With the fight against Sanders coming about so quickly, how does an athlete like Andre prepare for the challenge ahead? The mental side, Andre Soukhamthath told us, can be more trying than the physical.
“Especially in my circumstances, it could be very stressful. I’m 0-2. You know what happens when you go 0-3 in the UFC obviously” he said. “I have two kids. I’m not just a fighter. I have a job, I have two jobs. I have two kids, I have a wife. We’re in Florida, we’re away from all our family. It’s just us. So it’s a lot of responsibility that I take on day in and day out.”
“When I’m in fight camp I kind of get a little more selfish, and put a lot of weight on my wife’s shoulders” he continued, proving how crucial family is for an athlete on the rise. “And that’s what’s happening this week really. My wife is really holding it down, she’s holding down the fort for the next two weeks. She knows what’s up, she has her own job, she has a great job, but at the same time, we have kids too. I have a great support system.”
So for the next little while, she bears a bit more of the load. “From us going 50-50, helping out with the kids, driving them to school and working, it’s kind of like 10-90 now” he estimated. “I’ve got to be in the gym, I’ve got to focus on training, I’ve got to eat the right things. I’ve got to do this and I’ve got to do that. Really, the only things that have changed are at home.”
“The things at the gym don’t change. Me and my coaches are on the same page. I’m consistently in the gym working hard. So nothing in the gym changes,” he emphasized, “the only things that change are at home.”
The gym, these days, is Hard Knocks 365, and Combat Club, both in Florida, where Soukhamthath has relocated.
“I do some training at Combat Club, I do a lot of my jiu-jitsu there with Gilbert Burns, a very good friend of mine, also my professor. I also train at the new facility Hard Knocks 365, that’s where Henry [Hooft] is doing most of his training, him and Greg Jones and Coach Kami” he told Cageside. “We do a lot of training here, our pro fight training, it’s all here in Fort Lauderdale. It’s a little bit of a drive for me, about 40 minutes versus Combat Club being 10 minutes, but it’s all good.” The main draw? “I go where the quality’s at, that’s why I’m here. Quality coaches and quality training partners.”
Once camp is done, Soukhamthath will head to Fresno, and enter the octagon for the third time. One key? Keep it away from the judges. Both of his previous bouts went to the scorecards, and both resulted in split decisions again him. That’s despite knocking Alejandro Perez down three times in their August contest. This time out, finding a finish would be a big plus.
“Absolutely man” he said of avoiding those pesky judges. “On the [Albert] Morales fight, I kick myself in the ass for going for the takedown. I could have won that fight, I could have ended the fight but I didn’t. But at the end of the day, I took it on seven days notice, and I couldn’t be mad at that performance.” That fight, of course, was his UFC debut.
The Perez fight is another matter. “The Alejandro fight, man, that I want to kill myself [for]. I beat myself up for that fight” he said with a laugh. So what happened?
I was focused on putting on a show, trying to make the UFC like me, trying to make the fans like me way too much. Obviously I’ve got the skills to be there. I fought Alejando Perez, that was his sixth fight in the UFC. He’d knocked out guys, he’d finished guys, he was the Ultimate Fighter winner, and I made it look easy, lets not lie. I made it look easy with my jab — I could have finished him, but I didn’t. I let the high altitude talk get to me, I let me being the villain in Mexico get to me, and I tried to put on a show.
Honestly, when I watch the video I just get mad. But when I was in there and dropped him with those jabs, it looked like his equilibrium was still there, so I didn’t want to gas myself out trying to finish him at high altitude. That’s the only reason why I didn’t jump on him. I wish I did, that would have gave me a chance to display my ground skills. But you know, shoulda, woulda, coulda. I blame nobody but myself for that.
So what will change at UFC Fresno? “This time you’re going to see the same Andre that you saw in the local scene” he said. “The guy that’s hungry, the guy that’s fighting for his family. The guy that’s fighting like he’s got everything to lose. That’s what got me here. It’s too bad that I shied away from it a little bit. I let trying to put on a show and the fans and stuff get to me a little bit. But I’m back.”
