(Puciato stands far right. Submitted photo.)
Greg Puciato always has super glue handy. The vocalist of The Dillinger Escape Plan uses the glue to repair damage caused by his guitarists’ crazy stage antics. When the 30-year-old isn’t being attacked by six-string juggernauts, people attack him with requests to start training in mixed martial arts. That’s because Puciato is fast, small and compact. Plus, anybody who gets whacked in the face with guitars as consistently as Puciato does is tough as nails and should, at the very least, give MMA a whirl.
FIGHT! Magazine: Why do you get hit in the head so much?
Greg Puciato: Our guitar players are little wild on stage. We’ve been on tour for two and a half weeks, and I’d say out of 20 of the shows we’ve played, five of them have involved me with blood running down my face and it sucks because my face is the same height as the end of their guitars. They throw those things around and run around with them, so it happens all the time. I don’t have health care. I never got stitches. I don’t like going to the emergency room anyways, so over the years, I realized super glue will fix almost anything with the exception of teeth, which I had to go get fake teeth from getting my teeth knocked out by my guitar player. My eye opens every day. As long as it’s not a gigantic, super wound, super glue will do it. Not a lot of people know that. I’m not advocating that for people who have health care, but it works for me (laughs).
FIGHT!: Do you buy super glue by the box?
GP: (Laughs) No, we just always have it lying around. Super glue is the duct tape of the human body. You can pretty much fix anything [with it]. Do you know Eugene Robinson from Oxbow?
FIGHT!: Yeah.
GP: He’s a good friend of mine. When I heard this interview was happening, he was the first person I thought of. He’s one of those people who are like, “You gotta fucking start fighting. You’d be perfect,” but I don’t have the time of day to get started on something like that.
FIGHT!: Has Eugene’s coercing paid off yet?
GP: Well I’m good friends with Eugene. We ended up becoming friends because we have similar bands. We’re both very aggressive bands, we’re both front men where people on the Internet say, “Who are the five singers you’d never wanna fight,” and me and him are always on the list. To me, it’s based on appearance and kids see me bleeding in the face, but Eugene is known as a guy who will kick peoples asses. We just became friends, started hanging out and [he] said, “I can’t believe you don’t fight. You’re fast, small, [and] compact. You should be doing this.” But again, since I’m on tour all the time, I can’t be doing this.
FIGHT!: You live in Huntington Beach though. You got some gyms around there like HB Ultimate and Tito Ortiz lives in the area.
GP: Yeah, I see him all the time at this place called The Harbor House, which is a 24-hour diner. I always see him at 2 in the morning eating 12 eggs at a time or something (laughs), but I know there are a lot of good places in LA. I know enough people down there where if I wanna get started. Like a buddy of mine trains Rampage. I never really knew because I’m from Baltimore, but I never realized Southern California was the mecca of MMA and once I moved there, I said, “Holy shit, this stuff is everywhere!” And it’s funny because whenever Georges St. Pierre fights, everyone is like, “He looks like your brother! You need to fight,” so I can’t escape it.
FIGHT!: But you have boxed in the past too.
GP: I was just learning it. I didn’t get that far into it. I wanted to pick it up as I got older because there are a few cool boxing gyms in Baltimore, but by the time I was thinking, “Ok, maybe I can go compete,” I was already so far down this path – music and stuff like that. If you’re gonna try something and you really wanna be good at it, no matter what it is, especially if it’s something like a competitive sport or music, you have to put an insane level of odds into it. You have to put every single ounce of everything you have into it and I couldn’t. As far as the sport goes, [I didn’t] put any serious time into it because of music, so the training aspect of things is all I have left of it in being competitive.
FIGHT!: I’d still love to see you box Mario Lopez.
GP: I didn’t realize he fought. Is he a good fighter?
FIGHT!: He’s legit. He was on HGTV’s The Antonio Treatment, and the crew built him a boxing gym in his garage and Entertainment Tonight office.
GP: Bizarre (laughs).
THE DILLINGER ESCAPE PLAN – Black Bubblegum
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