Joe Riggs has had his ups and downs, but his career could be looking up again after getting a shot on Bellator’s “Fight Master” reality show.
On people saying he seems 40 years old, not 30, given his experience: “Everybody always says that crap. … I want to kick them in the head. … Some guy came into the gym the other day and he’d made like a mural painting of me, and I look like I’m 70 in it. I wanted to strangle him. It was a good painting, but my face had so much s--t all over it. I was upset about it, but yeah, I understand that. I’ve just been fighting for so long, so people think I’m older. It’s good that my career’s taking a big upswing. I’m happy to be a part of things right now.”
On his biggest accomplishment: “My biggest accomplishment in my career is probably outside the cage. Probably beating addiction. Inside the cage, it’s probably getting the title shot in the UFC, getting a title shot in Strikeforce or being the WEC champion, something like that.”
On his lowest point: “The lowest point in my career was definitely after I lost to Diego Sanchez. I’m not taking anything away from him, but a big part of that was from addiction. Blowing an opportunity like that and being on drugs and lying to my family and all that stuff, I think that’s definitely an addict’s low point. Every addict has a low point, and if they hit their low point, they go up. Some addicts hit their low points several times … but that’s the time that sticks out. Right after my son was born, I was really struggling. I’ve had a lot of ups and downs in my life. I’m just glad to be finally on an upward steady swing.”
On taking pain pills before fighting Sanchez: “I took them the day of the fight. I took them probably 15 minutes before the fight. It wasn’t a good thing. … I got dropped by a little shot because [if] you hit a drunk guy, he’s going to go down a lot easier. Same thing, you hit a guy that’s [on] narcotics, [he’s] going to go down a lot faster.”
On fighting again in Rage in the Cage, where he started his career: “It’s embarrassing, man. It’s embarrassing to my family, to my friends, the people you think are fans of yours. I mean, it’s embarrassing. To go back to where you started, to go from making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, to go to fighting for a couple thousand -- that’s embarrassing. It sucks. It’s embarrassing on so many levels.”
On “Fight Master”: “My wife was tired of living like a fighter. It’s either feast or famine. We both agreed: If I go on this show and it doesn’t pan out the way I know it can … if I don’t go on the show and win it, then I’m going to retire. You’ve got to find out if I retire or not. I might have to retire after this whole thing’s over or I might just keep going on.”
On getting talked into doing the show: “I talked to one of the producers and I was like, ‘I just can’t leave my family.’ My son was 5 at the time. My daughter’s 3. Every day, you can’t take those days back. I was real hesitant to leave, so I said I can’t do it. They coaxed me with some other stuff and they just talked me into it, and I hopped on the plane and left. I take it back. That’s the biggest accomplishment, to be able to survive mentally seven weeks without my family and do what I did on the show so far up to this point.”
Listen to the full interview (beginning at 34:40).