Into the Cage

by Nick Gullo

  Campbell theorized the reason this same pattern occurs across continents, cultures, races, and religions is because inside, despite our differences, we’re all made of the same hopes, the same fears, the same dreams. In one form or another, it’s the journey we all face, so we need to hear/see the story over and over, just with different heroes, obstacles, and settings.

  Flip through late-night TV movies and you’ll see the pattern:

  A young peasant endures a brutal beating at the hands of an evil warlord’s minions, so he skulks into a monastery and meets an old man who sets him to peculiar, hellish tasks. The peasant questions, doubts, wants to quit training but sticks with it, and after arduous trials he emerges to conquer the warlord, and a hero is born.

  If this sounds like a spiritual quest, well…

  “It is always a battle of the spirits,” Lyoto Machida told me in Montreal, “inside the Octagon, and out. It doesn’t matter. Training every day, even when you are going to close a major [business] deal, it is a battle of the spirits.”

  That’s why it’s called mixed martial arts—despite how it looks, the sport is not merely about smashing and snapping—it’s about that dawn-of-time mystical journey. The Hero’s Journey.

  TRAINING CAMP

  Though an MMA fighter works out year-round, come eight weeks before a fight he enters camp. General training yields to increased intensity, focus on fight strategy, a monastic diet, and mental strain unlike anything, the days ticking away, millions watching, waiting.

  “When I’m in camp, we make my opponent out as a monster,” lightweight title contender Joe Lauzon told me. “We focus on his strengths because that’s what we need to negate. Right off the bat, take away his tools. Find training partners who can simulate those strengths, then work on jamming him up and eliminating how he’ll hurt you.”

  Training day in, day out, you arrive at the gym after breakfast, again after lunch, and, oh, let’s head back before dinner, as if all this training won’t kill the thrill and shatter the body. Split fingernail. Swollen cheek. Aching elbow. Still you hump along, leaving every sparring session wheezing for breath with these strained ribs, nose throbbing from the constant jabs, but don’t complain because this is what you signed up for, and fuck if you don’t need this fight.

  “Boxing is a grind, I hate it because it’s my weakness and I have to put so much time into [improving it],” Lauzon told me. “Getting punched in the face for an hour straight, that sucks. But rolling jiu-jitsu is my favorite. It completely picks me up. Even if I’m losing I have a good time. I’m serious when I say grappling brightens my week—to go for an awesome sweep or submission, even if I don’t make it, who cares, I’m having fun.”

  Too bad this is MMA and not choose-the-discipline-you-like-best, for in the cage you gotta prepare all weapons, especially those needed in fifty-six, fifty-five, fifty-four days and counting. “When camp starts, we buckle down and start grinding it out,” Steve Maze, Lauzon’s striking coach, explained. “The first week we’re just getting back into it, formulating a game plan, looking at different combinations. Everything is geared toward the opponent, because it doesn’t make sense to work on things you’re not going to use in the fight. I get the DVDs [of opponents’ fights] from the UFC, then I make copies for all the coaches and sparring partners.”

  Old fight videos are key, not just for devising strategy but also for stoking the fire. “In MMA you’re only as good as your last fight,” Lauzon said, “so I like watching my old fights and seeing where I screwed up. Even Anderson Silva, if he drops a few fights they’ll start saying he’s overrated, and he was never that good. That’s just how it is. Fans are fickle. I’ve had some good fights, but when I drop the ball fans immediately tweet how bad I suck. That’s the game. So I go back and watch old fights that didn’t go so well, get ideas for things I should work that day.”

  Joe also watches other fighters for motivation, particularly his hero, Kazushi Sakuraba. In the early 2000s, Sakuraba earned the moniker “Gracie Hunter” after defeating Royce, Renzo, Royler, and Ryan Gracie. “I know his fights are old,” Lauzon said, “but people still make highlights of the guy. It’s so inspiring because even if he was losing, really getting his ass kicked, from nowhere he’d pull some crazy submission and win. He always thought outside the box; like, fuck typical tactics, because there’s always another solution. I also watch B.J. Penn, the Diaz brothers—any guys that really go for it.”

