At the end of high school, I stopped talking to people, stopped connecting and just focused on myself. I discovered a darker side, a darker place in my existence. I’m not sure exactly how to explain it. I just think it was part of my evolution. I’ve been a good and nice person at times, and it has helped me win opportunities, and other times I’ve been pitiless because that’s what the situation demanded of me. Genetics and environment are the determining factors in that equation. Where I come from, and the people who came before me, helped make me who I am today.
Determinism is something I strongly believe in. I have the illusion that I control all of my actions, but in reality I don’t. It’s like a pool table—you hit the cue ball and it strikes the other balls and sends them on a path that’s beyond your control, even if you know where the balls are going. Life is like that, just more complex. It’s the butterfly effect, and each gesture has an impact on the final result. It means I control most of my reactions, and as I get better and acquire more knowledge, my preparation to meet my fate is improved.
The key has always been simple, though: discovery. Even though other people had started voicing their opinions on my potential, I remained silent. Until I discovered exactly what it is that I wanted to do: become a mixed martial artist. That discovery gave belief to my inner dreams because I started seeing the concrete possibility that I could become a fighter, a true fighter. And so the change was going from having visions about my life to living them concretely.
At this stage in my life I left many, many things behind. I constantly heard Kristof’s words whispered in my ear, and it triggered a reaction inside me and I realized: this is what I want to do. I want to become champion of the world in mixed martial arts.
And then, all of my energy, everything I had inside of me, went toward achieving that unique goal. I wasn’t making sacrifices anymore, I was making decisions. Train instead of party. Work instead of play. Perfect practice instead of casual repetition.
I started living life with purpose and direction. In the words of Buddha: “First, intention; then, enlightenment.”
BOOK 2
MENTOR
The Ground Book
WITH
KRISTOF MIDOUX, SENSEI
I was only fooling myself.
I still wasn’t on top of fear, even if I might have thought I was. Being in the now, at this moment, having just heard that surgeons would be cutting into my knee, became a bad idea. This was not a good thing for me, fighting my fear in the now. I took some hard shots and the fear took me down, but I thought I’d be able to reset my mind after a while. Get my feet back underneath me. But I was wrong, and I panicked.
The now is usually when the fear tricks you, when you think you’re okay again. It gets you to think there’s an easy solution, a simple fix. That’s what happened to me: I decided I’d fix my torn ACL right now.
I went from fear of never fighting again to wanting to be able to fight next week. The fear got me thinking that I needed to fix the problem in the next twenty-four hours, right away, as soon as possible—NOW, RIGHT FUCKING NOW! I rushed home and sat on the computer and started looking up surgeons. I Googled it: surgeons, anterior cruciate ligament, ACL, best in the world. I made a list of names, people I’d never heard of. I called around to my team and told them the news, but that I didn’t want them to worry and I had a plan. I wanted to do things quickly. I spoke with Firas and asked him to help with my search of surgeons, that I could go in tomorrow and get my knee opened and fixed. Because the fear convinced me I was ready, I could do this, and the earlier the better. The fear took control because that’s what it’s supposed to do, and I should have known that. I should have remembered. Instead, I freaked out.
Fear hates logic, and it puts blinders next to your eyes and thoughts and forces you to focus on one single thing—as long as that one thing isn’t the fear itself. This is not good.
Don’t get me wrong: fear can be a good thing, and there’s no way you can eliminate it from your life. In fact, eliminating fear from your life is a lie, or it’s a mental illness. That’s it, nothing more. Anyone who says they don’t feel fear is a liar. Guys who say they don’t feel fear are full of shit or they’re plain crazy. Major denial issues.
I remember hearing a story about soldiers going into battle and showing no fear, and the guy said it was really simple (I’m paraphrasing here): ‘‘There are two kinds of men: those who want to go out and fight—the crazy ones—and the ones who are afraid to go, but they go anyway. They’re the courageous ones.’’ I realized at this moment that it takes fear to make a person courageous. And I like that, because courage says something about you.
The result is that, after a while, you get practice at being courageous. You understand how to move forward against fear, how to react in certain situations. You just get better. It doesn’t mean you stop feeling fear—that would be careless—but it means you have earned the right to feel confidence in the battle against fear.
MENTOR: It’s in training that you see the real Georges and see how dangerous he really is, like an assassin. In fact, I think he’s too nice to his training partners. You can see it in their faces and hear them after sparring: “I did this to Georges” or “I passed his guard and it was easy.” They don’t realize that Georges is doing that on purpose to put himself in harder situations. But that, too, is part of concealment: letting people imagine your weaknesses and question your strengths. But these people who train with Georges never really get a chance to be in a real fight with him, and they shouldn’t want to.
Many people call him the French Hurricane. His ability to pop up at any time, to overtake center stage and to submit men with his awe-inspiring force, is legendary. Kristof Midoux, after all, once knocked out an opponent in nine seconds. I think it’s an MMA record, and it came in his first professional fight. He stepped into the ring, the referee started the bout, Kristof moved forward and, with a single flying knee, knocked his opponent out cold. Everyone in the room felt a surge of power, like seeing a comic book hero absorb his opponent and all he has ever owned. One swallow, and a person disappeared.
