Overthinking a fight can be just as detrimental. When I was a kid, I won the first fight I ever got into because there was no time for analytical thought. The Billy badass of the school came up to me and socked me in the face, and I reacted by tackling him to the ground. I had no clue what the mount position was back then, but that’s where I ended up. I delivered several stiff head butts to his face, busting him up and immediately causing him to break into tears. The teachers yanked me off him, but they didn’t seem mad. They were too stunned. I was a quiet, nonviolent kid, yet I had just slapped a major beat-down on the school terror. Even the principal was shocked; all she could say was, “Don’t do that again.”
I didn’t do that again, but it wasn’t because I thought fighting was wrong. I was one of the only white kids in Monosana, an all-black school (I know, sooo cliché. If I ever meet Eminem, I’m going to punch him in the melon for ruining my “only white kid” bit), and if I had been a scrapping machine, I would have saved myself a lot of torment. The reason I didn’t deliver any more ass kickings is that no one else stepped toward me with his fists clenched. They always approached me with trash talk, such as, “I’m gonna punch a hole through your face, bitch.” Instead of analyzing if such an act was even possible, I would automatically believe him. I’d think, Shit, this kid is gonna punch a hole in my face. It didn’t matter if he was half my size and the biggest wimp on the planet. I’d automatically back down. If that same kid had simply charged me, I probably would have turned his face into ground beef, but by talking shit, he gave me time to think about all the possible outcomes. I mean, come on, who wants to get a hole punched in their face? It was even worse when someone called me out early in the day, because then I’d sit there in class and think about it for the next four hours. By the time school got out, performance anxiety had turned me into the biggest bitch on the planet.
To prevent this from happening, never think about consequences before a fight. Throw rationality straight out the door. Of course, this is often harder than it sounds. By the time I made it to the UFC, I already had a number of fights under my belt, but that didn’t stop me from overthinking my first few scraps. After all, I was in the UFC, hopefully fighting in front of millions of viewers. If I got my ass handed to me, I couldn’t hunt down the five videotapes floating around, burn them, and be done with it. That shit would follow me around. I thought about every last detail and all the what-ifs a hundred times each and, as a result, I didn’t perform to the best of my ability. A perfect example is my fight with Tito Ortiz—I overthought the hell out of that fight. Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t game-plan for the fight. You need to do your homework, train as hard as you can every day, and know you won’t quit on yourself. But as long as you cover those three bases, leave the coming fight behind you as you go about your business each day. A fight is just a fight, so don’t make it any bigger in your mind. Remember, your life is small and meaningless.
Compartmentalization = Enlightenment
(Keeping Your Stools Solid)
A lot of people argue that mixed martial arts isn’t a real job, and I would have to agree. If it were a real job, I wouldn’t like it half as much. However, you can’t say that because it’s not a real job, fighters don’t feel real stress. If you’re just starting out in the sport, you’re making at best five hundred dollars to step into the cage and five hundred dollars to win. It’s possible to fight a couple of times a month, but only if you go uninjured. And if you always go uninjured, it probably means that you’re quitting the instant the fight turns bad, making it damn near impossible to ever earn more than a thousand a fight. The money gets a little better if you make a name for yourself and get into one of the bigger shows, but then you’ve got autograph sessions and sponsorship photo shoots, and you have to travel all over the country to compete. You also have to contend with the stress of losing—tank two in a row, and you can find yourself back in the minor leagues.
An overload of stress can lead to an assortment of catastrophic side effects, the most disturbing ones being weight gain, poor immunity, decreased pain tolerance, constipation, rashes, gas, and massive testicular shrinkage. If you have a job that requires no human interaction, I suppose these side effects can be tolerable. But if you fight for money, the last thing you want is to be a fat, sick crybaby who is full of shit, always irritated, and passes gas into his training partners’ faces while rolling. Throw a small package into the mix and you might as well shoot yourself in the face; repeatedly, if possible.
If you let these stresses get ahold of you, it ruins your training sessions, and if your training goes like crap, you’ll most likely get your ass handed to you come fight night. In turn, the loss creates more stress, and soon you’re on an Indian reservation in the bumfuck town of Clearlake, California, competing on the undercard of an IOU event. To shut down this negative stress cycle, I use a form of mental compartmentalization. For example, if it gets close to training time and I’ve got a long list of shit to do, I’ll write it all down on a schedule and leave it sitting on the desk in my office, which happens to be my dining room table. By writing it down, I know it will be waiting for me when I get back, and can therefore clear my mind of everything on the list. If you keep that list in your head, not only do you risk forgetting shit, but you bring that list with you wherever you go, including the gym, and there goes your ability to focus on what you need to be doing.
