The Laws of the Ring

by Urijah Faber

  The bottom line is the guy who was working as a surveyor for an engineering company for little pay—and gave up the profession to work for even less as my support system—is today being paid—and paid well. He just kept working and enjoying his life, and before long, it became lucrative.

  There’s power in doing more than you’re asked, and more than people expect of you. It’s a “people skill” because it gets you noticed, and appreciated, and rewarded. It’s a measure of your personal credit, the biggest people skill of all, and it ties in nicely with my desire to look for people with potential to do great things.

  Tommy took a chance. He made a lifestyle out of his passion. Conventional thinking would call for him to stick it out with the engineering company, make the best of the surveying job, and wait for the inevitable promotion. And for people who are passionate about building roads, levees, and airport runways—people who are extremely valuable to society—that’s the perfect approach. Go the extra mile in that profession and be noticed and rewarded the same way. This isn’t to suggest that ditching a traditional profession for something as unusual as Tommy’s is the only way to go. It is, however, suggesting that there are definite traits that are shared among successful people—in every profession.

  And going the extra mile is one of them.

  The 22nd Law of Power

  Create Your Own Opportunities: Think Outside the Box

  Sometimes potential is obvious. When Joseph Benavidez showed up at the gym, anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of MMA could tell he was special. But I don’t want to give the impression that everyone who walks through the door ends up being a success. As the profile of our team has grown, so has the number of guys wanting to show up and train with us. They come from all over the world, and many of them don’t realize their dreams in the cage. The training is difficult and the competition is fierce, and you have to have a unique combination of talent and discipline to thrive. But some guys show up wanting to be fighters and end up showing potential in a completely different field. Maybe it turns out that they love the culture more than the act of fighting itself. We have a place for those people, too.

  Dustin Akbari is a good example of this. He is my longest-standing training partner. He was fourteen when I started my training in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and he had already been on home studies for a year studying MMA full-time. Dustin was born in Texas, but raised in Iran until the age of ten, when his family came back to America. Dustin was intrigued by my mentality when I first showed up at the gym because of my intensity, and confidence about becoming a fighter. At fourteen, Dustin was still smaller than I was, but he had grit. His training was mostly in the traditional martial arts like tae kwon do, but he had recently dedicated all of his focus on BJJ and on becoming a world champion. He would train all day, and was always picking other people’s brains about techniques and ways to get ahead. So every time that I came to the gym, Dustin was the first to greet me. He would ask me every day if I would teach him a new wrestling move after practice was over. I would always agree to it. Dustin told me that he wanted to fight when he grew up and wanted to learn all aspects of MMA. As time went on, he grew, and he got better and better. Before long he was my main training partner. He would come with me to kickboxing and boxing at other gyms. Dustin had a key to the jujitsu academy and taught the kids classes there. We would open the gym during off-hours, with Cassio’s permission, and we would drill wrestling for an hour with me leading the way, then Dustin would lead us through an hour of BJJ.

  By the time Dustin was seventeen, I was seven fights into my career and I asked him to be my cornerman for my upcoming fight. Cassio was unable to make it, and I needed someone I felt comfortable with. Dustin was more than happy to stand in the corner, ane he did a great job.

  Dustin’s first pro fight was less than a year later, shortly after his eighteenth birthday, and he has had several more fights over the years, but it turned out that his heart wasn’t into being a fighter like he’d once thought it was. He enjoys the lifestyle and the discipline but has stopped competing in MMA at the age of twenty-three. His résumé is thick, though. He has been in twenty fights for me as a cornerman, with seventeen of those for some form of title (UFC, WEC, Gladiator Challenge, and King of the Cage). His grappling is world-class and he has world championships under his belt. Dustin has seen Team Alpha Male grow from the two of us swapping technique after hours at the BJJ gym to one of the most dominant camps in the world. Dustin is a black belt under Cassio Werneck and is the head instructor at my Ultimate Fitness Gym in downtown Sacramento. As a professional MMA fighter, he has stopped competing with a pro record of 5–1, and now spends his time training and mentoring future champions. I know in my heart that Dustin is one of the most well-rounded mixed martial artists in the world, but his goals don’t involve letting the world know it.

  This is a good place to talk about the gray area of a community, which comes between the buyer and the artist—or in the case of fighting, the fan and the fighter. Maybe what makes me different from others is that I have ambitions that are linked to, but that expand beyond, the scope of the cage. But even fighters whose sole focus is their fight careers need guys to train them, manage them, promote them, etc. The point is that there are roles in the fighting community that are not the equivalent of being a fighter and that vary in visibility, but are just as important as the guy throwing the punches.

  Let’s say MMA is your passion. You got into martial arts as a kid and found it to be a great outlet. It helped you overcome some issues in life by providing discipline and self-confidence. When the MMA craze hit, you never considered fighting as a career, but finally you had a sport you could identify with and follow. You work every day to pay the bills, but MMA has become your passion. You read all the magazines, you buy all the big fights, you continue to practice karate or jujitsu at a local gym. In short, you know your stuff, but the demands of everyday life—job, family—have conspired to keep your passion for MMA on the sidelines.

