Tony Hinchcliffe — The Fighter Inside

Thomas Gerbasi
Aug 26, 2017 · 5 min read
Tony Hinchcliffe (Photo courtesy of Frankie Leal)

If Tony Hinchcliffe is on stage at the Gramercy Theatre in NYC at a certain hour on Saturday night, don’t be surprised if he’s tempted to check his phone or even ask the crowd for an update on the Floyd Mayweather vs. Conor McGregor fight in Las Vegas.

The 33-year-old comedian is that kind of fight fan, as he’s a regular fixture at UFC events, a former high school wrestler and someone who even grew up on the same block as Boxing Hall of Famer Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini. So you could say it’s in his blood, and he certainly sees the connection between the worlds of fighting and comedy

“I think there are so many connections,” Hinchcliffe said. “It’s a lifetime commitment, I think both are full-time jobs in which you craft all the time for one explosion of adrenaline, and you have to have all that preparation. You have to be calm, yet aggressive, yet relaxed, and all of these things I’ve noticed are direct correlations.

“You have to train harder than other people but still have a certain amount of natural ability. And both come down to timing. Sometimes it’s not about where or how you throw your punch, but when you throw that punch. Just like Conor McGregor wanted to stun (Jose) Aldo, that’s exactly what I want to do to the audience in the first 13 seconds.”

And if he doesn’t get them in the first 13 seconds, Hinchcliffe is willing to go the distance in order to get the reaction he’s looking for.

“There’s nothing more fun for me than sometimes when I first get on stage and I’ll look out there and find the person that seems the most disinterested immediately,” he said. “And my favorite thing is to focus on them a bit and try to slowly crack them. I’ll glance back every minute and watch their evolution and watch them catch on to it.”

Those times of winning over skeptics are few and far between for Hinchcliffe these days, because he’s landing first-round knockout blows with regularity. Whether it was his Netflix special “One Shot,” his popular podcast “Kill Tony,” or the Monster Energy Outbreak Tour that he’s currently on, Hinchcliffe has come a long way since his salad days in Los Angeles. And while those days all comedians go through are currently being glamorized to some extent on premium cable, they were far from glamorous.

“I was crashing and we were all in one two-bedroom apartment,” he recalls. “There were like six of us sprawled around this thing. I had the main couch because I was the third in position. At one point I got downgraded to the beanbag, which was sort of a low point. It was grinding and grueling. I slept on a beanbag for a few months, I slept on couches for almost two years, and there were a few months where I slept in my car in the back alley of The Comedy Store.”

Hinchcliffe never lost sight of the ultimate goal, though, which was to make comedy a career.

“There I am, sleeping in the back seat of my car in the fetal position,” he said. “When the sun would come up, I would do is go to the Starbucks, grab a coffee, and back then, even in 2007, we had these things people don’t use anymore called newspapers. I would get an actual newspaper for 50 or 75 cents and I would start writing. And I didn’t know s**t back then about writing. But I still kept doing it, over and over again. But I’ll tell you this, those were also some of the most fun days and I’m so glad that I have all that to look back on.”

Eventually, Hinchcliffe got his break thanks to his work perfecting the lessons he learned back in Youngstown, where a 103-pound wrestler had to often rely on brains over brawn to deal with the situations so many teenagers have to.

“My biggest defense mechanism was verbal,” he said. “And it stays that way, there’s no doubt about it. My first job making money out here was working with the great Jeff Ross, writing roast jokes and helping out with the Comedy Central roasts. That is one of my strongest skill sets because of Youngstown, Ohio and having to either defend myself verbally against a bigger, tougher hater or by making people fear me by wanting to be on my good side or thinking that I’m cool or funny. I wasn’t mean to people who didn’t sort of mess with me first. That was my defense mechanism, that’s how I would scare people away, by making their friends laugh at them. And it worked. And I got so darned good at it. My teachers back in school would say, ‘Where’s being mean to people ever gonna get you?’ It got me into the Writers Guild. I guess I’m one of the exceptions to that rule.”

He laughs, still aware that his greatest strength as a comedian is one that also makes the best fighters, and that’s the ability to switch things up and force an opponent to expect the unexpected.

“One of my favorite fighters is (UFC strawweight champion) Joanna Jedrzejczyk, and she throws punch after punch after punch, wild and aggressive and right in the middle of her opponent’s face,” Hinchcliffe said. “In a way, that’s what I’m trying to do with each punchline and every step. And sometimes you do something to throw off your opponent, which in this analogy is the audience. You want to make them think you’re about to do that one thing that you did earlier, but then you get them right in their belly when they weren’t expecting the punch. I’ll have some written punches and then all of a sudden I do something physical out of nowhere and it sort of stuns them. The two are so much alike.”

So if Hinchcliffe was a fighter, who would he model himself after?

“I consider myself one of the Diaz brothers,” he said of popular UFC contenders Nick and Nate. “I have my fun, I like to smoke and I like to drink, but I’m also doing more spots than the average LA comedian, I’m doing more podcasts, and I’m always hustling. Those guys do triathlons when they’re not fighting and that’s how I like to treat the comedy game, but while having fun. Like a Diaz brother.”

Tony Hinchcliffe plays the Gramercy Theatre in NYC on Saturday, August 26. For tickets, click here

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Thomas Gerbasi

Written by

Editorial Director for Zuffa (UFC), Sr. editor for BoxingScene, and writer for Gotham Girls Roller Derby, Boxing News, and The Ring...WOOOO!

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