Ray Longo has played a hand in toppling some of mixed martial arts' greatest pillars. Legendary champions Georges St-Pierre and Anderson Silva were shockingly upset by Longo-trained underdogs Matt Serra and Chris Weidman. The native New Yorker now aids Aljamain Sterling's defiant quest to become the greatest bantamweight in history against Sean O'Malley at UFC 292.
Longo leads his chosen family with youthful exuberance, but he must accept his status as an elder statesman of the sport. After all, he entered MMA on the ground floor. Longo launched his martial arts school three years before UFC's inception and has flanked fighters to UFC gold in three consecutive decades.
Serra, who now coaches alongside Longo, was a major underdog when he upset St-Pierre via knockout to win the UFC welterweight title in 2007. Weidman closed as a betting underdog in 2013 for both middleweight title matches against Silva, despite entering their second fight as champ. Sterling overcame the meaty betting favorite Petr Yan in their rematch to cement himself as the rightful bantamweight titleholder. For the Serra-Longo Fight Team, there is no sweeter taste than upsetting the apple cart. Simply put, "It's a Long Island thing."
"Nothing motivates me more than beating a bigger gym," Longo said. "I love it."
"We love being the underdogs," Weidman said. "That's something that we really thrive in. Coming from a small gym, that's kind of what's expected. We love to prove people wrong. So any time we get to be an underdog, that's fun."
Check out the full interview with Ray Longo below.
Bigger isn't always better. That is the ethos of Serra-Longo. The collective is split into two separate gyms: Longo-Weidman MMA and Serra BJJ Academy. Longo's gym is minuscule compared to the size of some prominent camps like Kill Cliff FC and American Top Team. In the era of sponsor-branded training facilities and super gyms, a grassroots mentality continues to bear fruit for the Long Island misfits.
"I've got a 5,500-square-foot gym," Longo said. "I don't know if I would change it. I think I would lose control. That loss of control would lead to a cookie-cutter approach. I never wanted to do that. You might have a big room of people sparring. Our guys spar in the cage one at a time, even if I got to sit there for three hours. It's not a group sparring session. So they get really personal attention."
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You'll be hard-pressed to find someone who has a bad thing to say about Longo. That same respect is not always extended to his pupils. Take Sterling for example. "Funkmaster" holds the record for most UFC bantamweight title defenses in history, but circumstances have marred his title run in the eyes of some fans. He won the title via disqualification against Yan and beat an injured T.J. Dillashaw who never should have fought that night. Hearing your family badmouthed is tough to tolerate. The same goes for Longo and his fighters.
"Any time those guys lose, I feel like I lose and I go right back to the drawing board," Longo said. "What did I do? Is there something I could've done better? It never ends. Matt beat GSP, but then he lost in the rematch. So when Weidman beat Silva, it wasn't good enough.
"'They're one-shot wonders.' The pressure, if you bought into it, would be brutal. You know what I mean? But I just do the best I can. The guys believe in themselves and we believe in each other. I think that's where the magic happens."
Check out the full interview with Chris Weidman below.
Sterling was stretchered out of the Octagon after eating a crushing knee by Marlon Moraes in 2017. What could have changed Sterling's career for the worse instead reinforced his commitment. Nine fights and six years have passed since Sterling was rolled out of the Save Mart Center in Fresno. He hasn't lost since.
"A lot of people would have folded. They could have never been the same," Longo said. "He got better. He had the desire to get better... And the way he bounced back after the Yan fight. We had a great conversation about the first fight. He promised me the second fight that things would be different and he held to his word."
"I wanted to be with a team that was trying to push the fighters to be the best versions of themselves. I found that with these guys," Sterling told "UFC Connected" last month."It's just that loud energy. It shows in those fights. It shows in between those rounds. It shows that they care."
The loyalty between coach and fighter is a two-way street at Serra-Longo.
