It’s the middle of the afternoon in the middle of the week, and former UFC middleweight Chris Leben is lounging on a leather coach in his San Diego gym talking about the strange way life has of picking you up and turning you all around before setting you down somewhere new.
This comes up a lot for Leben, whether he likes it or not. And it’s not just in his gym, where the young guys still sometimes come in all excited to tell him how they just streamed the first season of “The Ultimate Fighter” and can’t believe what a wild man their coach was once. But it’s also when he shows up to work as a referee or judge, two side gigs that, collectively, take up most of his weekends.
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“There’s two different reactions I get from fighters when I’m working these events,” Leben says. “One is, ‘Oh man, it’s such an honor to have you reffing my fight, I watched you growing up,’ and all that. The others don’t have any idea who I am a lot of the time, to tell you the truth. I’m just a ref to them, and that’s fine.”
Some days, it’s more than fine. Being recognized and remembered is a tricky thing for Leben. It comes with some baggage. He knows he could dye his hair red again, just like the old days, and be instantly recognizable. It’s a conscious choice to let it grow mousy brown atop his great big buffalo head. It allows him to sink into something a little closer to anonymity.
The face is still there, under all the scar tissue. Some of the old hardcores who were around for his heyday, they still recognize him. But the version of him that fight fans remember is not the same guy he is now. It’s not the person he wants to be.
Leben broke through on that first season of the UFC’s reality TV show as the hard-drinking, hard-slugging spark plug of the debut cast. He then spent the next eight years of his life in the UFC, holding down a roster spot as a fan-favorite middleweight who reliably delivered a certain kind of show to the tune of the fifth-most bouts in division history (22). Leben was never the guy who was going to win them all. But he was the guy who would plant his feet and throw leather without very much concern for his own well-being.
Chris Leben was a fan-favorite brawler in his early “Crippler” days.
(Josh Hedges via Getty Images)
He was also the guy who’d black out and put his fist through a pane of glass. He was the guy who, a few days before fighting Brian Stann at UFC 125, went berserk on a Las Vegas casino bathroom and had to bribe his way out of handcuffs just to make it to the fight. His tagline on “TUF” was that he could roll into the gym “smelling like booze and dirty strippers” and still knock guys out. A few times he was called upon to prove it.
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The fight game always has a place for people like that. And when they appear to be living at the same reckless pace outside the cage, somehow it only tends to make us more fascinated by their various demonstrations of public self-destruction.
“I think what drove me when I was young is spite,” Leben says. “Really, I think that was the main thing. People thought I was nothing and I was going to be nothing, so f*** them, you know? I’m going to prove them wrong. So I built this whole ‘Crippler’ alter-ego for myself, this kind of persona, and it worked. But the people who know me just for that, you know, that was a damaged person who did those things. That damaged person was trying to prove that he was tough and he was worthy. And then once I’d proved that, then at a certain point I was trying to prove that I wasn’t crazy.”
Leben’s life after the UFC was a tumultuous one. In 2015, he pleaded guilty to felony weapons charges, as well as charges that he’d violated a restraining order when he broke into his ex-wife’s apartment. He retired from fighting, came back for a few bare-knuckle boxing matches, then retired again.
Before opening this gym — The Training Center, a spacious and modern facility in a prime location on Garnett Avenue in the hip Pacific Beach area of San Diego — he did all kinds of work. Flood restoration. Construction. All types of manual labor. And when some promoter would offer him just one more check to wade in blood at some bare-knuckle event, he’d answer the call. For time.
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“At that point, I was actually feeling good,” Leben says. “I was sober. After the way my UFC career ended, I wanted to show I could get it together. And I felt great there for a while. But I was pushing 40 and it was like, what are you doing? These kids are getting faster. You’re getting slower. You came back, had a few knockouts, had a few wars, and you didn’t end your career sitting on the stool. So let it go. Could I find a promoter willing to give me [$30,000 or $40,000] to take one more fight? Probably. But the damage that would do to me — not just physically, but in my life, to go back to that now — it wouldn’t be worth it.”
What Leben realized, he says, is that eventually fighters all have to learn how to be something else. And not just something, but someone else. The old you must die so the new you can be reborn. The ones who don’t manage to make that transition, well, we see what happens to them. Leben saw it with friends and former opponents. Guys like Stephan Bonnar, who died at the age of 45 of an accidental fentanyl overdose. Also guys like Phil Baroni, who was arrested in Mexico in 2023 for the murder of his girlfriend.
