While it can certainly make a positive impression in the minds of the judges if you rush back to your corner and choose to stand rather than sit, fights are generally determined by how they end rather than how they start, so you better rush back to your corner and stand after every single round. If you no longer have the energy to do both, it tells the judges that you have been broken. It doesn’t matter if your opponent is also too weak to stand—if he’s been walking back to his corner and sitting between every round, there is no way to determine if he is tired or not. So take my advice and relax the instant the bell sounds. Even though no points are being scored during the intermissions, you’re being judged. Consistency is the way to prevent that judgment from working against you.
Consolidation Prevents Constipation
When I went out with a group of guys from the Hardcore Gym in Athens, Georgia a few years back, I made a bet that I could eat a hundred Buffalo wings at a local dive bar. Now, I’ve always thought training for fights was rather easy, so I figured the eating challenge would also be easy. And, for the most part, it was. I consumed fifty wings down to the bone, and felt Massengill fresh! We had all sorts of cool stuff planned that night, but I figured I would polish off the remaining fifty before we headed out. However, the batch of twenty-five wings the waitress put before me were spicy. I don’t do well with spicy things, and my friends knew this. To help me wash down the fiery meat, they began feeding me pitchers of New Castle, which is one of the thicker beers. After I had downed two pitchers, they began purchasing me chocolate martinis, thinking the sugar would wake me up. I had three of them. By the time I made it to seventy-five wings, I no longer felt Massengill fresh. With pounds of meat swimming in a soup of beer and chocolate martinis, there was no way I could consume the rest or even head out for our debaucherous night on the town. I was so sick, I had to lie down on the floor of the bar for several hours. I kept mumbling over and over, “Oh God, I made a mistake,” and vociferously promised sweet baby Jesus I would never ever accept an eating challenge again.
But, in hindsight, the mistake I made wasn’t in accepting the challenge; it was in taking advice from my jerkwad friends. If I had had my senses about me, I would have realized that drinking a river of heavy beer and hard alcohol would hinder my primary objective, but when you’re in the thick of battle, rationality rarely steps into the picture. When you’re tired and slightly worn down, outside advice always seems like good advice. After all, it’s a different perspective, and your mind somehow convinces you that this other perspective is clearer and better than yours.
This type of derailment doesn’t just happen in the realm of childish bets—it happens all the time in fighting. You’ve got grappling coaches, striking coaches, strength and conditioning coaches—you’ve got all these coaches who have opinions on what you should and should not be doing. Having so many coaches in your arsenal helps when you’re a member of a well-organized gym because the trainers tend to work together to develop your regimen, but, on occasion, things can turn into an egofest. Each trainer knows his individual field better than the others, and his natural inclination is to steer you toward becoming a master in his arena. But the more you work on one aspect of fighting, the less you can work on the others. If all of your coaches are like this, you’ll quickly become overtrained. To prevent this from happening, it is important to constantly monitor your workouts. If you feel you are being pushed too hard in one aspect, instead of going along with it, you need to get your coaches together to have a meeting. This can often be a difficult thing to ask for because you view yourself as the student and your trainers as your teachers, but if they are good coaches, they will have your best interest at heart. These meetings can get rather intense, even produce a long-winded argument as to what’s more important, so I strongly suggest sitting them out. Let them figure things out among themselves, and be open to hearing what they collectively suggest. If they can’t agree on a unified regimen and your training suffers, you know they’re only out for themselves and you’re training at the wrong gym.
You Know How to Judge the Size of a Man’s Genitals? By Looking at Defeat
(Note: Never be concerned about another man’s genitals unless he used to fuck your old lady)
It doesn’t matter if you have the slickest submissions on the planet and possess the strength of a silverback gorilla—if you compete for long enough in mixed martial arts, you’re going to get beat. When this day comes, it is important to take a hard look at yourself and your training. If you did everything in your power to train for the fight and just got knocked the fuck out, don’t sweat it. It happens to the best of the best. After a loss, it’s natural to experience a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach and find it difficult to look into people’s eyes, but if that feeling persists, it’s usually because your mind is trying to tell you something. You need to ask yourself, Did I take it serious enough? Did I eat all the right things? Did I train all aspects of fighting hard enough?
To discover what you can do better the next time around, review the fight tape and analyze your performance. It can suck to watch yourself get put to sleep by a hard right over and over, but it is the only way to know if those voices whispering in the back of your head have any merit. I watched my fight with Jardine, and I didn’t like what I saw. Every time I broke away from the clinch, I’d step toward my right, directly into the power of his left hand. To make matters worse, I’d do so with my hands down, giving him a free shot at my face. The other thing I didn’t like was the form of my kicks. Going into the fight, I knew he would throw a lot of leg kicks, and I was determined to outkick him and break him down in that area of the fight. The problem was that every time I threw a kick, I would again drop my hands. The combination of these mistakes allowed Jardine to land that one big blow and put me down. That sleeping pill was a stern wake-up call. When training for a fight, it’s easy to convince yourself that you’re training all the right things and as hard as you possibly can, but after a loss, the proof is always right there on the screen. And it’s not about how hard you try, but about what some call deliberate practice—the practice that improves your game and makes you great.