  Coaches treat camp like a clock repair shop: each week they wind the spring tighter and tighter, in the hope that the coiled whiplash releases the night of the fight, causing maximum destruction. “You don’t want your best day during camp,” coach Maze said, “not that you should look terrible for eight weeks, but during that time you want to get beat up because if you’re [besting] guys every time you spar or roll, then guess what, you don’t have anything to work on and you’re cheating yourself. During camp I want to break a fighter down, push him as hard as I can so if something goes wrong on fight night he can mentally push through it. The last thing you want is your boy’s will to break during a fight. That’s why every week we run Simulation Saturdays, where whatever he’s gonna do day of the fight—take a shower, have breakfast—that’s what he does, so it’s routine. Then he spars for an hour straight, rotating out fresh guys to simulate the worst-case scenario.”

  To cope with the mental strain, after training Joe Lauzon, like many fighters, retreats into his cave for nightly sessions on the Xbox. “Playing video games helps me switch my mind off from training. If I make a mistake while sparring, during dinner and lying in bed I’ll obsess on it … you fucked up, you shouldn’t have lowered your hand, why did you turn after that kick … it haunts me. Driving, eating, showering, it’s still going through my brain. But Call of Duty, the constant strategizing, the I’m-gonna-die-if-I-don’t-dive-into-that-hole, it forces my brain to switch over, and that keeps me sharp during camp.”

  Joe Lauzon (center) with Steve Maze (left) and Ricky Lundell (right).

  DIET

  What’s he walk at?

  It’s one of the most important questions in MMA. Why? Because a fighter wants every available advantage: speed, strength, technique, and weight. So during camp he restricts meals and sheds every ounce of fat, then during fight week he cuts water and, stepping on the scale, let’s say he makes weight at 170 pounds—well, that night he rehydrates, and after a few light meals to bulge the vacant intestinal tract, the next day he enters the cage weighing much, much more.

  That’s how Rory MacDonald rolls, and it proved an enormous advantage over B.J. Penn during their UFC on Fox 5 bout in Seattle in December 2012. Unlike most fighters, throughout camp B.J. struggled to gain weight—who knows why, really—and after eight weeks—fully hydrated and bowels bulged—he tipped the official scales at 168. That’s two pounds under the welterweight limit.

  Now this doesn’t sound like much, but on fight night B.J. entered the cage at 168, effectively handing Rory an enormous advantage. It’s simple algebra, whether we’re talking ten, fifteen, or however many extra pounds Rory packed behind every punch and every kick. This isn’t a subjective edge, it’s hard physics: as in P=MA*V (Power equals Mass Acceleration multiplied by Velocity). Jump to Chapter 6 for the outcome.

  So there’s the combat advantage, or at least a need to level the field, but denying the flesh also steels the mind and ups the chi—again, a spiritual thing. Great thinkers from Plato to Jesus have long advocated fasting and refusing the body, and it’s perhaps the most divine trial a fighter faces. In the words of Henry David Thoreau: “Every man is the builder of a temple, called his body, to the god he worships, after a style purely his own, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead. We are all sculptors and painters, and our material is our own flesh and blood and bones.”

  Though we mere mortals might never throw a punch or drop an elbow, we’ve all denied ourselves a warm donut or an oven-fresh chocolate chip cookie—so it’s no revelation that dieting suck
s. The body wants what the body wants.

  Mike Dolce, nutritionist to numerous UFC fighters, including Vitor Belfort and Chael Sonnen, cemented his reputation when he supervised Quinton “Rampage” Jackson’s massive weight cut prior to his bout with Rashad Evans. It was a remarkable feat, especially given how Dolce spurns the traditional wrestler/boxer starvation approach. Instead, his fighters feast on fresh veggies, fruits, whole grains, coupled with small portions of grass-fed beef or wild fish. And in total sacrilege, during the last week of camp his fighters drink gallons of water and, via the manipulation of electrolytes, come the morning of weigh-ins they’ve pissed out at least seven pounds of water weight.

  One afternoon I found Mike in the Zuffa corporate kitchen, and while grubbing a Dolce Diet recipe of wild salmon, sautéed string beans, and mashed sweet potatoes, I grilled him on his approach.

