But I lose.
I leave that cage defeated. Physically, emotionally, and spiritually. It’s my first fight with Invicta—and I lost. And to make it worse, I am alone without anyone with whom to mourn it. I barely know the teammate who came with me, and I feel so embarrassed, I wouldn’t want her consolation anyway. The loss feels like being pushed off a cliff and completely forgotten.
People say it happened because Tecia is more advanced in her career—that’s what the Vegas coach said, anyway. But I don’t care about the reason. The idea of all those people watching me lose is devastating. In the same way that winning is the most incredible feeling on the planet, losing breaks my heart. I fall apart, almost literally; I feel that everything I’ve worked for is broken. It’s very public, and all I can think about is getting the hell out of there. I want to go back home immediately. I was wrong for coming in the first place. It feels like something precious has been suddenly snatched from my possession. When I call my dad, he doesn’t mince words.
“You screwed up,” he says, deadpan.
“I know I did. But how?” I don’t care if he’s mean—I’m here to grow.
“You went in with so much heart that you forgot your technique,” he says, making me realize that technique really is the missing link for me right now. “Go in with your whole heart, but make sure that when you do, you’re as skilled as you are passionate.”
He’s right. Moving forward, it’s a precision game.
How do I get it back? How do I climb out? How do I recover? I don’t claim to know everything about fighting at this stage, but I do know that I need every win. Each one propels me forward, building on the last one to sustain me. Losing, on the other hand, slows me down. It kicks my ass. And it humbles me.
But it also compels me to go harder. It demands that I dig even deeper. To push past my comfort zone and consider the possibility that this whole thing is going to be a lot harder than I thought. Just because I want to be a fighter doesn’t mean I will. Just because I want to be a champion doesn’t mean I am. Until I am. But it’s going to take all of me. I’ll have to make sacrifices. It’s going to mean rethinking my whole approach. I head home replaying the fight in my mind, the whole time wondering what I could have done differently, and what I will do the next time.
When I pull up I see that no one is home. The apartment is empty. But it’s not just empty in the sense that my roommate isn’t home at the moment—rather, she’s completely gone, and so are all her things. She’s vacated the apartment. Not even a hanger is left in her closet. I never hear from her again, nor do I ever receive the last of her rent checks. She completely disappears without a trace, not a note, not a text, not a “have a nice life.” All of this means I’m stuck with an expensive Las Vegas two-bedroom on the measly salary of a church lunch lady and the occasional few hundred bucks from the occasional fight. Oh, and the worst part is that she has apparently also taken off in my car (which I will later find out she has totaled!). I’m alone, I’ve just lost my first fight. I’m broke. And I’m out of a car.
Panic grips.
That April, I’m up against Courtney Himes in Grand Junction, Colorado. The good news is that the weight class for this fight is at 125 pounds—it’s called the flyweight division, which means I won’t have to cut weight drastically in a panic before the fight. I know Courtney is slightly bigger than me, but now that I can keep some pounds on, I feel stronger in my body. I say my prayer, take a deep breath, and commit to winning. From the moment we touch gloves, I’m driving the fight. The pain of my loss against Tecia is driving me. The need to correct the course of my career is driving me. I don’t let up for a moment, grinding pressure into her the whole time, almost always from a position of dominance. She has me locked up on more than one occasion, but I slither out and slam her down, retaking the position of power each time. I win on a technical submission with a rear-naked choke. She glares at me when the ref raises my arm as they announce me as the winner.
I feel vindicated. Winning was key after that first loss, a public and private reminder of what I am here to do. But the win aside, financially, my stint in Las Vegas is starting to spin me out. It’s frustrating to have all this drive and motivation but no real sense of direction. Scraping by on barely any money and not knowing when the next fight is going to come up. I feel like I lack real guidance and suddenly the Vegas period starts to suck more. Solo navigating all these new worlds: Las Vegas as a city, but also the fight world as a special club unto itself. I get the feeling that not everyone is excited about a new girl on the block. When I walk into the gym I can’t make sense of the vibe: I get the occasional smile-less head nod—from both men and women—which tells me very little. No one is outright warm. People just seem focused on their own singular mission. Maybe overall it’s been a journey for me to make friends, but in Las Vegas, it feels like I’m on a solo mission.
And more to the point, my folks simply can’t afford to keep floating me extra money to make rent. They’re struggling to get by themselves, and it’s been so many years of them supporting all my different causes, it’s time for me to start helping them out. The only logical move for me is to go back home. It’s not ideal and it’s not what I had in mind, but sometimes you just have to be tactical. There’s something mournful about having to pack everything back into my mom’s silver Accord, especially only one year after my arrival, but I try not to beat myself up. Careers don’t happen overnight, I convince myself. I can pace myself. I can still train hard and fight professionally in Reno, where life is cheaper all around and I won’t have to pay rent. Las Vegas isn’t going anywhere.
