Kirik is the World MMA Awards’ 2022 Lifetime Achievement winner; UFC president Dana White did the introduction (watch here). Broadcast on ESPN, it’s the most prestigious award event in mixed martial arts. Coach is one of only 16 recipients of the lifetime award, joining a legendary group that includes Royce Gracie, Abdulmanap Nurmagomedov, “Big” John McCarthy, Charles “Mask” Lewis, Jr., Randy Couture, Tito Ortiz, Wanderlei Silva, and Ken Shamrock. Significant accomplishments that led to the honor include:
- Co-founded NESF, the first MMA gym in Massachusetts;
- Wrote the first book on MMA (with NESF co-founder Dave Roy);
- Official records keeper for MMA, as called for by The Muhammad Ali Act, a US Federal law;
- Oversees rankings for the UFC and BKFC;
- Expert television commentary for MMA events in 33 nations;
- Co-founded mixedmartialarts.com.
- Co-wrote, with founder Kipp Kollar, the rules for NAGA, the world’s largest grappling organization;
- Officiated thousands of matches, and did the first MMA judge and referee officials training for Massachusetts and New Hampshire, when the sport was first legalized in New England;
- Cornered hundreds of fights, from first-time amateurs to multiple times in the UFC; and …
- … even appeared on The Joe Rogan Experience, #675 🙂
Biography:
On December 8, 2022, Kirik received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 14th annual World MMA Awards, in Las Vegas, Nevada. Presented by Fighters Only Magazine, and broadcast on ESPN, it’s the most prestigious award event in MMA. Coach is to date only the ninth recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award, joining a select group that includes the first UFC winner Royce Gracie, the dean of MMA referees John McCarthy, and the veteran voice of the Octagon Bruce Buffer. The lifetime award introducer was UFC president Dana White, while Fighters Only Magazine publisher Rob Hewitt served as the presenter.
“Our winner has practically done every job in MMA, with the exception of ring card girl,” began Hewitt. “… an innovator, a long-time committed ambassador, the official records keeper for every fight that’s ever been. He created the greatest community within MMA that the sport will ever see. … A fountain of knowledge with incredible encyclopedic accuracy, he not only built awareness from a media perspective over the best part of his career, he travels the world coaching, commentating, refereeing, and recording with the same level of compassion and commitment as he had when he first came into the sport he loves.”
Congratulations poured in from family, friends, gym mates, regulators, promoters, fighters, coaches, managers, and fight fans worldwide. A smattering are copied below.
Kipp Kollar, founder of NAGA and Reality Fighting:
“I truly believe Kirik has contributed more to the sport of MMA than any other person I have ever met! … Without a doubt, NAGA and Reality Fighting would not exist if Kirik did not do all he has for our organization. He has worked selflessly his entire adult life to promote both MMA and grappling and again, it is with my sincerest heart to congratulate him on this prestigious award!”
John Kavanagh, 2016 World MMA Awards Coach of the Year, and head coach of Conor McGregor
“Congratulations to Kirik Jenness on his well-deserved Lifetime Achievement Award. Proud to call him a friend.”
Lucas Carrano, former event director for BRAVE Combat Federation:
“By far, Kirik Jenness is the best person to ever grace our sport.”
Dave Ginsberg, 5th degree black belt in jiu-jitsu, and founder of Ginsberg Academy:
“You have built this world of mixed martial arts, constructing all of its pillars from competing to officiating to commentating to media, to every other pillar that exists.  And you have accomplished all this, while also, being the most friendly, likable, knowledgeable, accessible, helpful, and humble human in the building. Kirik, you are the definition of a true martial artist.”
Michael Schiavello, Combat sports commentator nonpareil:
“Congratulations of the highest order my friend!!! Thoroughly deserved!!”
João Vitor Xavier, Head of Media Relations, BRAVE CF:
“A lifetime achievement award is the bare minimum mixed martial arts can give back to a man who has devoted his life to the sport. Kirik is not just one of the most competent people in MMA, he’s truly the nicest person I have ever met – in any walk of life. … Massive congratulations to the one and only OG of MMA!”
Lenne Hardt, announcing legend: ***note: read this in her inimitable voice***
“Congrrrrrrrrratulations”
That award was the culmination of a half-century in the martial arts, that began in a far off kingdom, as Kirik explains below.
1973: Started Martial Arts
I started taekwondo in the mountainous Kingdom of Lesotho, after watching Enter the Dragon at the Holiday Inn. The teacher was Mogg Yoon, who would go on to become bodyguard to Jomo Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya. I also took boxing sessions in Lesotho with pop’s dear friend, a retired pro fighter, anti-Apartheid activist, and artist, named Mohau “Meshu” Mohkitimi. I wrestled in high school, but was terrible, a poor representative of both my grandfather and father. Grandpa was captain of the wrestling team at Lehigh, beat a circus Catch as Catch wrestler in England during WWI (he puked after), and went on to coach a national YMCA championship team. I still have his letterman sweater. Pops was second at states in Pennsylvania in high school, but got married at 18, and quit competitive sports to focus on family and education. He did become a founding member of the Harvard Judo Club though.
