The
Ultimate Stand-Up Coach
With
two winners of The Ultimate Fighter, Spike TV’s
UFC-based reality show, Marco van den Broek can
rightfully claim the title of the “Ultimate” stand-up
coach: Van den Broek coached both Amir Sadollah
(Combat Sports Center, Richmond, Virginia), winner of
TUF season 7 and Roy Nelson (Country Club, Las Vegas,
Nevada), winner of TUF season 10. However, van den
Broek never envisioned himself involved in the sport
of MMA, much less one of its most prestigious
televised productions.
Van den Broek began
training Dutch-style Muay Thai Kickboxing in 1993 in
his home country of Holland and had his first fight in
1994. He trained at several gyms in Holland, including
Siam Gym, later finding a home at the famous Maeng Ho
Gym. Run by well-known trainer Cor Hemmers, it is
known as one of the best gyms in The Netherlands and
has brought up such well known fighters as Ramon “The
Diamond” Dekkers, Dennis Crouwel, Farid, Spyridon, and
Carlo Dekkers. Training with twenty professional
fighters, including nine world champions, it is
needless to say that van den Broek’s own training and
coaching was top level through his 34 professional
fights.
Van den Broek’s first gym,
affectionately known as “Old Style Gym”, started in
1997 in Leeuwarden, Holland, was where he began to
craft his own style of coaching. In 2001, he and his
partner Petra Janssen van Doorn opened Calmaro Gym in
Helmond, Holland. Calmaro soon began to develop a
reputation for producing good fighters and its own set
of top contenders and champions.
On May 14th,
2004, van den Broek had several career-changing
experiences when he and one of his top fighters, Chris
Ngimbi, were invited to participate in
the WKA-sanctioned Mayhem on Mulberry Muay Thai fight
show in New York City. Says van den Broek of the
experience, “It was a dream to come true to come to
the US, and especially New York City.” Nervous about
being the foreigner at the event, Marco found to his
pleased surprise that the event was well-organized
with fair judging and refereeing. It was an experience
that made him eager to come back. Brian Crenshaw (WKA
US Representative) was extremely impressed by the
Dutch coach and his fighter’s first round head kick KO
over Emyr Dakin. Crenshaw applauded van den Broek and
Ngimbi for the well-fought victory and encouraged
Marco to continue to bring more Dutch fighters to
WKA-sanctioned events in the US.
As a result,
the dialogue continued after van den Broek’s return to
Holland. After another trip to New York, van den Broek
got an offer from Brian Crenshaw for an opportunity
for Ngimbi to fight in a large, prestigious event in
Atlanta, Georgia. Ngimbi would be facing Muay Thai
legend Khunpon Dechkampu, who had relocated to Atlanta
from Thailand. With over 200 fights to his name, this
WKA Intercontinental Title fight was a big step up for
Ngimbi.
In retrospect, Van den Broek marks
this event as the second significant step toward where
he is now, laughingly recalling his early distaste for
MMA. This mixed card of Muay Thai, professional
boxing, and MMA would be the beginning of Marco’s
experience with fans’ appreciation for mixed cards in
general and MMA in particular and would open his eyes
to the skill and talent required for this hybrid art,
which at the time was unpopular in Holland. Unknown to
Marco, he was brushing shoulders with big names, such
as UFC veteran Sean Sherk and TUF contender Dave
Kaplan.
After
subsequent trips to the US, where Marco and his
fighters participated in other WKA-sanctioned events
and Marco taught several Dutch-style Muay Thai
seminars and workshops, he was invited to bring his
WKA Intercontinental Champion to face Shane Campbell
of one of Canada’s top gyms, Iron Tiger, for the WKA
World Professional Super Welterweight Title. Marco
brought not only Ngimbi, but also Petra Janssen van
Doorn, who fought the now WKA professional World
Champion Emily Bearden. Naturally van den Broek marked
this as a huge opportunity not only for his fighter
and his gym, but also now remembers this trip as his
‘coming of age’ to the MMA world.