I sit next to Mom at church, our shoulders touching. She holds her face up and listens intently, absorbing every word, using every moment there to connect. We’ve been going for the last few Sundays since my return home. I sit in the pew fanning myself, quietly listening, sinking into the calm of the collective solemnity. It feels good to press pause on everything and just be with my mother. Life’s moving at a dizzying speed lately, so it’s nice to have a moment when I don’t have to struggle or plan. And listening to the pastor, the words suddenly reverberate in me.
Don’t be afraid, for I am with you.
Don’t be discouraged, for I am your God.
I will strengthen you and help you.
I will hold you up with my victorious right hand.
—Isaiah 41:10
These precious words arrive at my consciousness like a warm, flickering light, lifting me up somehow. I take myself out of the sermon for a moment and think about how many times God has in fact saved me. I think of all those moments of panic that I have seen up close more than once, in several different capacities, when it wasn’t entirely clear if I was going to live or die. I take a massive breath, breathing into the gratitude that wells up in me. Mom takes my hand. Something courses through us.
“I want to get baptized,” I tell her after the service.
“Wow, honey. OK. Why now?” she asks, her eyes glossy.
“It’s time to put God in my corner,” I say, the truth of these words flowing through me.
“I’ll do it with you,” Mom says, always with me.
The sky above the Truckee River is an electric shade of blue, vast and bright, without a single cloud in the sky. We’re standing by a cluster of large rocks, their smooth surfaces warm from the sun. I submerge backward into the water, allowing my whole body to fall into it freely, soaking into the story of my whole life, with the intention of coming back up stronger, more connected, more alive. I release more pieces of myself. I let go even more debris, the leftover damage that I thought had already passed but hadn’t. I reflect on the totality of pain, thinking now about how the events of one night can become such an elemental story of one’s life, how the rape not only damaged the most human part of me, but also how surviving its aftermath became my most crucial job. And as I thank myself for my strength, I go a step further: I make a promise to myself to recover the pieces of myself that were
suppressed, ignored, or terrified throughout said survival, to reconnect with the strong girl I always was, the one who went after things, the one who would stop at nothing to achieve everything.
And in the new spaces, I invite gratitude. I surrender fear and welcome faith. I think about the importance of going into the ring with purity of heart, a heart connected to a force greater than myself. Now that I am a Christian, how much more could I give in the ring knowing that I am protected and supported? How much more could I accomplish by staying close to God at every level of the battle? If everything—in and outside the cage—I do and say is inspired by my belief in and love of God. A devotion to a force greater than me. So much of my life—good and bad—has centered on my physical body, and even my emotional body. Now it’s time to nurture my spiritual body.
The baptism feels like a massive personal transformation, one that started when I changed my name and shed that first layer of identity that anchored me to the trauma. The next palpable phase of my change came with the revelation of wanting to be a pro fighter, when I tasted the glory of victory and what it could mean to live a life predicated on strength. The baptism now washes away all the memories of weakness and remnants of sadness, and in their place comes the presence of God. It somehow gives me a greater purpose for being a fighter. The ritual helps me become reborn as someone strong, focused, and faithful—a survivor who will forever take that faith and gratitude into any cage. I watch myself now, on this path of change, feeling in my bones and in my soul that with God in my corner, I can do anything.
I use my time in Reno to think critically about what to do next. I see it as an opportunity to regroup, to save some cash and get strategic. My parents are all in with me. They see how good this is for me. My dad is basically back in all his wrestling glory, and my mom is just glad to have me back and happy I’m involved with something that feels positive. They want this for me. We sit around the dining room table hashing out the possibilities, trying to figure out my next move.
“What’s your goal?” Dad asks me, one eye narrowed.
I don’t answer right away, letting the words rattle around inside me for a moment. I know, but I’ve never admitted it out loud.
“I want to be a champion.”
He doesn’t show it, but he’s pleased with my answer.
“Well.” He pauses. “To be a champion, you have to train with champions.”
Around the gym, I start hearing about another Reno fighter who’s doing well in Sacramento. Rumor has it that she’s training with an MMA group called Team Alpha Male, an elite group that has earned the Top Fight Team title at both the 2013 and 2014 World MMA Awards. Dad says the team has some of the country’s most seasoned experts in Brazilian jujitsu, wrestling, boxing, and Muay Thai, and that this place is a champion factory, regularly churning out award-winning fighters. He’s especially intrigued because he says Team Alpha Male is known for having smaller weight classes in its program, which is perfect for me as a strawweight, the division in which competitors weigh between 106 and 115 pounds. I toss around the idea of a visit to Northern California with him; and though we both agree it’s a long shot to go out there, we decide it’s at least worth a peek.
The drive through the Sierra Nevadas is as much charged with anticipation as it is with the unknown. I roll my window down and let the air hit my skin. I watch the greens and blues whiz by in a steady, infinite stream, excited about the plan but wondering if we’re wasting our time. I’m in an interesting position: on the one hand, I’m a total rookie with only a couple of pro fights under my belt. But on the other hand, I know I’m tough—I just have to find a way to prove it. I am certain that I have it in me to go really far with this, but I also know there’s a long road ahead. Dad is serious and quiet. But his heart is 100 percent in this now, and waste of time or not, he and I are now locked in an unspoken pact. We settle into the silence of the passing scenery, the two of us lost in our own blend of fantasies and fear.
