“Slippery Pete” Barrett (8-0-0) On The Cusp of MMA Superstardom

“You put your nose down, you do what you’re told, you show up and work hard – before you realize it, you’re doing things you never thought you’d be able to do.”

“Slippery Pete” Barrett (8-0-0) returns to the cage on Saturday, June 17th 2017 as the C0-Main Event for Cage Titans: XXXIV at Memorial Hall in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

An undefeated former Cage Titans Amateur Champion, Barrett is currently ranked 7th for New England Pro Lightweights and Featherweights as well as 23rd for US Northeast Pro Lightweights (23rd for Featherweights).

Beginning his Amateur career with a loss – a three-round Unanimous Decision against Sean “The Ginger Ninja” Nichols (2-3-0) in April 2011 – Barrett often references that loss as the driving force behind his motivation to improve and achieve greatness inside the sport of Mixed Martial Arts.

Barrett finished his Amateur career 5-2-0 before making his Professional debut in June 2014 with a third-round KO/TKO victory over Lionel “Boogz” Young (7-16-0) at Cage Titans: XIX. Barrett has since recorded seven consecutive victories – six under the Cage Titans banner and one 150-pound CES Catchweight match against Jeremy “Pretty Boy” Davis (4-1-0) at CES 39: O’Neill vs. Santiago in November 2016.

A native of Abington, Massachusetts, Barrett has made his team at Sityodtong in nearby Somerville under the legendary Kru Mark DellaGrotte and home to the top mixed martial artists in the region – including UFC Lightweight Tony Martin and UFC Bantamweight Rob Font. With another victory to add amongst his undefeated record, it won’t be long before Barrett is showcasing his talents in the UFC alongside his teammates.

Aside from being an undefeated and unstoppable force inside the cage, Barrett is widely regarded as one of the most cerebral and intuitive thinkers outside the cage. Often fighting on the same card as younger brother “Mad” Max (3-1-0), Barrett spends the majority of his free time thinking and training, studying and pondering martial arts, life and philosophy.

One week out from Fight Night, Barrett took the time to speak about individuality, old wisdom, Sityodtong and honesty.

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Cage Titans: XXXIV / Saturday, June 17th 2017

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ON UPCOMING FIGHT

Little fight preview: my last fight went three rounds to a Decision. I get paid by the second; I am getting in there, showing you guys some new stuff and I’m knocking this kid the fuck out and getting my hand raised in the first round.

ON WRESTLING

Wrestling has been something that’s really stuck with me my entire life. I started wrestling in high school, and whether I realized it at the time or more retrospectively, wrestling gave me a lot of obstacles and challenges that at first glance I didn’t think I’d be able to accomplish.

You put your nose down, you do what you’re told, you show up and work hard – before you realize it, you’re doing things you never thought you’d be able to do.

That translates directly into fighting. It really instills a work ethic you don’t really get with other sports just because the nature of the sport. It’s a grinding sport, it’s a physical sport; one-on-one, pretty much a grappling match. You’re out there and might as well be fighting for six minutes, because that’s what it takes out of you.

People don’t think of wrestling as a martial art – but it is. Albeit, an Americanized martial art, but wrestling’s been around for ages.

There’s so much good involved in wrestling programs, to the point where now I am an Assistant Coach of my high school wrestling program. It’s really given me an opportunity to come full-circle and to see the perspective from a coach’s side to what I remember when I was going through it in the room in high school, and try to bridge those gaps for the kids in there now so they can see some of the things I’ve taken away from it and now coming back with them.

ON COACHING

Being able to coach and give back to the community that helped form who I am has been a gift in itself. Not to mention being able to be in the room with those guys, I’m able to hone my wrestling skills, refine certain things and work with other coaches who have much higher wrestling pedigrees than I ever had. Guys that went on and competed in D-1 colleges with Championship matches under their belt.

It’s awesome because I’m also able to tie in the adversity. I say ‘adversity’, but the hard work from fighting and what I do day-to-day to put myself in a position to go compete for fifteen or twenty-five minutes depending on the fight. To be able to connect that with the kids when they’re in the room bitching and moaning about how much cardio we want them to do, how much drilling we want them to do – they don’t necessarily see the direct payoff.

By being in the room, I can say, “Hey, listen: this shit does pay off. I’m doing it outside of high school, I’m doing it to put my ass in the UFC; I’m doing it to chase my own dreams. If you want anything out there, you’ve got to work your ass off for it, and you’ll learn that here in this wrestling room. So bust your ass, shut up and just listen and do what we ask of you and you’ll see the success come down along the way.”