  In short, life has relegated MMA to the status of a hobby. Does that mean it’s no longer your passion? I say no, not if MMA is what you do to escape the stresses of your nine-to-five (or more) existence. Not if the gym is the place you go where none of that can touch you.

  Wouldn’t it be great to increase those hours of escape? Wouldn’t it be fun to let your passion lead you to some unexpected place? It doesn’t mean quitting your job, but it might mean looking into the possibility of working in the industry. You have to ask yourself a question: What are the different ways people are making a living off this sport, and what would be the best fit for me?

  You might be surprised at how many different types of occupations have been created by the rise of MMA and UFC. There are folks who design and make the gloves we wear. There are guys who travel the country assembling the cages we fight in. There are judges and photographers, writers and referees, promoters and public relations people. Not only are there ring girls, but there is a person at every event who takes care of the ring girls.

  Once you decide where your talents fit best, do some research and find out who is doing the job well, and why. Here’s where emulation comes in. How did he, or she, get there? What unique talents are required? Emulate those people. Talk to them. You’d be amazed at how many people at the tops of their professions are flattered to receive a call or an e-mail from someone who recognizes their success.

  Mike Roberts is a great example of someone who staked out his passion and made it work around his profession. After high school, he was headed to college to play baseball, but his plans changed and his dreams were put on hold when his father had a heart attack. While his dad recovered, Mike was needed to run the family tire business. The business was very successful, but the current circumstances could have changed that drastically if Mike didn’t step it up. Turned out that even at that young age, Mike had every bit as much business acumen as his father, Rich, had, and the business continued to t
hrive.

  But secretly, his passion was combat sports. He loved fighting from its early days, and while committed to the family business, he desperately wanted to find a way to incorporate his passion into his day job. So he got creative, and managed to make Rich’s Tire Barn one of the first businesses to sponsor fighters. Starting around 2002, Mike used his business to reach out to the heaviest hitters of the time—Randy Couture, Tim Sylvia, Matt Hughes, and Tito Ortiz. This was back when a relatively little guy with a relatively small business could sponsor top talent without bankrupting himself. There simply wasn’t a big line to sponsor UFC fighters at the time, so Mike got a bunch of top guys to splash RICH’S TIRE BARN across the butts of their shorts.

  But Mike sought to take his passion even further. He wanted to manage fighters. So he intelligently sought out Monty Cox, one of the early fight managers, and picked his brain about how to get deeper into the field. Through Cox, Mike learned how to build relationships with fighters and make connections with organizations. He began scouting local fighters in and around Sacramento, and this brought him into contact with me, Scott Smith, and James Irvin. Mike called us together and mapped out a plan for becoming our manager. When we met, I remember being impressed that he had T-shirts made for each one of us. At the time that felt big-time.

  Mike introduced us to a trainer and told us he wanted us to begin training together. This was before I had my own gym, and training was a dizzying schedule of different gyms and teachers. I trained at five different gyms to learn all the disciplines, including an abandoned church in a tiny town called Sheridan, where a few of the local MMA fighters were learning BJJ from a purple belt named Chuck. The idea of a central location sounded great.

  Because Mike stepped it up and helped his family business to flourish, he was given enough of a leash to incorporate his passion into it. In the end, he spent far more money than he brought in, but to his credit, he never complained. He wanted to make sure we had what we needed, and his generosity reflected that passion.

  Your life doesn’t have to be compartmentalized: work in one box, MMA in the other. It can be a little of both. Maybe you’re not going to be able to quit your job and support yourself on the money you earn as an MMA referee, but you will have more fulfillment in your life, and who knows what opportunities will come from the new involvement with your passion.

  Pick somebody out. Find an MMA referee who makes the right decisions and controls his fights in a way that shows he knows both the sport and the mentality of its fighters. Watch his fights and see what separates him from the average referee. Call him up. Find out how he got to where he is. Don’t be shy. What’s the worst he can say? No? If he says no, you move on. Simple as that. But you know what? He’s not going to say no. He’s going to be so flattered you contacted him that he’s going to help you out. It gets back to the power of positivity: People like to be complimented. A compliment is the most disarming “rhetorical device” in any language.

  If you were able to go through your workweek knowing you were going to referee a fight at the end of it, I’m guessing you would be a better employee than you are right now. I’m guessing your boss is going to see an increase in productivity because you’re a happier person thanks to the refereeing gig. You’re going to be less grudging of all the petty, mundane matters in your work because it’s no longer your sole focus. Even without the okay of the bosses in your world, there is a way to add your passion to your day, make your days longer. Remember how Tommy went from a 4:30 A.M. departure time to his surveying job to a full night of helping me with my action-packed hustles. Find a way and make some time because you only live once.

  You might not be all the way free, but you’re on your way.

  The 23rd Law of Power

  Connect the People You Trust

  Shortly after Dana helped me buy my first house, she told me I needed to meet her chiropractor friend Matt Fisher. Matt was an ex-wrestler who followed my wrestling career through UC Davis before becoming a fan of my MMA career.

