Jake Shields and Gilbert Melendez would love to be able to tell people that it was their mutual love of martial arts that first united them in friendship, but it isn't true.
These days the top UFC welterweight contender and the Strikeforce lightweight champ seem like dedicated training partners who have successfully pushed each other toward a common goal, but it wasn't always the case. Instead, it was their shared interest a completely different pursuit that first brought them together.
"Jake was looking for someone to party with," Melendez recalled. "I was like, hell yeah."
Then a student at San Francisco State, Melendez wasn't the type to turn down that request, so the two future MMA champions got together over a drink or twelve.
"I had just moved to San Francisco and didn't really have any friends up here," said Shields. "...I was looking for someone who was fun to hang out with, and Gilbert was fun. We'd go out partying, pick up chicks, and have a great time. We got along great in that aspect, then I found out he was a wrestler so I started making him come to the gym with me."
And when Shields says he made Melendez train, he's only slightly exaggerating.
It wasn't that Melendez was completely uninterested in the sport. He'd wrestled in high school and became a die-hard MMA fan after seeing Royce Gracie beat Dan Severn at UFC 4. But he'd only dabbled in training before meeting Shields, who one day happened to mention that he was an active professional fighter – a claim Melendez found dubious at first.
"He told me he fought and I was like, I've never seen you in the UFC, buddy. Then he exposed me to Gladiator Challenge and King of the Cage...I saw him fight [Robert] Ferguson, old school, and one of Chris Brennan's students, where he flips a dude off afterwards and I was like, oh sh-t, my boy Jake's a bad-ass."
Shields was already two years into his pro career, and the tapes of his fights were handy to have around when they wanted to impress girls, but they also piqued Melendez's interest. He'd felt a void in his life ever since his high school wrestling career came to an end, and the idea of getting in the gym with Shields and learning MMA appealed to him. But Melendez was a poor college student and couldn't afford the costly gym fees. Fortunately, Shields had a solution.
"To me at first it was just a hobby," Melendez said. "I didn't initially want to fight, but that's how I got [to train] for free. Jake [told them], 'He's going to fight.' I was like, what?"
In fact, if it hadn't been for Shields' insistent attitude, Melendez might never have pursued MMA as a career.
"At first he was kind of on and off, training like two days a week," said Shields. "But I started just forcing him. I'd stop by his house and say, 'Get in the car, we're going to the gym.'"
These days the two are not just best friends, Melendez said, "we're brothers." They both rose through the ranks alongside one another, with Shields blazing the trail from Strikeforce champion to UFC challenger, and Melendez following along closely behind.
But even though it was Shields who got him into MMA to begin with, Melendez wonders if his longtime training partner can ever truly appreciate the influence he had as a mentor and role model.
"I was trying to be a fighter and I was maybe 3-0," Melendez said. "I came back for spring break and I went to Mexico and my boy Jake went to Vegas and he trained, maybe partied a little, but he trained out there. My dad said, 'You say you're serious and you chose Mexico over going to Vegas and training? You're weak.' He just makes you feel like that, and I was like, man, I am weak. From there on out, I was like, let's take this seriously."
The decision paid off. Melendez went on to win ten consecutive fights before suffering his first defeat, and now he's the Strikeforce lightweight champion and – depending on who you ask following his first-round TKO of Tatsuya Kawajiri last weekend – maybe also the world's best lightweight.
Shields, who vacated the Strikeforce middleweight title last year to sign with the UFC, is trying to make his case as the world's top welterweight in a title fight at UFC 129 against Georges St. Pierre in Toronto at the end of April.
"I'm so focused on being where I want to be that I don't really take time to think about it, but I was talking to Gil last night about how crazy it was," RIFT Platinum Shields said. "We were just young punk kids in college, talking about what we wanted to do. Now here we are, and we've come a lot further than we dreamed."
Melendez is the first to admit that the pursuit he started as a way to justify his free training was never anything he expected to turn into a career.
"I never imagined it, but I'll tell you who did, is...[Jake]. [He] knew from out the gate that he had a goal and a mission, and I said, rift gold I'm going along for the ride. I liked what he was doing and I said, I'll be a disciple of this guy and see where it takes me. Taking beatings from him for a long time made me the man I am today in the cage."
For the two friends who climbed the MMA ladder side-by-side for the past decade, RIFT Platinum nothing could be sweeter than dueling title fight wins in the same month.
Who knows, they might even celebrate with a victory party to eclipse any night on the town from their college days. Then again, Rift Gold as both Shields and Melendez will tell you, some of those nights are still pretty tough to beat.
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