When ‘HD’ Met ‘Showtime’

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To hear UFC heavyweight Patrick Barry and WEC lightweight champ Anthony Pettis speak about each other, one would think the pair were lifelong friends. The effusive praise and genuine respect present between the two Duke Roufus-trained fighters is a reminder of the great camaraderie that the martial arts can engender, especially since ex-kickboxer Barry only joined the Roufusport crew in 2008.

Below, Barry tells Sherdog.com about the first time he and Pettis crossed paths.

“When I first came to Milwaukee, Duke had been telling me about this kid named Anthony Pettis who called himself ‘Showtime.’ He had been telling me about him for a while. I hadn’t seen him, had no idea who he was, hadn’t heard of him.

“So I get to the gym, and my very first day at the gym, I had practice the very first day that I was there. He’s walking past me and I hear somebody call him Anthony. So, I tapped him on the shoulder, right in the hallway, and said, ‘Hey, are you Anthony Pettis?’ He’s like, ‘Yeah, yeah, that’s me.’ He didn’t know who this big guy was. No one in the gym knew who I was. And he kinda gives me the up-and-down, and I braced up to him really hard, and I said, ‘You the motherf---er I came here for.’ And I just walked off. I left and he was just stuck in the hallway, like, ‘Man, what?’ But I just told him that, just to mess around with him.

“So, practice starts and we get matched up... and he’s got a lot of skill. He’s got a lot of talent. But, like I said, no one in there knew who I was. So, I went up to him and just put him through, like-- I mean, I just punched him, kicked him to death for a little bit. He stood there and he took all of it, like he was supposed to, and I told him at the end of the practice, ‘Hey, man, you got a lot of skill, a lot of heart, a lot of talent... I promise you, I’m gonna beat the s--t out of you every day until you become the best in the world. I’m gonna take you to the limit.’ He still was like, ‘Man, who is this guy?’ But then, Duke announced who I was to everybody and he was like, ‘Oh, wow.’ And we’ve been friends ever since.

“I’ve just watched him grow, having local fights. I’ve just watched him grow as an athlete. When we’re younger, we might not have all the necessary maturity of a fighter, but we’ve got all the physical ability in the world. And over the last two and a half years that I’ve been here, I’ve just watched him excel so much with not only his focal ability, but his mental maturity in the fight world. Inside the Octagon, outside of practice, in his everyday life -- I’ve watched him, every day, just grow as a man. He’s really taken control of his life and who he is, and he’s learning more of who he is and what he is every day.”