Other people call Kristof Midoux “le phénix,” the phoenix, the mythical bird that burns into ashes as it darts across the sky. Maybe, to some people, he really is a fiery ball of power that blazes down from above. Maybe he is the ashes that give rise to the self. Or maybe, like the classic story of the phoenix, he signals immortality.
Whatever you choose to call him, let me tell you this: Kristof Midoux is the single most important figure in my becoming a mixed martial artist, and the only reason why I understood so many years ago that I could become a champion.
When I was barely sixteen years old, I had no idea what I was going to do with my future. I was becoming a loner at high school. All I wanted to do was go to Kahnawake, the Mohawk reserve near Montreal, to watch local MMA events when my mother let me. There were times when I wasn’t allowed to go—not because of the violence, necessarily, but because some adult magazine sponsored the event. The sport was fresh and new and I felt a special connection to what I could see happening inside the octagon. The king inside that octagon during those years was Kristof Midoux.
Midoux was larger than life for me, and at six foot two, 240 pounds, he stood for pure, unstoppable power. He’s European, and despite his French citizenship, he’d chosen to fight out of St-Joseph-de-Sorel, Quebec. He had the same Kyokushin karate background as I had, and on top of this, he owned and ran an MMA gym in downtown Montreal.
MENTOR: Canada accepted me when I was young, and had been very good to me. I felt really good here—this is where my life in sport took off—so I thought I should be good to this country. France has never accepted my sport—not yet, anyway—so I’ve never represented France or carried its colors, and I don’t think I ever will. Even at the world competitions, it’s the Canadian anthem that I’d play, and my sponsors come from Russia.
After seeing him fight, I decided I would track him down and find a
way to become his pupil.
MENTOR: Some people at the reserve had said this kid was talking about me and wanted to meet with me. I didn’t pay much attention to it, but eventually I’d have to . . .
I was wandering down the sidewalk one day, running errands, and I saw this car stop half in the middle of the road. It got my attention. Suddenly, I saw this kid with short blond hair come out of it and run toward me. He literally chased me down the sidewalk.
I was driving up St-Laurent Boulevard in the heart of downtown Montreal when I saw Kristof walking down the sidewalk. Immediately, I became excited, knowing this was the opportunity to speak with him alone. I half pulled over in my car and slammed on the brakes, leaving the vehicle and blocking a lane on St-Laurent. I ran out from the driver’s side and sprinted over to Kristof. He stopped and looked me up and down curiously. He smiled and said bonjour. I responded by telling him I’d been looking for him because I badly wanted him to me my teacher.
MENTOR: He had these piercing blue eyes and this short blond hair, he looked everything like a sixteen-year-old boy. “Kristof! Kristof! You’re the champion of the Indian reserve!” he said. “I do karate just like you. I want to become strong like you in this sport. What do I need to do?”
“Why me?” Kristof asked.
“Because I’ve seen you fight, and we both come from the same background, and I believe you can teach me many things,” I responded.
MENTOR: Looking into his face and seeing the way he was determined, the way he addressed me, I just had a feeling in my gut, a good feeling I couldn’t resist. So I invited him to “come tomorrow” to my gym in downtown Montreal and to train with my fighters and me. I said I’d take a look at him and see if and how I could help him.
“There’s a problem, though—I don’t have any money.”
“That’s okay,” he replied. “Neither do I.”
MENTOR: When he came back after our first meeting, I saw immediately that there was something to do with this kid. That’s why I couldn’t leave him behind. I told him that if he’d stay disciplined and come regularly to train, I’d help him out.
I saw from the very first day that he loved training, he lived and fed off of it, and nothing would tire him. Nothing. That’s also why I wanted to help him. I did everything I could to exhaust him, to make him fall from fatigue, to break his will and his resolve, but he just kept coming back to me. He kept coming for more, day after day. It was like a battle between us in many ways to see who could outlast the other. Every time he came to train—he’d go two solid hours, take a little ten-minute break and then start going again—I saw more and more potential.
My life literally changed when I met Kristof.
It started at the first moment on the first day that I stepped into Kristof’s gym. He looked at me, stared straight into my eyes, pointed at me and said, “I’m going to make a champion out of you.” It really scared me. Not only was Midoux a legend where I came from, but he looked every bit the part of a professional MMA fighter: bruised, tattooed, cut from a rock. And he had the intense disposition to match.
In my head, I thought it would be possible to become a champion, but I never expressed it to anybody. I thought maybe it was just another daydream, a mental trick, another fantasy that existed inside my head alone. But Kristof believed in me.
MENTOR: He had a crazy life: no money, a few shitty part-time jobs—including one as a garbageman—a crap car filled with more crap, but he never complained. After a tough workout, we’d get a quart of milk, two small pieces of crappy chicken or a cheap salad, and despite this cheap, shitty food, he’d look up at me and say he felt strong, that he was ready to go. He was always ready to go, and he hasn’t really changed much when it comes to this.
