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Business of Fighting - Northwest Herald
story by Kevin Kaduk, Northwest Herald Sports columnist
An hour earlier, the baddest man in Crystal Lake could have been found in his natural habitat, sparring and shadowboxing inside a chain-linked octagon.
But with that training session now over, the only place to find the baddest man is in his office. In here, among the trophies and stacks of paper, his fiercest opponent is – get this – a finicky laptop.
Jeff Curran furrows his brow in concentration and, for those privy to both of these scenes, it makes for quite a contrast.
photo by Justin Runquist
“Hold on a minute,” says the 30-year-old Island Lake resident, trying to attach a file to an e-mail for a visitor. “I think this should work.”
On one hand, Curran embodies the preconceived image many might have of an ultimate fighter: He is not wearing a shirt, tattoos cover his arms and chest and his hair has just been shorn.
And even though he stands only 5-foot-6 and weighs only 145 pounds, his chiseled physique makes him look like the first person you’d want on your side in a barroom brawl. Right now he’s in top condition and, on Wednesday, will fight champion Urijah Faber at the Hard Rock Casino in Las Vegas for the World Extreme Cagefighting featherweight title.
It is the biggest match of his career.
But it doesn’t take long to see that there’s another side to the fighter who breaks stereotypes as efficiently as he breaks wills. Not only is Curran one of the nation’s top ultimate fighters, but he also is one of its ultimate businessman.
Indeed, to spend a day with the soft-spoken Curran is to visit with a unique 21st-century success story.
While he fiddles with his computer, Curran is sitting behind a desk in the office of his 15,000 square-foot “Team Curran” gym in Crystal Lake Plaza. He has run this business for 10 years – built it from scratch, really – and he now has more than 300 students and fighters of the mixed-martial arts. On his office wall hang blueprints for his dream project, a 26,000 square-foot standalone facility that he and two partners are building near McHenry County College. Curran says that if everything goes as planned, it will open next summer.
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Of course, in his dream vision, Curran will start his tenure in the new center while owning the WEC belt. That should come as no surprise. The fight against Faber figures into most of Curran’s thoughts these days.
“This fight defines my career,” he says, still tired from the mid-afternoon workout. “I’ve been fighting for 10 years, I have a family and I have a huge business. ... I just have a lot more to risk than just a loss on my record. This is 10 years in. I’m not a rookie anymore; I’ve put in my time.”
But ask the baddest man in town what he considers to be a bigger success story – his fighting career or his business – and he doesn’t try to choose between the two. One definitely had to do with the other, and it’s hard for him to imagine doing it any other way. Most weeks he spends more than 60 hours a week in this gym, teaching students who range from novice to expert and training both himself and a close circle of other fighters who travel to Crystal Lake from places as far as Batavia and Kenosha, Wis.
Though it’s possible you never have heard of Curran, he is well-known in the growing world of ultimate fighting. His production company often promotes fight cards in Lakemoor and even the Sears Centre in Hoffman Estates. He has fought in Japan, holds several endorsement deals and his fight with Faber will be televised live on the Versus network as part of a weekly WEC program. (WEC is a sister company to the more well-known Ultimate Fighting Championship. Featherweights fight under the WEC banner.)
That’s not a bad deal for Curran, who graduated from Woodstock High School in 1995 and started learning jiu jitsu, a Japanese fighting discipline, as a teenager.
Actually, he says, his interest in combat traces back for as long as he can remember. He watched “Rocky” and Bruce Lee movies with his grandfather, an ex-military boxer, and he wrestled throughout elementary and middle school. His high school years were spent traveling to martial arts seminars across the country, eager to eat up anything he could learn about jiu jitsu.
Ask him if he thought that path would lead him here and Curran just laughs. Ultimate fighting still was being born back then, and making a career of it was the furthest thing from his mind.
“Back then, my only intention was to have a jiu jitsu academy,” he says. “I didn’t want to base my whole future on a sport (ultimate fighting) that was in its infancy. At the same time, I wanted to help pioneer it. So once I found a comfortable meeting with the two and once it hit a certain point, I jumped in with both feet. ... I went crazy.”
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WEC fights can end in a number of ways, with knockouts and submissions the two most likely outcomes. There also is the chance of a decision, but neither Curran nor Faber ever have fought a full five-round, 25-minute match, having dispatched most opponents long before the final bell. But many WEC aficionados say this might be the first full fight for both.
“That’s the worst case, getting tired in a fight when he’s not,” Curran says. “It’s going to come down to who can better deal with the tired feeling for the first time. I think I can outlast him in that area.”
If you know the trials and tribulations of the baddest man in town, that’s a pretty safe bet. Curran was raised in what he calls a “rough” situation in Wonder Lake. His family didn’t have much money, his parents were divorced and his father died from diabetic complications when Curran was 18.
But while some might have turned to easier outlets like drugs or drinking, Curran threw all his energy into jiu jitsu and other martial arts. He opened his first training center in the front half of his uncle’s carpeting warehouse, paying $350 a month for 900 square feet. He installed carpet during the day and, at night, he’d train students while training to be a professional fighter himself. After a few years of hard work, he had enough income to quit his day job and commit full time to his gym. Now, the baddest man in town controls a kingdom he helped create.
And while it isn’t often that a fighter calls all of his shots, it quickly becomes clear that Curran isn’t just any fighter.
“I came on the scene with pure motivation and, 12 years later, I have the same drive,” Curran says. “I’ve just made it an accustomed part of my lifestyle. It’s just who I am and I try to get the people around me to share the same beliefs.
“I really believe that’s the formula that works.”
– Kevin Kaduk is the Northwest Herald’s sports columnist. Write to him at kkaduk@nwnewsgroup.com For more, read his blog, “Duk’s Calls,” at NWHerald.com/kaduk.
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