ON OLD WISDOM

Martial Arts has really driven me towards connecting with my higher self. And if that’s not a term a lot of people are familiar with, your higher self would be your spiritual core or your consciousness. I’m trying to find the highest version of myself that can exist, and to become that version of myself that exists – without getting too New Age/Old Wisdom; I like to call it Old Wisdom, a lot of people call it New Age.

According to the information that I’ve read, we are infinity experiencing itself constantly and anything that can exist does exist. It might not exist for you right now, but it is out there in existence – you just need to tap into it.

Today, I just got out of the Zen Den in Norwell (Massachusetts), which is where I go to do Floatation Therapy and Infared Sauna and Yoga from time to time. I really rely heavily on meditation to look in for my answers, and that ties right back in with my views of the universe and how I truly believe that we are interconnected. Chasing that knowledge – and I say chasing because there’s so much of it out there that I haven’t experienced and I haven’t delved into, but from what I have done it is incredibly intriguing.

These are things that’ve been around for ages; this is information that comes and goes with time. I really have this feeling inside of me that there’s a lot of truth in that information; I’m on a journey to find as much truth – or as much as I find as true – as possible on that journey.

ON FIGHT IQ

I do go out there with a game plan, but I don’t go out there stuck to a game plan. I spend a little bit of time researching my guys to get an idea of their style, but I don’t want to limit myself to a game plan nor what I should expect out them.

Case in point: with Vince (McGuinness), the only fight that I could find of him fighting a southpaw led me to believe that he was not super-familiar moving with southpaws. I thought I was going to be able to capitalize on that in the first round – I was wrong, and he capitalized on me on that behalf. That’s when he split my eye open.

Martial Arts is supposed to be the truest expression of yourself according to Bruce Lee, of course. You’ve just got to go out there and give it your best. You can’t be locked to a certain set of ways or certain game plan.

ON HONESTY

Anybody can pick up a gimmick and try to sell you something, and at the end of the day it’s a gimmick. That’s not what I want to be known for. When I first started fighting, my mouth was huge – it was “Eff you, eff this; I’ll kill you; let’s fight.” Over the years, I’ve stepped back a little bit in that respect – only because it’s a lot of noise and wasted energy, and because I like to let my fighting do a majority of the talking for me.

Now that’s not to say if I’m fairly friendly or familiar with the person I’m fighting, once we get the fight: “Hey, let’s sell some tickets and have some fun on social media.” That’s what I did when I fought Lionel: he was an old training partner. We went into it knowing we were going to have some fun on social media to sell some extra tickets.

But to look at when I fought Jeff Anderson, I was incredibly disappointed and my post-fight speech was: “Hey everybody, I’m so happy that you came down here. I apologize that’s how that fight ended.” I was looking for a three-round war with him; he had a reputation of going to Decision, so I was really looking for a tougher journeyman. I was hoping to get a good fight out of him.

I kicked him – he got kicked in the face – and then he told the ref I poked him in the eye and there was no eye-poke. And because he backed up and said, “No, no, no” the ref ended up calling the fight because it was a verbal submission.

I always want to push myself and I always want to see what I’m capable of when I fight. Things like that just… I felt like I got robbed.

ON AUTHENTICITY

A lot of these guys just want the Win – they’re happy with the win. If you want to do well in this sport and you really want to succeed, you have to be a showman, you have to know how to brand yourself and you have to know how to sell yourself. That comes down to having a serious conversation with yourself about what you want to project out there, what your brand is, what your image is, what you want people to know you by and how you want to be recognized.

Part of that is being a showman and making sure that you’re addressing the crowd: the lovers, the haters, the naysayers, the critics, your fans – all of it. A lot of guys get into it and think, “I’m a fighter – you need to respect me; you should do this, you should do that.” When in reality, it’s what I need to do because I’m a fighter, because this is what I want to do, because I want to go far with it. It’s not what they need to do for you; you need to reach out and put that out there so they reciprocate that back to you.

It’s kind of sickening to see these levels of entitlement that you’re getting with these younger kids just because now you’re a pro fighter so you just deserve all this recognition. Buddy, you’re 3-0, 3-2… I had more amateur fights than you’ve had pro fights. Give me a break. Some people lose sight of why they’re doing it or what they originally got in there for. At the same time, you get all those guys that just want to be on Facebook about it and that’s just sickening.