  So, Mike, how has weight cutting evolved over the last twenty years?

  “It hasn’t. Turn of the century, and I mean the early 1900s, boxers would layer heavy clothes and plastics, stop eating, and sweat off the weight. They’d dehydrate and starve themselves for days, sometimes weeks, forcing their bodies to submit, but they paid a heavy price. And that was their health. That’s the way a lot of guys still lose weight, and it’s ridiculous. I’m on the other side of the scale—adhering to basic nutritional principles, I keep my guys healthy.”

  Joe Rogan has talked at length about fighters stepping on the scales at weigh-ins, and due to their sunken cheeks and eyes, he knows right then they’re gonna lose.

  “No question about it. In 2008, Daniel Cormier was captain of the U.S. Olympic wrestling team, and while losing weight [the old-fashioned way], his body completely shut down. They rushed him to the hospital, and the doctors, seeing how bad off he was, wouldn’t let him compete. It’s a shame, but adhering to those old-school principles crushed his Olympic dreams.”

  Explain, please.

  “Well, I focus on the health of the athlete. That’s number one. Using common-sense strategies based on whole foods, I keep my athletes as healthy as possible during the most unhealthy part of their training. This includes a diet based on nutrients that [have] sustained our species since the dawn of time. I get them off the pills, the powders, the potions, all the crazy fad diets and secret weight-loss tricks—I bring them back to the basics, and it works. I preach it and I hope to re-educate athletes, and ordinary people—this is what we truly need.”

  What do you do when a fighter slips?

  “Each person is different. Regarding carrot and stick, I want nothing to do with the stick. My athletes slip, I treat them like adults. I find out why they slipped, what was the problem, what were the options at that time. Did they make an informed decision? Did they say, ‘Yes, I’m consciously choosing to eat this now, though I know it’s going to set my training back three days and balloon my bodyweight seven pounds.’ I’m the coach, the trusted advisor—but you’re an adult, the boss, captain of the ship. After the slip, there’s no reason to dwell on it, we need to build back up and wipe out the consequences. I keep my responses very critical, very clean and professional. I always tell my athletes the exact truth. I tell them where they fucked up, when they fucked up, and why they fucked up—but I always help them find a way out of it. The important thing is to stop the slip. If Vitor calls me and says, ‘Man, I got a sweet tooth and I’m craving something really bad, what should I have?’ I’ll ask what’s available, what’s in front of you, what’s in your house, what’s in your wife’s purse, what’s down the street? All my guys call me. After one or two fights, we develop a strong relationship.”

  Chris Weidman makes weight, UFC 162.

  Okay, so tell me about a slip.

  “Okay. During Rampage’s big weight loss, I stayed with him for eleven weeks before the fight. Everything was going good. Then, maybe six weeks into camp I’m in the kitchen around midnight and I hear a dog barking outside, really freaking out. I go to the door, and there’s Rampage’s assistant sneaking across the lawn, clutching a McDonald’s bag. I stick my head out and ask what’s going on. She jumps, hems and haws, then confesses that she’s delivering Rampage food. So I walk down to his window, and on the ground there’s an empty milkshake cup, a few crumpled bags. I confronted him, and he dropped his head and told me, ‘I messed up, I messed up.’

  “McDonald’s in the middle of the night—that’s a pretty big ‘mess up’ when you’re preparing to fight Machida. I don’t care who you are, at that level you need to be in the best shape of your life. Anyway, the fight ended in a split decision [Rampage won], but if he didn’t slip those few times, who knows, [the decision] might’ve been unanimous.”

  So you’re helping with the entire mental game?

  “Diet is just a slice of fight camp. There’s also the lifestyle, the rest, the recuperation, the support system—I help with all the influences, internal and external. Nutritional, emotional, financial stresses—they all impact a camp. If a fighter’s going through shit with his girl, or wife, there’s nothing more detrimental. I also monitor the workouts, to eliminate overtraining and mental burnout.”