I went back to the drawing board and focused on all the little details that I had previously missed or cast aside. If you watch my next fight, which was against Hector Ramirez, anyone could see just how much of a difference these small improvements made. I broke down every aspect of my training, and the result was clean, crisp combinations that landed a large percentage of the time. Of course, everything is a learning process, and you can’t expect to get it all right your first time around. If you try something and it doesn’t work, instead of getting discouraged, go back to the drawing board.
You’ll often hear fighters say that losing was the best thing that could have happened to them, and if you’re a guy who uses defeats to get your shit together, most of the time it’s the truth. UFC fighter Martin Kampman is a perfect example. When he first came to Xtreme Couture, I’d submit him like it was nothing. Instead of getting discouraged, he’d analyze what he did wrong, and then go off and grapple with someone who was even better than me. At first, I thought he was some type of masochist. But then I began to notice massive improvements in his game, and in a very short period of time. By viewing his losses as victories, he pinpointed his weaknesses, and then he did everything in his power to eradicate those weaknesses. As a result, he improved faster than anyone else in the gym. Adopting this kind of mind-set will drastically improve your game. If you choose a hardheaded, know-it-all mind-set instead, chances are you’ll always make the same mistakes—and you’d better hope that you never fight me because if I watch your tapes and notice you overtly making the same mistakes you made in prior fights, I will exploit you like a motherfucker. But you can thank me when we’re lying next to each other in the hospital because I’ll have given you a free lesson in upping your game.
Be Humble, Grasshopper
I’m not sure if I’m humble, have a really good self-
understanding, or just have a tremendous amount of self-loathing. All I know is that I can see what I am as well as what I am not. I realize I’ve had some good fights, but I have never fought miraculously like Anderson Silva or BJ Penn. I’ve never had a reign of terror like Chuck Liddell. And the reason is simple—I’m not as gifted as those guys. I push my body and mind to their limits in training, but I’m not so delusional that I think I’m the best fighter to have ever walked the planet.
Being honest with yourself is the best way to live life because it keeps you from having massive falls. After all, if you think you are unbeatable, and then get your ass served to you on a platter, your whole world comes crumbling down. That’s when the excuses start to flow, but who is buying them? No one. Not yourself, not others. If you can admit to yourself that you simply got beat by a better fighter, it dissolves the lies and allows you to be a happier person.
Although it can be depressing to admit to yourself that you will never be the best, it is liberating at the same time. Instead of trying to be better than everyone else, which is existentially arrogant, you can focus on being the best that you can be. Even if you can never defeat the Anderson Silvas and BJ Penns of the world, you can take pride in the fact that you did the most you possibly could with what you were given. You can take pride in every accomplishment. What more can you ask for? Wishing that you were three inches taller or that your dick would grow an extra five inches delivers nothing but misery, brother.
If you choose to ignore this advice and treat the world as though you own it, when you do fall, everyone is going to kick you while you’re down. If you’re humble in defeat, everyone may still kick you, but they won’t kick you as much.
Blooooooood
There are a lot of hemophobiacs running around out there. And no, I’m not referring to people who have a fear of man-on-man love. A hemophobiac is someone who can’t handle the sight of blood. There are varying degrees of this phobia. Some people simply get an uneasy feeling at the sight of blood, while others actually experience a decrease in heart rate and blood pressure, causing them to pass the fuck out. If you think about all the thousands of different phobias circling around, it makes more sense than most. People who have this condition fear blood because it reminds them of their vulnerability and mortality, and that doesn’t seem to be a bad thing to be concerned about. Certainly makes more sense than getting freaked out by two guys who enjoy playing ass darts in the privacy of their own home.
Personally, I’ve never had issues with blood. A part of it probably has to do with the fact that I got my ass kicked on a regular basis as a kid. And when I say “regular basis,” I mean every week. Seriously, I got my ass kicked so many times in Georgia’s public school system, my mother ended up sending me to Catholic school. (Sorry about all the cursing in this book, Sister Margaret.) There is, however, an upside. After the local bullies turn your face into a piñata half a dozen times, you begin to realize that spilling a little blood doesn’t mean you’re teetering on the verge of life and death. Even when you leave a good-size puddle of your life fluid (the other life fluid, moron) on the pavement, you understand that you’re still nowhere close to taking the Long Sleep Good Night.
By the time I made it to high school, getting beat up and bleeding was just a part of the routine. One of my bloodiest ass-whoopings occurred in the locker room before basketball practice. I was suiting up with the team, and the super-stud jock that had made it his life purpose to fuck with me began going on and on about how my shirt was too tight and my shorts were too short. He had been riding me for years, and something snapped. I knew his mother had recently died, and so I turned to him and said the most fucked-up thing I could possibly say.
“Does that make you feel better?” I asked, looking at him in the eyes. “Does it take your mind off the fact that the maggots are eating your mother right now?”
