Shark Tank.

FCF: You have a mix of fairly new fighters and Victor Hunsaker, who has a number of fights under his belt. Tell us a little about some of the guys who are coming out of your school who have only a few fights under their belt?
EM: Yeah, if you look at our fighter, Jose Lopez. He's an incredible boxer. He's got to work on his wrestling skills a little bit, but the problem with him is that it is hard to find him a fight because he's about 135-140lbs. We would like to see him come up and see him fight in Japan against some of the lighter weights. Preston Hartzog, he's one of our guys. We want to get him down from about 280lbs, teach him wrestling and bring him up. Look for big things from Jose Lopez, John Alessio, Victor Hunsaker, and Jay Martinez.

FCF: It looked like Hartzog and Lopez are primarily boxers. Did you develop them at your school or did they come into your school as boxers?
EM: Well, Preston Hartzog came in as a boxer. He's an All-Army gold medal boxing champion, but this was his first NHB fight, so he was still doing some boxing stuff out there. We have a boxing trainer there [at the school]. We have wrestling training. What we try to do is build their strengths up real high and teach them counter-grappling, how to not to go to the ground. So they can knock them out using their strengths.

FCF: Do you actually encourage your guys to knock their opponents out? Or is that because most guys come in as strong strikers?
EM: Yeah, I think sometimes we go in a revolution. Sometimes you got guys that are real good wrestlers that will take guys down right away, but personally I like to do some counter-grappling and do some stand-up and lay into the kicks and box. Good boxing techniques never hurt anybody.

FCF: Most of the guys at the Shark Tank are very well rounded and with some of the guys you can see that they are skewed towards one side but are coming around. What do you think are the keys to creating a well-rounded fighter? It's kind of obvious to say teach a grappler how to punch and kick. Can you expand on this?
EM: We definitely cross train. In the case of a striker, we start off teaching him some basic wrestling, whizzers, like you seen them doing. I like to pummel underneath when in the clinch, sucking them up. Positioning, once on the ground, how to pass the guard, stay in the side mount position, and how to hit on the ground. I give them the basics and let that become their strong points. And then, from there let them grow.

FCF: How would you approach a pure grappler?
EM: A pure grappler? Oh, we will definitely get him into boxing classes three to four days a week and teach him to kick. What I think the biggest problem is a lot of coaches teach them how to hit on the focus mitts and to kick the bag, but they don't allow them to practice on a live body. So when they get in the ring and throw a kick, they are like, "wait a minute, that didn't work." So I get my guys out there. I, myself, personally kickbox with them. I get them kickboxing at the studio, full contact. We get over to the Lion's Den, cross train with Ken and those guys a lot. So we cross train a lot, so we get the actual feel of being inside the ring.

FCF: For a pure grappler, would you basically work on his striking from the clinch or would you just start working on his boxing to work on his general fundamental striking skills?
EM: Oh definitely. We teach them basic boxing 101, to work the jab, jab-cross, jab-cross-hook-uppercut, but they still need to be ready to clinch because, like you seen what happened tonight, one of my boxer kept getting clinched and he had to use that whizzer. We were working on that a lot with him because we knew that was going to happen. And now we go back to the drawing board and teach him how to work off that whizzer. How to go to a take down, reach for the leg and so on. We will build off of that like legos. [both laugh]

FCF: You had, what 5 or 6 guys tonight?
EM: We had six guys, five Shark Tank and one of Erik Paulsen's guys.

FCF: How many active fighters does the Shark Tank currently have?
EM: We have fourteen fighters. We train them, manage them, I'm their big brother, father, everything. It's been a tough three years.

FCF: Does everybody at the Shark Tank compete or do you have guys that just come to train?
EM: They can compete if they want to, they have to go through a pretty tough trial. We have about 75-85 students that train and we open the academy to anyone. There's never an ego because I know what it's like to be on the other end, not knowing anything, so we welcome everybody and everybody is equal to the Shark Tank. We just love to train.

FCF: How often is your gym, seven days a week?
EM: We are open six days a week. We have a branch in Rancho Cucamonga and San Bernadino and we will probably open up another one, there is talk of me and Erik Paulsen opening up a gym in LA.

FCF: Who teaches the class? Do you teach all of them?
EM: I teach everything. I teach a lot, mainly the submissions and kickboxing, the Muay Thai, and the western boxing, but I have a boxing trainer that also teaches boxing. We have some wrestlers, who work a lot on the wrestling, like Victor Hunsaker. He works a lot on it and teaches.