I also apply compartmentalization techniques to the way I maintain my perspectives on fighting, training, and socializing. The instant I get to the gym, I leave the happy-go-lucky Forrest at the door and become a grade-A asswipe. If someone tries to talk to me about something other than the training ahead, I blow them off. It doesn’t matter if it’s a fan wanting an autograph or my dearest friend. If they push, I tell them very kindly, “Sorry, can’t talk right now because I’m at work. I’d love to talk later.” Personally, I don’t feel this is rude. If I walked up to them while they were in the middle of their work, they’d probably tell me the same thing. It could be argued that because I’m a quasi-celebrity and depend on their patronage for my livelihood, the terms are different, and this point has a little merit. If someone approaches me on the street, I’ll almost always stop to shoot the shit. Hell, I’ll even take the time to strike up a conversation with someone if he or she approaches me while I’m in the middle of doing something most people consider important, like…say…purchasing my lady a wedding ring. If I’m not training, I’m the easiest guy in the world. I understand it can be jarring, making the transition from having the intense focus of a fighter to having a casual conversation, but I employ a technique called “verbal judo.” My superiors taught it to me when I was on the police force in Georgia for when I’d be writing a report and some dipshit would come up and ask me a stupid question, like, “Is that gun real?” Verbal judo is basically a word that you say out loud or to yourself that allows you to quickly switch gears without blowing your lid. (It should be a peaceful word or sound, like wooooosaaaaa. You definitely don’t want to make it an angry phrase, like “I’m going to stab you in the fucking eye!”) So I’ll do my best to be approachable on the street, but when I’m training, I try to turn the outside world off. If you’re going to succeed in fighting, the gym has to be your inner sanctum, a place where you let your man out. And by “man out” I don’t mean your penis. I mean the evil demon inside of you.
This form of compartmentalization also works the other way. When I step out of the gym for the day, I leave all thoughts of fighting behind me. Psychiatrists often say that you shouldn’t do anything but fuck and sleep in your bed, and I wholeheartedly agree. I’m not one of those people who has UFC memorabilia plastered all over his house. I don’t wear fight clothing outside of the gym, and I don’t talk about fighting with my friends. Just as I make a list of all the bills I have to pay and leave it on my desk when I go train, I leave all the things I need to do to prepare for an upcoming fight on a schedule in the gym. This allows me to concentrate
on what I’m doing, thereby reducing my stress. When I picture my home, I think of my cats, my old lady, good food, and watching movies. I don’t even watch my opponents’ fight tapes in the house—I do that between training sessions at the gym. My most prized hour each day is the one right before sleep. I’ll just lie there with my woman, watching television and eating junk food. It doesn’t matter if I had the crappiest training session of all time. In that hour, fighting doesn’t exist.
Utilizing this form of compartmentalization doesn’t mean you’re denying your identity. If fighting is the primary focus of your life, it will obviously be a large part of who you are. It’s the same as if you were a cop; you most likely hang out with other cops, tell cop stories, and go shooting once or twice a week. But just because you’re a cop doesn’t mean you have to wear the clothes every single cop on the planet wears when off duty. You don’t need mug shots hanging up on your den walls or to watch only cop movies late at night. I truly believe that in order to excel in your profession, you need to have an identity outside of it. It’s the only way to lessen the stress. A perfect example is my fight with Keith Jardine. I lost that bout, and as you could tell by my copious tears in the ring, I was pretty broken up (a moment of unmanliness, I’m sorry). But swear to God, when I walked out of the arena twenty minutes later, I was totally fine. I had a smile on my face and was bullshitting with my friends. If I didn’t have an identity outside of the sport or lacked compartmentalization skills, I would have been devastated for a lot longer than the few moments I was holding my poor head after getting pounded upon, which in turn would have made it much more difficult to bounce back.
Visualize
(or, What the Hippie Chicks Taught Me)
The closer you get to a fight, the more it will weigh on your mind. If a few days before a show I find myself unable to leave thoughts of the fight at the gym, I’ll use a visualization technique to clear my mind. It’s pretty simple, which is fitting since I learned it at basketball camp when I was thirteen. All you do is draw a bath, climb inside, and then go over all the possible outcomes, both good and bad. Once you’ve run through every possible scenario, pull the plug and visualize all your worry and anxiety running down the drain with the water. After all the water goes out, hop in the shower and clear your head of all thoughts of the fight. I’ve done this on several occasions, and it works surprisingly well.
A similar technique can also be used to switch your brain from “fucking-around mode” to “training mode” before practice. About twenty minutes before I head to the gym, I’ll jump in the shower. The instant the water hits me, I think of all the little things I need to accomplish that day and the little victories I need to have. After the shower, I drink an Americana espresso from Starbucks (please, please sponsor me!). When the coffee is finished, it signifies that it’s time to work. (If Starbucks does not sponsor me, screw drinking coffee as a part of your routine. Drink a protein shake instead.) The little routine is what I’ve heard physiologists call a Phase Changing Activity, which is something that allows you to make a transition from one mind-set to another. (Yeah, my IQ is above 67, asshole…It’s 87. No fucking kidding, that’s the IQ score I got in college. Is that good?) It doesn’t have to be a shower and a coffee—it could just as well be a shit and a screw, and not necessarily in that order. I find it extremely helpful because going from the tranquillity of your home to the adrenalinecharged gym can at times be very jarring. The smoother the transition, the better training will go.