The only solace I found during this time was from training and fighting in the gym, and Kristof encouraged me to stick to that. Kristof, in the meantime, did what he was good at: getting me mentally ready for the challenges that lay ahead. A lot of people expressed doubts about Kristof and alluded to his questionable reputation, but I just didn’t listen to them. He was different from anyone I’d ever met, and his interests were my interests, so I went with what I knew and felt was right.
As we started training together, he did something very interesting.
MENTOR: I made Georges realize his own power by giving him choices. We’d be in my gym, for example, and I’d invite fighters who were already professional and on television.
He made me fight against all the “regional” guys who were competing regularly on the circuit. Guys I’d see on television destroying everybody. And he made me face them. We’d get to the gym for training, I wouldn’t know the plan for the day, and he’d just toss me in the ring.
MENTOR: Then I’d ask Georges: “Between these two guys, which one do you think is strongest?”
In those days, you had local legends like David Loiseau and Jason St-Louis. St-Louis, especially, was seen as an assassin in those days. But I knew how those guys were fighting, St-Louis and Loiseau. I knew their thinking. When you’re a professional, you get a feeling just from touching someone or being close to them. You sense an aura of strength, of power, of danger—or you don’t. Some guys will be standing ten meters from you, but even at that distance you can sense them, and you feel a certain power. I wanted to teach this to Georges and just let him feel how strong he is, so I had to show him his strength by using other fighters’ strengths, and by putting obstacles in his way.
I used those reputed assassins like victims, really, but they had no idea what I was doing. In fact, I had to draw them out to our gym and trick them into training with us. I’d say, “Hey, come on over for a free seminar and free training sessions.” They’d walk in and see Georges’s nice blue eyes and his pretty blond hair . . . fresh meat. They’d have no idea what power he had in him. Georges didn’t know what he was doing there either. He was scared and intimidated.
At first, I refused to fight; I was too scared. They were really strong and powerful and I didn’t think I could beat them. But Kristof’s voice was a constant whisper in my ear, telling me, reminding me and cajoling me into believing I was better than everyone. He’d lean in close to me, put his powerful hand on my shoulder or grip my forearm, and say: “You’re better. You’re strong, very powerful. You can defeat this opponent. Believe me, and believe in yourself.” Eventually, I took the step, I crossed the line, and it was the best thing I ever did. At seventeen years old, true to his promise, I really dominated those fighters. That’s how I found my own source of belief and transitioned into the world of MMA as a fighter.
This became Kristof’s trademark. He kept putting me in situations where I didn’t think I could win, but he always knew I would.
MENTOR: In terms of martial arts, I was brought up by the Japanese. Their “way” is part of who I am. I started when I was four years old. I’ve made people win battles they should have lost, and I’ve made others lose battles they should have won. It comes down to mental games, and knowing the difference between fiction and reality. The only true challenge I faced with Georges was his confidence. I had to find a way to help him believe in his own power.
Georges is first and foremost a theorist. This is why I believe that one day he’ll be a great teacher. It’s also why I was able to put him in situations that everyone else would have failed in. He has a superior intellect, especially when it comes to the martial arts. So I designed lessons made for him.
I love learning and discussing ideas and the way people have thought throughout the history of mankind. I’m drawn to traditional philosophy and philosophers—in a completely informal way. The school of thought or the historical relevance make no difference to me. What matters to me is the practical application of the novel thinking. This doesn’t mean I’m an expert who can teach a class about philosophy; it means I have found a way to incorporate traditional philosophy into my way of life to help make it better. It means that a certain kind of knowledge enhances my life. That’s why I post
an inspirational quote on my Facebook page every week. I choose one that I think helps me be a better person, and I share it with my fans.
MENTOR: The difference between Georges and everyone else I saw in training was his discipline. There have been a lot of people in Canada who have practiced this sport, kids who are strong but don’t have what it takes to go far. Georges—you see right away that martial arts is part of who he is, the discipline, the understanding. Even that first day, if you bothered to open your eyes you could see he’d go far. He was totally pure: no smoking, no drinking, absolute focus—he was obsessed by the sport. I could see it in his eyes.
Now, you can’t let an idiot believe he’s strong—it won’t work and he will fail. But Georges was extremely strong and had amazing capacities and potential, but he didn’t know how to believe in himself. He’d see others do well, and he never wanted to lack respect for anyone else.
The first time I saw St-Louis, I didn’t want to go out there on the mat, but Kristof told me it was too late—he was waiting for me, and there I was. I had to go out there. He didn’t leave me any choice. He’d scream at me, “Go get changed now!” He turned to St-Louis and said, “Here’s a new kid, don’t be too hard on him.” But then he’d turn to me and give me my instructions: “Take the initiative, jump them, and beat them as fast as possible.”
MENTOR: I knew I had to let him see how much stronger than everyone else he always was. That was the hardest part of my job—to let him see his own potential. I forced and imposed my will on him. I played tricks on him to test him, and he passed every time. Everything I asked, everything I instructed, everything I said to do, Georges did. When I made him believe that professionals train five to six hours a day, he believed me.
The Way of the Fight Page 4