1983: Started Teaching Full Time
Upon graduating from UMass, I bought into a local martial arts studio owned by Larry and Donna Kelley. Made pizzas for a couple of years to make ends meet, and after that, have done martial arts on a full-time basis ever since.
1993: Started MMA
We gathered at a friend’s condo to watch UFC 1. I thought Teila Tuli would win, and was a little dubious about the bracketing; a student at the gym, Dave Roy, he got it. On Monday he convinced me to buy Rorion Gracie’s tapes and started tape training on his girlfriend. After a couple of weeks, he challenged me to roll, and tapped me, six times in a row. Finally, I got it – this was better. Without Dave, I might never have gotten it. But like Jack Dempsey said to a biographer, “Tell them everything I know, I learned from the losses.”
Dave Roy and I opened up New England Submission Fighting in November of 1993; as far as I know, it was the first mixed martial arts gym in my home state of Massachusett. There were of course already countless combat sports gyms, including some putting fighters in the UFC, but they were focused on individual or hybrid disciplines, rather than wholly devoted to this not-yet-a sport, so young it was without even a name.
The gym is still there, same address, nearly 30 years later. Dave became the first American in Western Massachusetts to earn a black belt in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, and is opening up an affiliate in Boston.
1996: Birth of The Fighter’s Notebook
I can hide my own Easter eggs, so was taking extensive notes on all these new moves. I was an active member of Tim Mousel’s forum at Defend.net, and one day saw an image of Rickson Gracie’s blue belt test; it showed the positions, and how you can attack from each, and how you can defend against submissions, and how you can get out of the positions, and how you can move from position to position. In an instant, from the chaos of my big bucket of moves, there was order. At some point, I realized that MMA was the application of The Scientific Method to the practice of martial arts. Now MMA became my calling, if it wasn’t already.
One day my studio got a new Mac with a Video In port, and screen capture. With just a little work, I had some images to add to my notes. Not long after, I realized that I had turned both the Rorion tapes and the Renzo/Kukuk set into booklets, with images and text. I offered the booklets to the content creators, for free, or in exchange for lessons, whatever.
Rorion was, to his eternal credit, too busy evolving martial arts to reply. Renzo was truly appreciative (at that point we were driving four hours each way every Friday to take a private lesson with him), but he said he had to defer to Craig Kukuk, who was too busy doing whatever it is he did or does to reply. So I resolved to change every move, and make a booklet of my own.
I began working on The Fighter’s Notebook in earnest very early in 1996, and completed it in 1998; it was the first book ever written on the sport, and at 600 pages, it was, for the time, reasonably well detailed. Prior to self-publication we sent galleys off to Becky Levi and Jeremy Horn, among others, and were offered some critical feedback. And finally, we were ready to take it to market. But how? The only thing I was sure of was selling maybe 14 copies to members of our gym.
1998: Birth of The UnderGround
Dave Roy had been posting a Technique of The Week from our book material on an aol page called The Art of NHB Fighting. Joel Gold’s Full Contact Fighter was an amazing resource to get the word out, but the heart of our marketing effort, as stated by Dave, was the Internet. I wanted to open NHB.com, as a tool to market the book, but Disney beat me to the url by a couple of weeks, so I went with submissionfighting.com.
I bought some software on how to make your own website, and was putting something together with decidedly mixed results, when a kid who grew up in my gym offered to take me out to lunch. He started training at 11, tough Jewish kid. Did the Golden Gloves. He said he was studying coding in college, and wanted to build the website. I declined but he proceeded undaunted.
“Anything you can think of, I can do,” he explained. Given that I was struggling to make a word bold, that was compelling, so I grudgingly accepted. Against my wishes, he added a message board to the site. I was a member of Mousel’s, and had nothing I could think of that was better. My site opened in August of 98, and that same month Tim Mousel added a $5 a year charge, and so people migrated to other pages, including my new one.
The UnderGround became a place for fighters, coaches, fans, all of us, to virtually hang out, and the site grew and grew into an online community. Ultimate Athlete magazine called it the 8th most important thing in the history of MMA, saying “if not for The Underground … the sport might have died, as PPV buys had sunk to such abysmal levels.”
Eventually, the social network arose, an easier way for fighters to connect with fans. Luckily, we know jiu-jitsu – how a smaller entity can use leverage to survive against a larger adversary. We built up a robust social network, over 5,000,000 Facebook followers in all, so site traffic remains robust.
We’ve changed urls a few times. My ma likes to brag about me, but when she told her friends the submissionfighting.com url, they thought it sounded dubious, so I eventually changed it to mixedmartialarts.com; by then the term was in wide use. When ZUFFA bought the UFC, they went with UFC.tv, and Royce Gracie went with RoyceGracie.tv, so we went to MMA.tv. Eventually, I went back to mixedmartialarts.com. The Fighter’s Notebook has long, long since dropped into irrelevance, but The UnderGround continues to thrive, thanks to its members.
