Luc “Doberman” Rousseau - MMA Fighter
Luc Rousseau: “I enjoy MMA, but it’s a fake, superficial world.”
Getting to know Luc “Doberman” Rousseau
I first met Luc “The Doberman” Rousseau back in April at Gods FC’s debut show, after he defeated Muhd Hazrul in a middleweight bout. After feeling each other out, he put on a guillotine choke, pulled guard and forced the submission.
He has been training and coaching at Malaysia’s premier mixed martial arts gym, Muayfit, and has been working on his all-around game, fighting when the opportunity shows itself, before he heads off to Brazil later this year to get in some solid MMA and BJJ training.
More recently however, he defeated Isamu Himura at Ultimate Beatdown 9, which went down in Johor Bahru. I got a chance to catch up with him and find out a little bit more about this skilled fighter and unique individual, and he wanted to clear some things up about what went down between him and Himura before, during, and after the fight.
“So this is what really happened. After ONE FC 4, we were all on holidays. I was eating, no joke, fast food everyday. I was totally out of shape and training,” he explains candidly, “And suddenly Isamu called me out on Facebook, after other people were trying to make this fight happen so bad. The fight was in just two weeks, and I had to cut six kilograms to make-weight.
“I took the challenge for my honor, and for my team as well, and I’m happy to have done that fight. Everything was good… didn’t feel any stress before the fight or preparation. I even slept in the bar before the fight.”
He seemed rather elated, telling me exuberantly about how he was satisfied getting the fight behind him and defending his honor. But as soon as I asked him WHY Isamu Himura called him, his demeanor changed and he got serious.
“He called out my team-mate Arnaud Lepont, during his preparation for ONE FC 4. How stupid is that? And not once, but a few times,” he explains animatedly. “He was saying “Is there someone from Muayfit who’s gonna’ step and take the challenge?” and etc… actually, I knew he was just trying to get a fight, and he is good at selling them. I thank him to have called me out, but I just wish it was with a bit more respect.”
After accepting the challenge, there were still problems going on around, according to Luc Rousseau, as he explains:
“When I accepted, he made a lot of trouble, by changing the weight because I was “too big”, which is a complete bullshit. Everyone knows I’m not big – I’m tall and tiny, and this guy is much more built.
“So I don’t remember everything that went down, but weight changed one week before the fight. When you challenge someone, you go to his weight, not the opposite.”
While most fighters have to learn to adapt to the whole process of cutting weight to make weight for a fight, Luc Rousseau has no problem admitting that he doesn’t enjoy it, telling me “…cutting weight pisses me off. I love eating, and hate dieting hard.”
Luc Rousseau sucked it up, made the weight at the day of the weigh-ins, and took that night to relax before his fight the next night. It was a fight that was getting a lot of local attention around JB and fight fans around Malaysia and Singapore.
On fight night, it was a back and forth affair, with Isamu Himura having a slight edge of Luc Rousseau in the first round standing up, and Himura spent a bit of time on top of Luc in rounds one and two, landing some body shots. Throughout the fight, however, Rousseau was busy attempting submissions, locking in several which put Himura in some danger. In the third round, Rousseau managed to get on top, and ground and pound his way to a third round victory by TKO.
“I wasn’t very impressed with his BJJ technique. Let’s say he was strong, but not “crazy” strong,” Luc explains to me, “But I will say that he was hard to submit, and he is super resistant to punishment.”
Luc Rousseau felt at this time to point something out to me, even though I didn’t bring it up. It concerns some of the things Isamu Himura had apparently said, post-fight:
“By the way, with his punches, I wasn’t even rocked, even if people think I was half knocked out,” he exasperates, “They are dreaming. I got surprised by the cage size, and I made some mistakes, I paid, but I wasn’t hurt at all.”
So with Ultimate Beatdown 9 over, and the hatchet pretty buried between him and Isamu Himura (if you can believe it), Luc Rousseau is already looking towards the future.
“I’ve pretty much been eating good food, and hoping to get on the Ultimate Beatdown 10 card, if that’s a possibility,” he says earnestly, “Then after that, I am going to Brazil for about six months.”
If you know Luc Rousseau, you know that he loves Brazilian Jiu Jitsu – the training, the competing, the mere talking about it. “I have been for there two months before, when I got my blue belt. I haven’t gotten proper BJJ training for long time, so it’s time to get back to what I love the most – training with around 30 world class guys twice a day.”
Having connections in several parts of Brazil, he doesn’t quite know exactly where he’ll be heading to, but he knows that Brazil is where he’s going to get the best of BJJ. He plans on training all day every day, and competing as much as he can.
That’s the dream for many aspiring martial artists, to be able to train, learn from the best, train with world class martial artists, and compete regularly. Luc Rousseau plans on doing what he wants to do whenever he wants to do it, and that is something he learned at a young age.
“I stopped school at around 15, without degrees or certifications or all this society shit. I was the worst student in school and had zero respect for authority, except for my parents. I used to insult school teachers everyday during class, and never did a homework”, Luc laughs.
“I don't regret anything – stopping school was the day of my life where I felt the most free.”
Young, free, but still lost, Luc recalls not really knowing what to do with his life, but he knew that he wanted to do something that made him happy.
“When my dad got broken ribs doing Krav Maga (to be precise, not the Krav Maga taught in Asia, but French style, serious and efficient), I picked it up straight away. In one week I decided I would become instructor.
“Then I realized I sucked in sparring on the ground, so people told me about MMA. I tried it, and fell in love with the ground aspect of the sport.”
With that, a new desire grew in Luc Rousseau. He knew that he wanted to get into martial arts full time, and to make it his life. Having grown up in China for a few years in his early childhood, he always felt a strong connection to the East.
“I’ve always wanted to go back to Asia. I feel something very strong about Asia… very peaceful life. And also it’s there that I started to make a living from teaching BJJ and MMA in Singapore.”
After developing himself as a martial artist for a number of years, especially taking his ground game to a new level, he got into mixed martial arts, and made his debut against Mohammed Ezzat at MFC – Mayhem 2, back in September of 2011. So far he has put together a perfect 5 – 0 record. Despite showing potential in the sport, he does have some strong feelings about it:
“I really don’t know about MMA… I enjoy fighting it, but the MMA world is so fake, superficial, all about marketing and showing off, people don’t come for the sport but for seeing violence,” he opens up to me, “Jiu Jitsu is much cleaner, even though the rules and all the stuff sometimes seem to be getting a bit too “Olympic” with tons of restrictions.”
When asked about continuing his career as a mixed martial artist, all he had to say was “…I might stop MMA, or fight once in a while, but there is so little chance that I try to make it to the top, and even if I can, I don’t have the motivation to do it.”
And there you have it: an enigmatic man, who rose above his troubles, and is now living the life of a martial artist. Say what you want about Luc Rousseau, but many martial artists would give anything to live their lives like he does – a full-time martial artist, always learning and always developing himself into a better athlete.