For being the renowned championship fighter and world-class coach that he is, Urijah “The California Kid” Faber has something of a baby face. He looks more like a surfer than an MMA fighter, with his cinnamon skin and the asymmetrically perfect dent in the center of his chin. At five six, he’s no giant, but he makes up for it with crazy agility, physical strength, and evolved mastery. From the moment that I walk into his gym, I understand that I’m in the presence of greatness.
Dad and I take a few wrestling and sparring classes, both of which blow my mind. I can feel the difference in the levels of the teachers and coaches here. It’s a cut above everywhere else I have been. I’m physically and mentally cracked open to a new way of doing things, with more style, each movement more dignified somehow. After the class, Urijah comes over to my dad and me.
“You folks live close by?”
“Reno,” my dad says.
“Reno? You’ve come a long way.” Urijah sounds surprised.
“I want to train with the best,” I chime in.
“You want to join my team? Team Alpha Male?” Urijah asks, as if testing me. I don’t answer, and he continues. “Not just anyone can join my team,” he says, ping-ponging his gaze from my dad’s eyes to mine. “You have to have certain criteria.” More eye contact with both Dad and me.
Urijah invites us to sit down and pulls out a piece of paper, on which he strikes a yellow highlighter through a long list of all the different classes that will be required of me to join the team. “If this is what you want, this is how you do it,” he says. I love the seriousness behind his words.
Urijah takes what I already know, whatever exists in my mind and in my body, and he pushes me to the next level of possibility. He compels me to chase the breakthrough. In the last few gyms where I trained, I was always somehow on my own, or brushed off. The coaches never really invested themselves in me. Besides Ken Shamrock, Urijah is the first coach who really sees me.
“I can see that you’re tough, so I know you’re going to give it your all when you fight—but if you want to go big, you need experience,” he advises. “You need to train at the highest possible level, with the most intensity you can muster. It’s full-on beast mode, or nothing.” He runs one of the most prestigious MMA training facilities in the country, in the world maybe, so I feel great about being in his care. From day one, he knows I’m after the very thing he can help me obtain. He gets excited about it, which gets me even more excited about it.
Dad can feel it, too. He’s not one to show too much excitement about anything, but his eyes are wide open and he nods along to what Urijah says. We both know it: this is the kind of place I need to be. “Welcome to your new home,” Dad says on our way out. We both loved being there, the vibe somehow different and more advanced than anywhere else. There was something cutting edge about it, progressive, too: the teachers all come from different corners of the world, offering up serious mastery in their respective fields. We just needed to iron out the logistics. If I would train with Urijah, I’d be looking at a four-hour commute round-trip through the mountains, and for it to mean anything, I’d have to train at least five times per week. You belong here, my instinct whispers. But my logic has the other ear: Training in Sacramento is insane. Why go through the trouble? But it’s not just about the gym. It’s about mentorship. It’s about leadership. It’s about community. It’s about having a home. As crazy as it is, every cell in my body says it’s exactly what I need to do.
Yes, the drive sucks, but I start to look forward to it because I know I’m going to come back stronger, more aware, more developed. In the car, I turn up the music loud and think about fighting, and about how much fun it is. I love everything about my situation. Team Alpha Male has fighters from all over the world, so many different nationalities, races, and ethnicities, everyone united by one common goal: to be the best. I’ve found my tribe, this vibrant group of fighters and coaches, everyone serious and dedicated, but also inclusive and warm. I’m finally somewhere where I have high-level training partners.
I don’t just train—now I belong to something.
Breathing DREAMS like air.
—F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby
ALPHA FEMALE
Within weeks, the drive up the Interstate 80 to Sacramento is locked in, a whole 130 miles one way from our place in Reno to the gym in Sacramento. The four-hour commute is tough, especially when there is snow in the mountains, but it’s worth it. I feel myself becoming a beast. My stamina is high, I am becoming more technically advanced, my skill set is broadening. There’s a fire in me and fighting is stoking it. Urijah is pleased with my progress, too. Just like I’ve found solace and inspiration in his care, I feel that he, too, has a real stake in seeing me succeed.
Being a part of Team Alpha Male helps me understand that MMA isn’t just about getting into a cage and fighting. To be good—really good—you have to possess an arsenal. The truly excellent MMA fighter is a multifaceted multitasker, a wide-ranging expert. It’s called mixed martial arts for a reason. You not only have to know how to box, grapple, and throw, but you also have to master all of these things. It’s the reason why so many MMA fighters are able to compete well in so many different sports. They’re inherently versatile. Anderson Silva, for example, is known to be one of the most diverse martial artists of our generation, holding multiple black belts in tae kwon do, judo, Muay Thai, and Brazilian jujitsu, as well as a yellow rope in capoeira. I get it. If I want to be taken seriously, I have to diversify. I hang on to every single one of Urijah’s words, as if he is handing over an ancient recipe for success.
Rise Page 13
