On a sultry summer evening in June, Stephen “Wonderboy” Thompson and fellow UFC star Chris Weidman are facing off on the roof of IMG Models across from Madison Square Park.
“Never hit with a fist in a street fight,” Thompson says. “You’ll bust up your hand and cut your assailant’s face. You do not want to be wearing the blood of a stranger you know nothing about.”
In exaggerated slow motion, Wonderboy is springing forward from a crouch toward Weidman’s face.
“Your best weapon is an open palm,” he says. “Aim for the nose and then rake the eyes with your fingernails.”
The two fighters are sharing self-defense strategies and techniques with about two dozen young fashion models listening in rapt attention.
Their blunt assessment of risk and necessary precautionary techniques in an increasingly violent world is part of Model Prep, programming for IMG Models talent in areas such as mental health, nutrition, financial literacy, online security, and tonight, led by Endeavor sister company UFC, personal safety.
Thompson, along with UFC fighter Rose Namajunas, is now represented by IMG Models, the world’s largest modeling agency. It’s the kind of quiet, behind-the-scenes synergy at play throughout Endeavor (formerly WME | IMG), which will host its second IMG Fashion Camp at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla. in late July. The week-long camp at the state-of-the-art sports training facility that has developed stars such as Maria Sharapova, Cam Newton, Andrew McCutchen, Paula Creamer among many others is for young men and women 14-20 interested in learning about the fashion industry, with seminars led by IMG models including Halima Aden, Hailey Baldwin and Maddie Ziegler.
Model Prep started 11 years ago as an annual meeting with a varied lineup of speakers. It has evolved to a monthly program blowing out a single mind-body-life skills topic, according to IMG Models SVP David Cunningham, who has now integrated UFC into the “body” part of the wellness equation.
The mashup between sports and fashion that is so pervasive in pop culture made Thompson and Weidman — who are also brother in laws — ideal trainers in self-defense, Cunningham said.
Thompson, currently the No. 4 welterweight contender and one of the most successful kick boxers of all time, explained that he’s a magnet for modern meatheads eager to challenge him.
It’s why he walks down the street with a swiveling head, watching everything and everyone. And why he always keeps his back to the bar or restaurant wall, like an underworld capo preternaturally sniffing danger.
“Outside the octagon I’m not looking for a fight. But I’m always prepared for one, and you should be, too,” he said. “You don’t want to have to use these self-defense tactics we are showing you. But you need to be ready to use them. That comes with practice and drilling, so it becomes split-second muscle memory. In a street fight, start thinking, and you’re on your back getting shellacked.”
Living in a state of confrontational hyperawareness seems a cynical way to go through life.
Yet, the daunting mantra — always mentally locked and loaded for a brawl you’re not intending to start — resonates when voiced by an affable unassuming guy who routinely charms editors, stylists and brand managers in living up to a wholesome nickname nearly comical in its white bread, boy-next-door connotations.
A superhero of niceness has come to teach the proper way to gouge an attacker’s eyeballs, and it works because Thompson personifies clean-cut, heartland American optimism, as if pulled from an astronaut orientation a few years after JFK announced America was headed to the moon.
Between UFC fights and shooting for high-end Men’s fashion publications and mass apparel brands (he has a major TV campaign breaking later this summer), Wonderboy’s other day job entails picking up kids enrolled in the family-owned business, Upstate Karate, in Simpsonville, SC. The UFC star whose epic clash with Tyrone Woodley at Madison Square Garden will live in fighting infamy drives a school bus.
The 35-year old fighter-fashion model is, like many other UFC athletes active in their communities or harboring unseen artistic and intellectual talents, a potent weapon against lingering stereotypes levied against the beautifully brutal sport of mixed martial arts.
As he and Weidman showed a few tricks of the trade, the gene-lottery winners in the IMG Models-Endeavor star-making machine were sitting up and taking notice, some even taking notes.
Afterwards, the models wanted more hands-on instruction.
Cunningham and his team are now planning for the models to hit Weidman’s gym in Garden City, likely leading into the former Hofstra University and former UFC middleweight champion’s next fight at Madison Square Garden or Barclay’s Center.
Amid continuing widespread coverage of the #metoo movement, press interest in such a “beauty and brawn” event is likely to be strong, putting a new empowering twist on the conundrum of countering a rear-naked choke hold.