FCF: Are the two academies run on split days and you travel between them?
EM: I have Brian Warn, who was my fighter but blew out his knee runs the San Bernadino one. I just became the fight trainer for the TV show Battle Dome, training the warriors and the contestants, so I was busy doing that, working in LA, so it was impossible for me to get down to San Bernadino and Rancho Cucamonga, plus I teach a lot of privates too.

FCF: I almost forgot to ask you about the Battle Dome gig. How did you get hooked up with that?
EM: I went down and auditioned a few of my guys and they seen me working with some of the guys on the side and one of the warriors came up and asked me for some advice and I showed him. The stunt coordinator liked me and me and Erik Paulsen started training him and then the producer asked me to start training the contestants in kickboxing, so they kept me for the whole season. I worked on 22 episodes. I gotta tell you, the Battle Dome, the producers, the whole crew were great. That was one of the best experiences of my life.

FCF: A lot of people watch Battle Dome and think these guys are just huge, muscle bound brutes. But you can't just be a body builder and go in there and do well. Tell us a little about the warriors that are pretty impressive.
EM: We've got Randy, who plays Kuta. We like to joke with him and say that when he gets angry, he has super natural strength, and he does. He's 280lbs and I'm 190lbs, I've earned their respect obviously, but there was a couple times when he swung me around. You've got Chad, who plays DOA, who is strong. Michael Hearn, the body builder, who is also a Judo black belt. He's really good. Gary, who got hurt. You got, Stephen, T-Money. He's just one hell of an athlete, all-around. They are all incredible. These guys give their hearts out. They get hurt, I mean, it is real. I'm talking about legs snapping, muscles are torn. When me and Erik [Paulsen] train them, we don't let up on them. We train them hard. We sparred them, we punched them, and they really stepped up to it.

FCF: Michael plays O'Dell right?
EM: Yes, Michael Hearn.

FCF: To me, he seems like one of the most impressive warriors.
EM: Yeah, he's a Judo black belt. He studies with me in submissions and he studies Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. He's a hell of a guy, they all are.

FCF: This past year, they replaced the grappling portion with kickboxing. When training the contestants, how can you teach a guy how to kickbox when you have so little time with them?
EM: It's not the best. We get two or three sessions with them. It's about a couple of hours. And I basically teach them the basics, jab-cross, jab-cross-hook, front push kick, rear push kick, leg round kick and maybe a high kick and basically to keep their elbows in and punch. Don't go wild, keep your chin tucked, basic striking 101. I tell them that it's not so much about going out there and fighting, it's about staying calm because a lot of these guys were burning out in twenty seconds. They would burn out and throw wild punches. I said keep your focus and breathe. I think that it is more than teaching a technique. I really try to inspire them and get them to believe in themselves, let them know that everyone can be a champion. It doesn't matter how big they are or how much muscles they have, everyone can be a champion. That's my motto man, I give everybody a chance.

FCF: After training with those huge guys at the Battle Dome, what kind of advice and strategy would you give smaller guys when taking on one of those big men?
EM: Well, you definitely want to put them on their back. You don't want to go toe to toe because if they do catch you with a shot, you're going down. You don't want them to grab a hold of your neck because I have seen these guys do one-armed guillotines before. I like to shoot a low ankle pick and put them on their back and get position on them. Once you get position, as for me, I really like foot locks. When in doubt, lock their leg up.

FCF: Can you offer any other suggestions? When you say the low ankle pick, do you mean like a sweeping outside single?
EM: Yeah, ankle pick, a double leg, getting inside of them and putting them on their back.

FCF: I expect those guys to sprawl out if you just shoot in on them.
EM: Yeah, they are going to sprawl, but that's when you counter from the sprawl. You look for a hammerlock or a rolling knee bar, you keep moving. What a little guy has, compared to a big guy, is speed and agility, so you keep moving and moving and something is going to open up for you.

FCF: Do you have any new fighters or up and coming stars coming up?
EM: We have a few guys. You saw guys like Jose Lopez, I've got a couple guys who are training to fight. We've got Jesus, who helped corner tonight and Larry. We've got quite a few guys and we are always looking for more guys to come and train with us. No egos, like we said, the gym is open and we definitely fight all over the world. I don't know the exact number of fights that we have, but I think tonight put us up to 99 wins now as a team. So I feel really blessed. I want to thank the Hawaiian people, T. Jay [Thompson], Monte [Cox], and everybody.

FCF: How do people get in touch with you?
EM: They can email me at sharkeddy@aol.com. My phone number at the academy is (909) 948-2291 and it is located in Rancho Cucamonga, California. You can get in touch with us about the other gyms through that number.

FCF: Thank you for you time.
EM: Thank you. I will see you soon.