Pretty fucked up, I know. But I was tired of being punked. He instantly tackled me down and started beating the holy hell out of me. I was stuck between a bench and the lockers, and I didn’t even try to defend myself. As he hit me over and over in the face, I just laughed my ass off because I knew that no matter how hard he hit me, I had gotten the better of him. No amount of physical pain could equal what I had just done to him. The other players in the locker room didn’t know what the hell was going on, so they pulled him off of me. My nose was jacked up pretty bad and blood was everywhere, but it obviously wasn’t that big of a deal because I couldn’t stop laughing.
It’s probably best not to attempt to acquire my whimsidaisical attitude toward blood because it will most likely lead to a lack of concern for getting your ass kicked, which in turn can lead to a fucked-up face like mine. But if you plan on fighting, a fear of blood is sort of a setback. Err on the side of loving it like Penn. I’ve seen a lot of fighters who have that fear—the instant they receive a small cut, they begin dabbing at their face and checking their hand. Sometimes their knees grow weak, and other times they simply give up. Seriously, I’ve seen guys give up from a small cut, and I’m not just talking about in the old days. I’ve also seen fighters overreact when they open up a cut on their opponent. Instead of seeing the cut for what it was—a small laceration in their opponent’s skin that does absolutely nothing to hinder his ability to fight (unless, of course, it’s above the eyes)—they behave as though the opponent is hanging on to life by a thread, and go crazy with strikes, leaving themselves exposed to counterattacks. (Personally, I would much rather bleed than my opponent because I don’t know where he’s been. I’ve seen the kind of women some of the fighters fuck, and it’s scary.)
The bottom line is that neither you nor your opponent is going to bleed out in the ring. The average adult male has approximately ten pints of blood in his body. Lose one pint, and you might feel a little light-headed. Lose two pints, and you’ll probably feel a little dizzy and perhaps a slight chill. It’s not until you lose three pints that your body begins to shut down. How much is three pints? Well, it’s three pints. But that’s a fucking lot of blood. The chance that you’ll bleed even a pint out of a cut on your head is pretty damn rare, so if you start to feel queasy or think that your heart is beginning to fade, it’s just in your mind. Trust me, the referee will stop the bout long before you bleed to death. If not, then at least you’ll be the first.
Now, if you receive a cut, you want to tend to it afterward as quickly as possible. You might think it would look cool to have a lump of scar tissue above one eye, but scar tissue is weaker than skin, and chances are it will open up again the next time you get punched. Take my face, for example—I’ve got scars all over the damn thing, and all you need to do is touch my face for it to start bleeding, which leads those watching my fights to think that my opponent has superhuman power in his punches, when in fact my face will open up under the pressure of a decent-size yawn. To keep from becoming a “bleeder,” you want to get your cuts stitched up. If you’re competing in the UFC or one of the other larger promotions, they will most likely take proper care of you. However, it’s not this way in a lot of the smaller shows. I remember after one fight I got stitched up in a locker room by a guy who had Tourette’s syndrome. In order to keep his hands from shaking, he had to let a steady stream of cusswords out of his mouth. Shit, fuck, honey, fuck, Love ya Honey! He said these over and over as he dug a needle into my skin. He actually turned out to be a quite capable stitch man, but this is what you’ll find in the smaller promotions—a capable Tourette’s guy who has to curse like a sailor to make sure he doesn’t stitch something that vaguely looks like the state of Texas into your face. As a matter of fact, don’t expect to get treated at all. If you were like me when I first started out and don’t have the money to visit your local emergency room, it’s possible to stitch up a cut yourself using Super Glue, which was originally developed for this exact purpose. To apply these “ghetto stitches,” wipe the blood away from the laceration, pinch the wound shut with the fingers of one hand, and then apply a small dab of S
uper Glue across the seam using a Q-tip. Chances are the scar won’t be very aesthetically pleasing, especially if the cut was deep and you needed stitches inside, but when you’re broke as fuck, sometimes you got to go ghetto.
Best Techniques for Opening Cuts
(All Legal in MMA Competition—i.e., Wins Fights)
Over-the-top elbow
Grazing punch with leather gloves
Knee to the face
Side elbow from mount or guard
Chicken Soup for Your Scrotum
(A Word on Confidence)
Personally, I had very little confidence when I first began fighting, but, thankfully, I had a secret ingredient that eliminated its importance—I didn’t give a fuck about the consequences. Losing was fine by me as long as I got to hit someone in the face. To me, that was exciting and fun. However, at the time I was living a “Logan’s Run Lifestyle.” If you’ve never seen the movie Logan’s Run, it’s about an idyllic future society where everyone is as happy as can be, but at the age of thirty they get sent to the “happy place,” which in reality is a dog-food factory or some shit. I truly thought that I wouldn’t make it past thirty, so what did I give a shit about a few teeth or a joint or two. This “give a shit” attitude is an excellent replacement for a complete lack of confidence, but just as it happened for me, it gets ripped out from underneath you at the age of twenty-nine. If you haven’t built at least a little confidence by that time, you’re pretty much screwed.
Got Fight? Page 10