“I’m back and I’m better” he finished.
“The only way I got through life every day was going to the gym and just training. Training is addicting”
Getting to this point has been a journey, one born in part out of tragedy. Today, Andre Soukhamthath is a husband and father of two, fighting not only to be the best, but to provide for his family. Ten years ago, however, Soukhamthath was a young father who went through something no one ever should: the loss of a child. The fighter’s young son LeAndre suffered from Epidermolysis bullosa, a rare skin disease with no cure (treatments aim to ease symptoms and improve quality of life). The painful condition causes the skin and mucosal membranes to blister, and effects roughly twenty children in a million. Sadly, LeAndre passed away at just nine months.
Martial arts has been cited by many as a coping mechanism, and that was the case with Soukhamthath.
“I was nineteen when I lost my first born” he said, barely more than a kid himself. “I was really young, I was really stupid. You know when you’re nineteen, man – that was ten years ago for me. I’ve grown so much through that time.” The pain of losing his son drove him to the gym. “The only way I got through life every day was going to the gym and just training. Training is addicting. Training MMA is addicting anyway, but when you’re trying to relieve stress and think about nothing but the gym… when I’m at the gym, it’s my sanctuary. I think about nothing but letting go of my feelings and getting better.”
That is something that has stayed with the fighter ever since. “I can say to this day, it still does that for me. That’s why I’m so consistent with training” he continued. “That’s the only thing that gets that bad energy out, that sad energy out. No matter how long it is, it hurts every day. I need to get rid of that feeling, and this is a way to do it. So it definitely saved me.”
While Soukhamthath has come a long way, his first born will never be far from his heart. And he’s giving back, taking part in the Boxing for Life children’s fundraiser in Florida earlier this year, as well as the annual EB Awareness Week.
“EB awareness week, I try to do something every year. This year I just blew up. Things haven’t really gone my way in the octagon, but my fan base has grown quite a bit. I try to use my status so I can keep my son’s memory alive” he told us of his efforts, a glimpse of which you can see here. “There’s a lot of other babies in the world that are going through what my son was going through too, so I’m back to my calling to try to get the word out, because not many people know what EB is. I’m glad I can get the word out like that. I’m always giving back to the community, I love working with kids. That was my job for a long time. That’s what the future is, our kids.”
“Whatever I can do to give back to the kids, I try my best to do it.”
Soukhamthath is representing more than just himself and his family when he walks to the octagon Saturday. He’s also carrying the flag for an entire people, as the first Laotian fighter in the UFC. So what does being the first Lao fighter signed by the UFC mean to him?
“It means a whole lot to me” he told us. “It’s something I wanted to do, I wanted to be the first Laotian fighter in the UFC. And it happened, it’s in the history books, that’s going to be forever.”
The legacy doesn’t stop there, however. “My kids can live with that legacy. Now it’s up to me to make that legacy better. It’s easy to forget the first signed Laotian fighter that went 0-3 and got cut or whatever. I’m trying to make a statement here, now my dreams just got bigger. My goals just got bigger.”
Of his losses, Soukhamthath said that “I think I got caught up living in the hype, living in my dream. I was still training, but I didn’t get the job done in the octagon. At the end of the day, all the marketing, all the press, all the history that I made is going to be s***, really, unless I win the damn fight and stay in the UFC.” It means a lot to him, “because this is where I want to retire. I want to make a career in here, I want to make a name for myself in here. Not just with the Asians or the Lao people, I want everybody from all around the world to know my name.”
Like he said, the dream got bigger — and now it’s time to make the dream reality. “Absolutely. It’s not easy, but we try – all of us.”
Andre Soukhamthath meets Luke Sanders at UFC Fight Night 123 in Fresno, CA at the Save Mart Center on December 9. The fight airs on Fox Sports 1 (The Fight Network in Canada).