"Do you know what Aljo's manager told him after the Moraes fight? 'Get another striking coach,'" Longo said. "Do you know what he did? He fired the manager because the guy was a moron. This is what you got to deal with. People don't realize this. There's always somebody trying to tell you what to do and who's better than you. It's really vicious."
Longo faced similar criticism in the past. Serra lost his UFC debut after eating a spinning back-fist from Shoni Carter. People were in Serra's ear to find a new striking coach. Serra resisted those whispers, conscious of the magic they could conjure together.
"I stayed with Ray because I knew that Ray knew his stuff," Serra told "UFC Connected" last month. "I believed in Ray Longo and he believed in me. It led to incredible stuff."
"I love the guy for that," Longo said. "I'm as loyal as I am to him, really, that's one of the reasons why."
Good luck trying to drive a wedge between Longo and his fighters. It's not going to happen. The team didn't split when Sterling, Weidman and Merab Dvalishvil started cross-training primarily with other gyms. It doesn't necessarily sit well with Longo, but he won't let a bruised ego tear his family apart.
"I don't want my kids moving... I'd be just as upset with these guys," Longo said. "Maybe I have empty nest syndrome."
Collaborating with other coaches is a relatively new science for Longo, but it's clearly working. Longo finds comfort in one simple truth: "We keep winning."
"Even though I might not see Merab, I'm always going to be in his corner," Longo said. "It's the same thing with Weidman."
Longo used to hesitate when his troupe was dubbed a family. He has blood relatives at home after all. But he sees more parallels between his children and students with each passing year. Longo, 65, now begrudgingly accepts his status as the patriarch of the Serra-Longo Fight Team.
"I am dealing with problems just like I deal with my kids' problems," Longo said. "It might be a dysfunctional family, but it's like a family.
"Everybody's at everybody's parties, grand openings, communions, confirmations. Matt's always saying to me, 'You have to come to see my daughter, she's wrestling.'"
Talk to anyone from the Serra-Longo camp long enough and the word "family" will work its way into the conversation. It's a spirit that Longo hopes his staff and fighters will carry with them and use as a guiding principle for future generations.
"Family and camaraderie. You have to keep it together even if it's at the expense of my emotions," Longo said. "You have to keep the family together, even your real family. I take a beating sometimes with my family, but it's about my family. It's not about me. I think that's the biggest thing. You have to make it about your fighter. If you do and you're successful, everything will fall into place."
@raylongomma is a absolute tresure! 🥹✌️ pic.twitter.com/NIpDGwMnyX
— MMAspeechbubble (@MMAspeechbubble) August 12, 2023
There may be no bigger rugrat in the bunch than "Ragin'" Al Iaquinta. It was a suitable nickname at Iaquinta's prime. He had a temper on the mic and famously trashed a hotel room after defeating Joe Lauzon in 2015. These days, a more subdued Iaquinta prioritizes coaching and selling real estate over caving in faces and wrecking rooms.
"They let me be myself and discover who I was," Iaquinta said. "They definitely gave me good examples to look up to. You're always evolving and maturing. They're just great examples for everybody on the team on how to do things in life. They're great coaches in the gym, but it's more outside of the gym. How to treat people. How to work hard in anything in life. If you can succeed in fighting, you can succeed in whatever the next avenue is."
The one fundamental secret to Longo's success as a coach: self-awareness.
"The biggest thing as a coach is that I'm not the end-all to be all," Longo said. "You have to talk to people and understand where they're coming from. I don't run that type of gym where I'm a drill sergeant.
"I think I'm a good listener. It's not about me. That's the first thing I tell anybody that wants to be a coach. 'It ain't about you. And if you want it to be about you, put the gloves on and fight.'"
There may be camps with swankier facilities, more champions on their roster or new-age methods, but Longo challenges other teams to match the longevity of his family business.
"There might be camps that are doing good now, but where are they going to be 25 years from today?" Longo asked. "That's the part that even wigs me out. Even Matt would say, 'Dude, this is unbelievable.' We're living the dream. This is what we love to do, we're making money, and we're having fun."