* * *
DICK IN A BOX
by Big John
Forrest doesn’t just use visualization techniques to prepare for his fights—he also uses them to keep himself entertained. Back in 2000, he was working as a bouncer and struggling to complete a double major at the University of Georgia. Making just enough to hang on, he lived in a shitty, one-bedroom apartment. And when I say shitty, I mean shitty. The former tenant was a junkie or something, and left the place looking like a crack den. The landlord didn’t want to clean up the mess, so he offered to waive Forrest’s security deposit if he was willing to move in “as is.” Forrest accepted, and it actually worked out in his favor because among the trash he found a brown leather jacket that he still wears to this day.
To personalize his hovel, Forrest brought in a 1970 television and accepted a mattress from Adam Singer. I know what you’re thinking—how cool was that for Adam to help out a friend in need. No, it was not cool. The mattress was Adam’s premarriage mattress from eight years prior, and since it had been spunked on more times than Courtney Love’s hair, I’m seriously surprised it didn’t sprout a pair of legs and walk away. The only other items Forrest had in the entire apartment (other than the former tenant’s trash) were two pictures. One was of Martin Luther King Jr. and the other was of Clint Eastwood—his two idols.
After a workout one afternoon, Forrest and me headed over to his place for a protein shake. We’re sitting there on the floor, staring at the 1970 television, and he proceeds to tell me that he sometimes gets lonely and has conversations with me when I’m not there. I thought he was joking, but then he proceeds to tell me all about some of the great conversations that we’d had. He didn’t go so far as to say, “remember the time…” or “that was hilarious when you said…” but he went on and on about how clever some of the things my imaginary self had said. At that point, most normal people would have looked carefully around the apartment, noticed the 1970 television, the stained mattress on the floor, and the two pictures on the walls, and realized that in fact they were sitting in the apartment of a serial killer in the making, but I’m a few parts crazy myself. All I could do was smile. I had always realized Forrest was nuts—I had just never realized how nuts. When he failed the psychological test for the Gainesville Police Department about a year later, I wasn’t surprised in the least.
FORREST’S REPLY
It’s quite comical that Big John thinks I’m insane because he’s the craziest fucker on the face of the planet. I can prove this with a few simple stories. A few days after the Virginia Tech massacre in 2007, he was lying naked in bed at two in the morning, drunk as shit, watching a Renzo Gracie instructional video. You might think it strange that he was viewing a training video naked, but John refuses to wear clothes inside, ever…Starting to get the picture? So anyway, his apartment building catches on fire, causing the sprinklers to go on. As a federal police officer and a gun lover, he has all sorts of expensive weapons lying around his abode. Not wanting them to take water damage, he squeezed his 290-pound naked body into a pair of jeans, strapped his AR-15 over one shoulder, his shotgun over the other shoulder, and tucked his two Glocks into his pants, which he was unable to button because of his massive belly. Next, he put on his Georgia Tech football ring and his two ATT Championship rings. Did I mention his toenails were painted black? Yeah; well, they were. Instead of taking the time to put on a shirt and a pair of shoes, he grabbed a twelve-pack of beer from the refrigerator. Feeling he had covered all the bases, he headed out onto his balcony and went barreling down the fire escape.
As John was going down, a group of firemen were walking up to the scene. This is the image they saw: a 290-pound man armed with an assault rifle, a shotgun, and two handguns, sliding down a fire escape with no shirt, no shoes, black toenails, carrying a twelve-pack of beer. When John reached the bottom of the fire escape, instead of identifying himself as an officer of the law, he gave the approaching fireman a drunken smile. Remember, this is just two days after a gunman went ballistic at Georgia Tech, killing thirty-two people. Immediately all the firemen assumed he had started the fire and had been waiting for them to show up to kill them. One fireman shit himself. And I don’t mean figuratively—I mean he literally shit himself.
Failing to pick up on the fact that he was scaring the shit out of people, John walked over to the curb, laid his guns out next to him, and then cracked a beer. A few minutes later, cops swarmed around him with their guns drawn, ordering him down on the ground. After a
few seconds, one of them recognized him.
“John, is that you?” the cop shouted.
“Yeah, it’s me, it’s me, it’s me.”
If that story isn’t enough to convince you that he doesn’t have his head screwed on quite right, let me tell you about the movie character he most likes to impersonate. It’s not Al Pacino or Dustin Hoffman—it’s Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs. The first time I brought my wife over to his place to meet him, he answered the door doing this impersonation. Butt-ass naked with his junk tucked between his legs, he began a slow dance and said, “Would you fuck me?…I’d fuck me.” And this is how sick he is—he replayed that part of the movie over and over, practicing the dance until he had it just right. Yeah, and I’m the disturbed one.
* * *
If It Looks Like a Poser, and Smells Like a Poser…
A while ago, a New York Times reporter wrote an article about a new trend sweeping the nation—teenage boys bending and pulling on their ears with the intention of snapping the cartilage and developing the nasty, pus-filled lumps often referred to as cauliflower ear. According to the reporter, their goal is to appear cool, like professional mixed martial artists. Personally, I don’t think this is a trend. I think the reporter visited one gym, and that gym was located in some bumfuck town in the Appalachian Mountains. He approached an inbred kid sitting on the street out front, and the conversation went something like this:
Got Fight? Page 8