1997: Began Officiating
I started refereeing grappling events in the late 1990s for the North American Grappling Association, and as Commissioner, helped create the ruleset. Today NAGA holds over 60 events a year, across the USA and Europe, still using a much-improved version of those rules.
Over all those years, perhaps my proudest refereeing memory is being kindly chewed out by Carlson Gracie, Sr. I was reffing gi in Chicago, and heard a voice, “Heferee, hey heferree, heferree.” When there was a break I took a sharp, irked glance in the direction of the voice, and went cold when I saw who it was. I stopped the action. Carlson, the man who invented sport jiu-jitsu rules, kindly explained what I had gotten wrong. I got another, actually competent ref, to take over me, and was in a strange way very happy – Carlson chewed me out. Me!
Working with NAGA founder and my best friend Kipp Kollar led to officiating MMA, beginning at the Rhode Island Vale Tudo in 2000, co-promoted with Kipp and Manny Neves. Main event was Tim Sylvia’s first fight; he of course went on to become the UFC heavyweight champion. Prior to the fight, Big Tim walked up and asked if I was his opponent. I stammered that I was just a judge. As it turned out, my presence at his fight was irrelevant.
The event was held in a gym with two rooms, with a ring in each. So everyone could see something, the bouts went from one right to the other, and back, with the crowd trying to move from one room to the other. In Sylvia’s fight, with Dave as ref, he took one large step across the small ring, and hit his opponent with an open-hand strike. The opponent fell to the ground with foam coming out of his mouth. Then the police arrived. Luckily at least one of the LEOs trained at the gym, and it was all smoothed over. Tim’s opponent came back from the hospital, was fine, and enjoyed some beers with us.
Manny Neves passed away in 2012. RIP friend; you are missed and never forgotten. My first MMA reffing was in 2001 at RSF 1: Redemption in the Valley, in Wheeling, West Virginia. That promoter, Jamie Levine, passed away in 2014. RIP, friend; you are missed and never forgotten.
2004: Instructional Tape Production and Retail
In 2004 we acquired the second-largest instructional tape and later DVD company in the market, with titles by Tito Ortiz, Chuck Liddell, and Chris Brennan, among dozens of others. The business expanded into a general online retail store, with a proprietary line of UnderGround gear. Eventually, it all got blockbustered. But it was fun, and instructional, while it lasted.
2008: Records Keeping
In 2008 I was selected by the Association of Boxing Commissions as the official records and suspension keeper for the sport. Supporting fighter health and safety is the effort that, by far, I am most proud of. Everyone talks about what’s good for the sport, but the state, provincial, tribal, and municipal athletic commissioners are, truly, the unsung heroes of MMA.
The records-keeping effort spun off a rankings system, and we now maintain the rankings for the UFC, Bellator MMA, and BKFC. That effort is now run by Chris Palmquist; big things are coming.
2017: TV Commentary
In 2017 I started doing television commentary in earnest, for BRAVE Combat Federation, founded in the Kingdom of Bahrain, by His Highness, Shaikh Khalid bin Hamad Al Khalifa, fourth son of the king. Unencumbered by the paramount necessity of putting butts in seats, BRAVE is showing the world what MMA should be. HRH’s vision is carried out by a brilliant retired fighter, Mohammed “The Hawk” Shahid.
Among countless other duties, Shaikh Khalid, a graduate of England’s Sandhurst (the equivalent in the US would be West Point), commands the Royal Guard’s special forces, and is too an athlete. He has competed in MMA and boxing, won his weight division in Bahrain’s Strongest Man competition, ran the New York marathon, swam 26 miles (42 km) from his nation to Saudi Arabia, and I can go on.
Since its launch on Shaikh Khalid’s birthday, September 23, 2016, BRAVE has held events in 29 countries, making it the world’s most global MMA organization. So far, I have particularly enjoyed Abu Dhabi, Bahrain, Belarus, Brazil, Colombia, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mexico, Morocco, Pakistan, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Slovenia, the UK, and Uzbekistan.
2023: Return As Head Coach
Former head coach David Roy studied martial arts for 30 years, becoming the first American in Western Massachusetts to be awarded a black belt in jiu-jitsu, and today holds a 3rd-degree black belt. An opportunity arose in Boston to serve a far larger market, and he gamely took it, establishing only the second NESF facility. Although David will appear periodically for seminars and to conduct belt testing, with Roy’s departure, Kirik re-assumed the head coaching role. This return follows Kirik coaching and cornering athletes from first lessons right up the UFC, continuously since the 1990s.
“I do a lot in the MMA space,” explained Kirik. “Serving as the sport’s records and suspension keeper, plus developing the MMA SI algorithm, has undoubtedly saved fighter’s minds and even lives; nothing is more important than that. The UnderGround was vital in sustaining the entire sport during its lowest period. Working for the vision of Shaikh Khaled to move MMA from the entertainment industry to the sports business is of paramount importance for the future. But my favorite thing has always been coaching, and I am ecstatic to again more fully embrace that role.”