Van den
Broek was asked to come to the US early in order to
teach his Dutch-style Muay Thai at Combat Sports
Center in Richmond, VA, which hosts a variety
of martial arts classes (Muay Thai, Brazilian
Jiu-Jitsu, boxing, MMA, and Combat Wrestling, among
others), not to mention a very successful fight team.
During his stay, Marco worked with Muay Thai fighters,
and, for the first time, MMA fighters as well on their
stand-up skills. He was a little apprehensive at
first, as his experience in Holland with MMA had not
been a good one—Dutch MMA fighters at the time were
simply not on par with the Dutch Muay Thai fighters
with whom van den Broek was used to training. One of
the fighters Marco worked with at Combat Sports Center
was future Ultimate Fighter Amir Sadollah. Sadollah
had had a successful amateur career as both a Thai
boxer and an MMA fighter in the WKA circuit. However,
it wasn’t until the night of Combat Sports Challenge
19 that van den Broek became “very excited” about MMA,
especially during the Dwayne “Diesel” Shelton fight.
Marco was impressed by Shelton’s explosive techniques
and powerful transitions and throws and at the crowd’s
response—everyone in the house was on their feet. Not
only were the fans excited, but they were also
knowledgeable about the sport. This intrigued Marco,
as he was used to MMA fights in Holland receiving the
audience’s consternation as soon as they hit the
canvas. However, in the States, with grappling being
popular and the skill level of groundwork being
generally higher, the crowd’s interest and intensity
matched the action in the ring. This was when van den
Broek realized that he would always love Kickboxing,
but that MMA was the future of martial arts
competition.
Marco and his team would continue
their participation in WKA-sanctioned matches with
other fighters such as Twan Aarts, Angelo Wilkes,
Thijs Hoefs, Yavuz Kayabasi, and Hamza Ahnine. Van den
Broek also made a return trip with Chris Ngimbi for a
rematch with Shane Campbell to take the WKA World
Title. The association with Combat Sports Center and
Team Combat grew, as Amir Sadollah was sent to Holland
to train at Calmaro Gym to further refine his stand-up
and gain valuable experience with world-class stand-up
fighters. On Sadollah’s first trip to Holland, he even
got KOed during training by Belarus fighter and K-1
Max and K-1 Heroes veteran Ruslan Kaladko. After
Sadollah’s experience at Calmaro, he returned to
Combat Sports Center, where he was then picked up for
season 7 of The Ultimate Fighter.
Van
den Broek continues to refine his coaching and
training skills to be applicable not only to Muay Thai
but also his new love, MMA. Marco’s breakthrough came
when he went to Las Vegas to help Sadollah in his
final preparations for The Ultimate Fighter Season
Finale, where he networked with other top level
fighters and coaches he met at Extreme Couture and
Warriors Gym. Since then, Marco has continued to
travel back and forth between the US and Holland,
training both Kickboxers and MMA fighters, some of
whom have traveled from other countries, such as the
US, Spain, England to train at Calmaro. On one of van
den Broek’s trips, he met Roy Nelson, who asked Marco
to work with him on his stand-up. Van den Broek agreed
and traveled to Vegas to train not only Sadollah but
to train Nelson as well at both Warriors gym and
Nelson’s home. After Nelson made it to TUF season 10,
Marco helped in his preparation and cornered him all
the way to the season finale, which he won, making
Marco the first stand-up coach to have two winners of
The Ultimate Fighter reality show. Van den Broek’s
notoriety has continued to attract fighters coming
into his school to work on their stand-up. In
addition, the growth and popularity of MMA is evident
by the airing of The Ultimate Fighter and the wearing
of MMA brand gear by the general populace in Holland
when just a few short years ago, the sport was booed
by crowds. As Marco puts it, “You know it has arrived
when you’re seeing the TapouT brand being worn all
over the place.”