“Look at Wanderlei [Silva] at this boxing thing, getting knocked out by a stranger. That made me so sad,” Leben says. “A lot of guys from that era. I remember Stephan Bonnar, he came out here to visit me, and he was ‘The American Psycho’ still. He showed up to fight as ‘The American Psycho.’ He did commentary as ‘The American Psycho.’ He went to dinner as ‘The American Psycho.’ And Phil Baroni is another one. He was still trying to be ‘The New York Badass,’ still trying to be that same guy.
“I get it. It’s hard when people are coming up to you and they still expect you to be that guy. I get people coming up to me, talking to me like I’m still who I was on ‘The Ultimate Fighter.’ They don’t realize that was 20 years ago. That’s one thing TV does. It freezes time in a way. … But if you want to live a quality life, there comes a point where you have to let that character go. You’ve got to cut ties with that character. I think, because of recovery, I learned a little bit about how to do that.”
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These days Leben’s focus is on stability and structure. During the week, he’s in his gym, teaching and coaching. On the weekends he’s traveling to events to work as a judge or referee. He’s worked UFC events recently, but before that it was long drives just to work a local show for little more than gas money, all to get the experience he needed.
In his free time, he goes to the batting cages with his son. He takes Monday mornings off from the gym to linger at home with his fiancé. He focuses on staying right there in the middle of the emotional range, leaving the wild swings of the fighter life in the past.
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“I don’t want those lows anymore,” Leben says. “I don’t want the highs, either. I want to stay right in the middle.”
For a young, emotionally unstable man, he points out, the fighter lifestyle carries a certain appeal. It’s a feast-or-famine world. You could go from a nobody to a star in a year or two. A handful of good nights could make you a champion and a millionaire. But more than that, it gives you only a short-term future to consider while allowing you to ignore the bigger picture. You simply book a fight, train for a fight, then show up and bleed.
“For someone who has a lot of issues, a lot of baggage like I did, a two-month chunk of your life feels manageable,” Leben says. “A five-year plan? That’s hard to see for yourself. I still have trouble seeing it sometimes. But now my focus is on being 1% happier every day. I want to gradually bring my well-being and my happiness up a little bit every day.”
These days the body doesn’t always cooperate the way he’d like. Leben turned 45 over the summer. He blew out his knee recently. His shoulder is likely going to need to be replaced. There are some troubling discs in his neck that will also require some attention soon. He nods his head at the young fighter walking in for practice and tossing his gym bag down with the fluid movements of a man whose joints still work with silent ease.
That was a damaged person who did those things. That damaged person was trying to prove that he was tough and he was worthy. And then once I’d proved that, then at a certain point I was trying to prove that I wasn’t crazy.
“A couple years ago I could still get out there and throw him around,” Leben says. “Now, man, I was trying to show a double-leg [takedown] earlier today and I can barely get down to go over the knee. At the same time, I wouldn’t trade it. I’ve got friends who are old and beat up and they didn’t even fight. Two years from now I’m going to be two years older. There’s nothing I can do about that.”
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Sometimes people ask him, wouldn’t it be amazing if he’d gotten sober sooner? Imagine what his UFC career could have been if he wasn’t his own worst enemy throughout so much of it. Imagine what he might have achieved if he had figured out some of his own issues sooner.
But Leben isn’t so sure. For one thing, if he hadn’t grown up as angry kid on the poor side of town, he might never have found his way into MMA at all.
“I think, like, would I have done some of those things if I hadn’t felt like I needed to prove something? And I don’t know,” he says. “Those extremes, they carried over into all areas of my life. Everything in excess. Nothing in moderation. I think that’s why I fought the way I did.”
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It made him a popular fighter in the UFC, one who could always be depended on for a fun, wild fight. It became his brand and his personality, until he was forced to find some way to undo it and learn a new way.
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He’s happy with that way now. He’s got a good life, a good gym. There’s a sense of satisfaction in clawing his way out of the various graves he dug for himself. But if he hadn’t done all that, he wonders, could he have found his way here?
“I don’t know,” Leben says. “I can look back on all these mistakes I made and think about what would’ve been. But I also look around and go, I’m here now. This gym, it’s a home for a lot of people. I’ve got a family here. I have a lot going for me.”
It might have been a damaged person who did those things in the UFC, but it was a better version of the same man who built the life he has now. If it took one to have the other, well, maybe the rough ride to get here was worth it after all.