I have my team, my management – we know what we want to accomplish. But because they’ve got some steam behind them, they think they deserve a shot or these certain things in the local fight scene. I just want to say, “Buddy, you don’t deserve anything.” I’m busy building my brand, my legacy, my hype train to get to the next level – and it has absolutely nothing to do with you.

If you don’t fit into my plan, you don’t fit into my plan. I have a very specific plan; I’ve set goals and milestones and I’m hitting every single one of them along the way.

ON VISIONS OF SUCCESS

I’m not talking about when you’re a little kid and your parents say, “You can do anything, Timmy; just put your mind to it!” I’m talking Law of Attraction, setting your intentions, affirming what you want, going through your daily rituals to see and visualize the lifestyle that you want to lead. Because you’re putting that energy out there, you’re having these creative thoughts allowing you to achieve those goals.

If you’re not focused on what you want in life, you’re focused on what you don’t want in life. You’re focused on what you don’t have. I will be the first to say I need to practice more of what I preach. But compared to someone that doesn’t practice it all, I’ve got a pretty good head-start on it.

ON KRU MARK DELLAGROTTE

Kru Mark is awesome. He is a great friend, he’s one of my biggest fans; he’s always in there with the team pushing us, giving us insight. Pulling people to the side: “Hey, I saw you do this – this is some Martial Art I studied in my 20’s…” I only say it like that because he’s belted and accredited and promoted in so many, it’s hard to keep track of where what he’s showing you comes from.

The hand-trapping, the insight, the fight knowledge, the fight IQ, the experience, everything. He lived in Thailand and fought so many fights that you don’t get that authentic look from coaches, necessarily. Especially more so on the local scene; he’s up there with your Duke Roufus, with your John Wayne Parr. Those guys are Sityodtong, and Mark is the figurehead of Sityodtong in the U.S. and so it’s a pleasure.

More than anything, it really hit me when I went out to Team Alpha Male. Two summers ago, I went out there for a short time up to Lake Tahoe for the Fourth of July with my brother and about ten of our friends. I went out a week-and-a-half early and went to Team Alpha Male and trained out there. That’s when it hit me: TJ Dillashaw, Urijah (Faber), Touchy Fili (Andre Fili), all of them: they’re going, “You’re Kru Mark’s guy? Kru Mark’s the fucking man!” And like, “You get to work with Kru Mark? Oh he’s this and that.”

That’s when it hit me like, “Oh wow. If only everybody back home knew what kind of an opportunity we have to train underneath Kru Mark at his academy, it might change the way certain people look at things.” It was when I was removed and recognized as being one of his fighters that I realized the scope of his influence on the sport.

ON CAGE TITANS

Cage Titans has played a pivotal role in my success. Mike Polvere goes above and beyond for all of his fighters; he always has and I’m pretty sure he always will. I have so much respect for that organization that I joke with him about winning my first Performance Bonus in my UFC debut and coming back and investing all $50,000 in the company to get it to the next level.

He does a fantastic job working with fighters, taking care of fighters; making sure everybody has everything they need. You just get a real genuine feeling, and it’s an intimate community. Everybody knows everybody behind the scenes. Everybody takes care of everybody. Even if two fighters don’t get along, you don’t see the two sides from the promoter coming down; he plays it very evenly, very 50-50. That’s a rarity in this sport – we’ve gotten away from it.

You don’t hear the horror stories like you used to, but it still happens. You still find promotions that maybe they’re building a guy; maybe a promotion does a good job about not necessarily aligning themselves with that guy while other promotions – you see the owners walking the guy to the cage, sitting in their corners with their cornermen and what-not. You just don’t get that kind of favoritism here at Cage Titans, which is just a relief to see the new age of fight promotions and how they’re managed.

THANK YOU

I’ve had awesome support from MAC Roofing: they’re based out of Stoughton. Old Town Real Estate from Abington. Sheath Underwear: they’re international; they just branched out into Europe with Sheath Underwear U.K. Robert Patton has been a huge source of support for the last couple years. Bare Bones Gym which is my buddy Matt Warner: he’s got a private gym set up in the South Shore; he does one-on-one privates. I don’t use him and my brother doesn’t use him but he’s there to support the hometown kids out, so a big shoutout for him.

I recently left my desk job to pursue fighting full-time, because I didn’t want to be fifty years old looking back with my kids in my lap going, “I could’ve done this, but I was too afraid to put everything on the line and devote my life to it.”

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A sincere thank you to CrossFace Productions for the terrific photography.

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