German mixed martial arts pioneer Dennis Siver
climbing fighting ladder and is training for the
big match in July. By Frank Fuhrig
Dennis Siver emigrated as a 17-year-old with his family to Germany, where the martial arts he had started in Russia became not just a hobby, but a path to acceptance in his new home.
Now, the 34-year-old is a full-time mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter, the sixth-ranked featherweight (145lbs/65.8kg) and scheduled for a bout that could earn him a world title shot.
Competing since 2007 in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), the world’s top MMA promotion, Siver is 9-2 in fights since 2009 and has become the most successful German in the sport.
After a decision victory in April 2012 over highly regarded Brazilian Diego Nunes, Siver was booked against experienced Vietnamese-American fighter Nam Phan.
Before the December bout, Phan joked that the chiseled Siver was “built like a Ninja Turtle”. Siver retorted that he would fight like one of the cartoon superheroes, too, and delivered on the vow for the entire 15-minute bout, dishing out one of the UFC’s most thorough beatings of 2012, en route to an overwhelming decision over the durable Phan.
“The whole time, already after the first minute, I had the feeling that the fight was going well for me,” Siver said. “I was able to dictate the fight and strike him the entire time. He hardly touched me.”
Fight Metric statistics showed that Siver outstruck Phan 128-24 while overpowering him on the ground.
Last year’s victories earned Siver a February booking as the co-main event of a UFC event in London against US featherweight Cub Swanson, a veteran fighter whose trio of 2012 knockouts — at a weight class where MMA fighters are notoriously hard to finish — vaulted him into the title picture.
A month before, though, Siver suffered a torn meniscus in his knee and had to pull out of the fight, undergoing minor surgery to repair the cartilage followed by a few weeks of rehabilitation.
Swanson went on to win a clear-cut, February 16 decision in London over replacement opponent Dustin Poirier, a long-time featherweight contender. The Siver-Swanson match has been booked again for July 6 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada, giving the winner a strong case for the next featherweight title shot.
Swanson is known for flashy, explosive striking; like Siver, his attack is heavy on kicking. Swanson’s grappling is tinged with judo throws, though he has struggled against free-style wrestlers.
Identifying Swanson’s quickness as his greatest threat, the unflappable Siver, declared that his opponent’s unconventional style was “no problem.”
ESPN.com, the website for the top US sports broadcaster, speculated recently that Siver “could be closing in on a title shot in 2013,” describing him as “built like a hydrant, and (he) can kick a cup off the top of your head.”
Born in Omsk, in south-western Siberia, to a Russian father and an ethnic German mother, Siver was inspired in his early teens by Bruce Lee movies to start training taekwondo and other martial arts.
His parents encouraged Siver, who was small for his age, to learn to defend himself, and the training was fun. “I just wanted to keep getting better,” he said in a telephone interview in German.
The 17-year-old Siver was already competing in kick boxing when his family moved to Mannheim, Germany, in 1996, where he still lives and has been in training in recent weeks.
He spoke little German at the start, but within two months of arriving had found a kick-boxing club and begun carving out a social niche, and by his third month he was travelling with the team and competing. “I met so many people there, learned the language faster, and was integrated much faster,” Siver said. “Even now, I have lots of friends through the gym — all good people. Sports helped me so much here, absolutely.”
By 1997, Siver had won a German amateur title under the World Association of Kickboxing Organizations, before stepping away from competition.
Along the way he received a rigorous German vocational education, becoming a master car mechanic. But the call of combat sports was louder than the roar of engines; by 2000 Siver started training mixed martial arts, made his professional debut in 2003 on the European circuit and quit working outside the sport in 2009.
Arising out of diverse martial arts traditions from around the world, modern MMA is dominated by striking techniques borrowed from boxing and kickboxing, especially Muay Thai, along with diverse Olympic and folk wrestling styles, judo and submission grappling, particularly the chokes and joint locks of Brazilian jiujitsu.
The UFC is currently dominated by fighters from Brazil, the United States and Canada, with other top fighters from Japan, Russia, Belarus, Britain and Sweden. The promotion has made several international forays recently with multiple successful events in Brazil and Australia, and additional shows last year in Japan and China.
Outside Britain and Ireland, the first mainland European UFC event was in June 2009 in Cologne, Germany, followed by another show in 2010 in Germany and a sellout last year in Stockholm. Siver participated in all three cards, booking victories.
Siver was the first German signed to a UFC contract. Polish-born German fighter Peter Sobotta soon followed, but is no longer in the organisation after a 0-3 run.
Pascal Kraus, 25, was the next German to get a chance in the UFC, and after a victory in December is a promising 2-1. The young welterweight (170lbs, 77.1kg) has been training for more than a year in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
In the cage, Siver’s forte remains kickboxing, and he is known especially for his highlight-reel spinning back kick, a classic tae kwon do technique, and has twice knocked out UFC opponents with crippling liver shots to the right side of the abdomen.
But he has more submissions than knockouts in his 21-8 professional MMA career (10-5 in the UFC).
Ruggedly built at just 170cm tall, Siver’s guillotine choke — a front headlock that requires equal parts subtle technique and raw power — is a serious threat to opponents.
He stands out among European fighters, whose wrestling deficiencies are routinely exposed in the UFC, for having developed stout takedown defence, usually thwarting opponents who try to take the fight outside Siver’s preferred standup game. He sometimes trains with Germany’s Olympic wrestling team as a way of sharpening those skills.
“I’ve got to a point where I train everything,” Siver said. “I was a kickboxer, and for a long time now I’ve been doing Brazilian jiujitsu, grappling, wrestling, all of it.” – DPA