  Initially, I was flattered. Not many people follow college wrestling, and my MMA career was pretty new and definitely under the radar. But I lost Matt’s number just as quickly as Dana gave it to me. It was nice to have a fan, and while, of course, I didn’t have any contempt for the suggestion, I was pretty content with my community as it stood.

  A week later, Dana called and asked if I had gotten in touch with Matt. The tone of her voice told me she knew I hadn’t. I started rifling through my brain for my list of lame excuses, but before I could summon one, she continued: “What are you waiting for?”

  “It was just crazy busy this week,” I replied guiltily.

  “You guys will really hit it off,” she interjected. “Worst thing that can happen, you might get some free chiropractic work out of it. People in your line of work probably need it.”

  I knew from my experience with Dana that she wouldn’t push like this if she didn’t see the potential for something special.

  When I finally got around to calling Matt, I found out why Dana had been so intent on brokering a conversation. We hit it off immediately. He had been following my career because he had graduated from Lincoln High School ten years before I did and was a wrestler, too.

  After about fifteen minutes on the phone, Matt said, “Hey, have you ever thought about opening a gym?”

  The timing of this question was uncanny. I had been thinking about it for a couple years, but I never mentioned anything about it to Dana—actually, I had barely mentioned it to anyone at all. I dreamed of a place of my own, where I could grow my team and combine all my training under one roof, but the amount of work and funding needed to get it off the ground seemed daunting.

  “I want to do it eventually,” I said. “Right now I don’t think I have the time or the money to pull it off.”

  Matt said he thought he could help me get this going faster than I had planned, and he wanted to meet in person to talk more about it. My sense that we were both spur-of-the-moment, do-it-now-or-regret-it-forever people was confirmed when he suggested we meet at seven-thirty the next morning— about twelve hours after our first conversation.

  So the next morning I gave Matt the short version of my vision. I told him my gym would be a place where I could have all the MMA disciplines under one roof. It would be a place where I could bring fighters in to train and develop the camaraderie that would lead to the success of an Alpha Male team. It would be a place to sweat, learn, teach, inspire, and grow. I came into the meeting with Matt having crunched some rough numbers the night before. I knew it was a good business opportunity. There were enough people doing what I was doing—wandering from gym to gym to get the proper training—that I knew we could put together a solid customer base quickly. But I did have a big reservation. Having recently read Robert Kiyosaki’s Rich Dad, Poor Dad, I was adamantly opposed to becoming a slave to my own business. Basically, I didn’t want to own a gym that worked only when I was there. I needed a network of people around me—other teachers and other administrators who would allow me to continue to train and focus on becoming one of the world’s best fighters.

  “This is a good idea,” I told Matt. “And when I come across a good idea, I’ll do anything to make it happen. But I know what I can and can’t do, and I don’t want to get in over my head and feel like the place can’t run without me standing in it.”

  Matt didn’t seem fazed by this concern and said he would provide the initial funding for the gym and handle the business side of the operation (payroll, insurance, etc.), allowing me to provide the sweat equity (teaching, etc.) and the talent. I would teach all the classes to start, and I would be responsible for hiring other instructors and trainers.

  I got a good feeling about Matt’s intentions, and from our conversation, it was apparent to me that he was not only smart, but serious about his side of the bargain. So we shook hands and agreed to pursue it immediately. We had a p
artnership drawn up—Faber/Fisher LLC—that defined our responsibilities.

  We then set out to find a building, and after seeing a few places that were either too big or too small, too expensive or too run-down, we found an empty building on Seventeenth and I Streets in midtown Sacramento. We couldn’t ask for a more centralized location. The building was rough around the edges, but it was warehouse-style, large, open. I definitely saw what it could become—what it is today.

  I leaned on my sense of community to see the solutions to the structural problems. My father is a general contractor, my uncle is a plumbing contractor, my stepdad Tom is a handyman, and Matt and I were more than willing to dig in and do as much as we could ourselves. I had all the tools I needed at my disposal, and I knew that if we all banded together, this shell could be something great.

  The bureaucratic process was an enormous eye-opener: a barrage of neighborhood meetings, city hearings, construction inspections, and heavy-duty planning sessions, but after a year of unrelenting persistence and incredibly long hours extending beyond our already demanding lives, our gym—Ultimate Fitness—was up and running. Matt had his chiropractic office set up inside, and I was teaching classes and signing up members at a rate that exceeded my predictions. We took a chance, had a plan, executed it with persistence, and made it happen.

  The opening of my own gym—the end result of Matt’s and my mutual credibility—changed my career. It gave me a one-stop shop for my training, brought in money to assist my thrifty lifestyle, and offered me the opportunity to help others pursue their dreams.

  But let’s not forget that none of this would’ve happened had I not ultimately heeded Dana’s suggestion. The big lesson here is that if you trust someone enough to let her into your network, she presumably has enough personal credit that you should listen to her when she makes a suggestion.