Surely most people have heard the stories by now. You know, like the one where he never worked out with weights because he sculpted his physique by doing thousands and thousands of sit-ups and pushups daily, usually during the commercials of TV shows.
He also only eats one meal a day and has no dietary restrictions aside from basic vegetarianism (no fish, no meat, etc.), which usually comes after a day of workouts.
He owns the record for most yards rushing in a season by a professional football player (2,411 in 1985 for the New Jersey Generals of the USFL). In the NFL, he is the only player with a 90-plus yard reception, 90-plus yard run, and a 90-plus yard kickoff return all in the same season (with the Eagles in 1994), and he is also the only player to record an 84-plus yard touchdown run and an 84-plus yard touchdown reception, in the same game.
He’s also the only football player to pull off those feats and dance with the Forth Worth Ballet.
He is a sixth-degree black belt in tae kwan do, made the 1992 U.S. Olympic team in the bobsled, and next Saturday night in Miami, he will make his professional debut in the MMA against a fighter that wasn’t even born when he won the Heisman Trophy in 1982.
In other words, Herschel Walker is still quite active.
To call Herschel Walker a freak of nature is unfair to both freaks and nature. After all, we make a big deal about Jamie Moyer pitching successfully for the Phillies into his late 40s, but no is expecting the lefty to leave the Phillies in order to take up mixed-martial arts. However, when the news came out that Walker, born in the same year as Moyer, was taking up a new sport no one batted an eye.
There is no way to classify Walker as an athlete. Personally, he’s accessible like Charles Barkley only without the bravado, vices or rap sheet. Where football players Bo Jackson, Brian Jordan and Deion Sanders dabbled with careers in Major League Baseball, Walker says he used to go from college football games with Georgia to martial arts competitions. That was when he didn’t have a track meet, of course.
“He’s a freak, but this is not a freak show,” Luke Rockhold, one of Walker’s main training partners, told The Associated Press. “He put in three months of training at one of the best gyms in the world. He’s legitimate.”
Still, amongst his competitors in the MMA there aren’t many who remember Walker as a star football player. Though he was a veteran player by the time he got to the Eagles in 1992, Walker was always the fastest runner on the team. Actually, he made those 90-yard runs look effortless where he rarely changed direction or broke his stride. Even though it looked like Walker was out on a Sunday morning job, defenders seemed to disappear off the screen while trying to run him down in the open field.
Who didn’t love the guy? Sure, he played for the Cowboys and the Giants during his NFL career, and always seemed to kill the Eagles when he played for the Vikings (remember that 93-yard kickoff return for a touchdown in ’89?). Still, those 3,732 yards-from scrimmage for the Eagles in three seasons helped alleviate some of the dread in watching the team get out to a 7-2 start in ’94 only to drop the final seven games of the season. Three years later Walker gave up football.
So yeah, Walker is excited to get back into mixing it up—he’s definitely taking next Saturday’s fight seriously.
“There have been some athletes that have been totally an embarrassment," Walker said during a press conference last week in New York City to promote the fight. “Jose Canseco, it's insulting, the guy never trained. I’m a guy that's serious about this. This is fighting, you get hurt. People that talk about (a publicity stunt) don't even know me. That's why I always tell people to come and join me or come and work out with me. Then you'll see who I really am.”
Walker says if there had been the MMA 20 years ago, he might have cut his football career short. He’s definitely into it.
“This is the hardest thing I've ever done in my life,” Walker said, who will fight as a heavyweight in his debut and says his body fat index is up to 4 percent these days. “When a guy gets me in an arm bar within two minutes (during training), I'd better be learning something if I'm going to get in the cage.”
Yes, because all 47-year olds need to know how to get the hell out of an arm bar. And because of the demand of the new sport and his age, Walker has added a new wrinkle into his workouts he never considered before…
Naps.
“I never took a nap after football practice," he said at the press conference. “When I come home after MMA practice, I'm taking a nap.”
Even though it sounds kind of funny to hear a middle-aged man talking about fighting a 26-year old in a MMA cage, Walker has it all figured out. When asked why he’s doing it, the answer was perfectly succinct.
“Why not?” he said.