  But your books focus on diet…

  “That’s the foundation. If your diet isn’t right, every cellular function in the body suffers. Skip breakfast and lunch, come two o’clock the average office worker feels like shit—they lose energy, cognitive ability, timing. Performance dulls and diminishes. Imagine the effect on a UFC fighter in full training camp. That’s when the room for error is negligible. No, it’s not negligible, it’s zero. That’s the irony; diet is such a dramatic part of the game, but most fans and most athletes don’t see it. There’s more drama filming a sweaty fighter punching heavy bags and running sprints—but watching him eat healthy meals, kind of boring.”

  BACKSTAGE

  “Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.”

  —SUN TZU, The Art of War

  Backstage during the pre-fight press conferences, or during the weigh-ins, at first look it’s just a group of athletes milling about, shooting the shit. But wander close and you’ll note the thousand-yard stares, the anxious fidgeting; closer still and you feel the low-octave hum. That nervous energy only intensifies as the fight draws near. Come fight night, back in the change rooms it’s so thick that walking through with my camera, I step as quietly as possible and try to avoid any eye contact. For each fighter the pressure continues to ratchet until in the hallway he hears, “Let’s roll, baby! Let’s roll!”

  That’s the battle cry from UFC fight coordinator Burt Watson, a lifelong veteran of the fight game. This folksy bespectacled fellow, shuffling down the hallways, poking his head into change rooms, is the man tasked with ensuring the backstage happenings run smooth and on time. Fighters as a whole are a ragtag bunch—in the havoc there’s always a missing mouthguard, or torn trunks, or a delayed flight—and with the heavy tension, these mishaps threaten a code red meltdown.

  After managing Joe Frazier, Michael Spinks, and a slew of others, Burt knows more than anyone the pressures bearing down on a fighter. Maybe that empathy is rooted in his upbringing. Growing up in Buford, North Carolina, during the 1950s, at just five years old he’d enter the local grocery store, head downcast, and hand a note to the clerk. This was a different era, a parallel universe, it seems, when he describes how he’d stand silent as white customers brushed past, filling their baskets. Welcome to segregation, when your skin precluded you from touching the merchandise, or even looking at a white person. When you were “treated no better than a damn dog,” Burt told me—then he recalled with pride the marches and demands for equal treatment, and the changes his generation spurred.

  Then came The Fight of the Century: Muhammad Ali versus Joe Frazier, Madison Square Garden, 1971. At the time Burt was managing “Smoking” Joe, and leading up to the bout, after so much suffering via racism, and so much progress on civil rights, Muhammad Ali shouted to the world: “[Frazie
r is] the other type of Negro, he’s not like me. There are two types of slaves. Frazier’s worse than you to me.… One day he might be like me, but for now he works for the enemy.”

  For a black man in the early 1970s, this was the most demeaning bitch-slap. And it came from nowhere. During Ali’s three-year expulsion from the fight world—broke and desperate, no means of feeding his family—it was Frazier who helped him with cash and public support. So why did Ali turn on his close friend? Because as a student of ancient warfare Ali knew it’d take more than left hooks and jabs to rattle his opponent. Come opening bell he wanted Frazier so angry, so confused, he’d bungle his fight strategy.

  “Fights are won and lost backstage,” Burt told me. “When [Michael] Spinks fought Tyson, I’ll never forget, we’re in the locker room and Spinks looks great. He’s been training hard, got his head right, and an hour before the bell I’m looking around and I don’t see him. I wander down to the bathroom, and there he is, sitting on the toilet, blank-staring at the wall … Ah shit, somehow during that hundred-foot walk from the dressing room to the stall, he’d lost it, beat himself, and there was nothing I could do to bring him back.”

  Roughly an hour before a fighter’s call time, the cut-men head to the change rooms and sit the fighter in a chair. They unpack supplies while making small talk, and under constant watch of an Athletic Commission official they wrap the fighter’s hands. It’s an intense rite of passage signaling the end of a long camp, and it evokes countless metaphors, least of which is going to war with a medieval priest pronouncing his blessing.

  “When you come to the arena and get your hands wrapped,” Jon Fitch, a top welterweight contender recently released from the UFC, explained, “the fear escalates. There are literally times when you’re warming up that you think, What am I doing here? I should just leave. I’m thirty-five years old, I have a college degree, what am I doing?”