by Doug Merlino
Sometimes there is no way to avoid discord. The trick, which few of us are taught, is learning how to handle it.
Paul Gavoni, the boxing coach, had a theory that most professional fighters had at one point been bullied and found confidence through combat sports. Mirsad Bektic told me that, after he arrived in the United States, he had been, for a time, a bully; after seeing things like his older brother getting beat up in the park in Lincoln, he had felt it was the only way he could avoid being pushed around himself. Even though he’d been very young at the time, as an adult he remained ashamed of it. Martial arts had provided a way to become the person he wanted to be: strong, assured, tough but caring, someone who inspired others.
“Punches and kicks are tools to kill the ego,” Bruce Lee wrote. “The tools represent the force of intuitive or instinctive directness which, unlike the complicated ego, does not divide itself, blocking its own freedom. The tools move forward without looking to the back or to the side.”
In my own training, I discovered why people have always been drawn to martial arts: not necessarily to beat up someone else, but to learn to deal with difficult emotions like rage and anger that very few of us know how to effectively process. The training in combat helps align our minds with our bodies, allows us to physically exorcise the struggles in our heads, to tie our emotions to punches and kicks. We learn also to defend ourselves from others who are trying to hurt us.
Almost every one of the dozens of fighters I spoke with at American Top Team linked his initial attraction to combat sports to a need to get a handle on something gone wrong in his life—feelings of anger, insecurity, lack of confidence. Many also lacked strong father figures. Gyms were places where they received guidance from men such as Barzini and Liborio.
In becoming professionals, they’d taken it a step farther. The demands of the sports entertainment business overshadowed the early motivations, which, away from the cameras, had led them to practice for years before they even made it onto the mats at American Top Team. For reasons of commerce and entertainment, this deeper story was routinely obscured by the productions that ended up on television.
. . .
Even with the addition of women to the UFC roster, the subtext—sometimes the explicit text—of almost any televised MMA fight was the expression of masculinity. If you watched any random broadcast of the sport, you were likely to hear phrases such as: “That’s what happens when you put your balls in a wheelbarrow and man up.”
MMA took off at the same time as roles of men and women in the home and at work were shifting: More women were going to college than men, more were managers, more were becoming professionals such as doctors and lawyers; while jobs and wages in traditional “male” industries such as manufacturing stagnated or declined.
A popular book titled The End of Men and the Rise of Women, written by Hanna Rosin and published in 2012, argued that because women were better able to communicate, listen, and focus on others, they were perfectly suited for the new, technologically oriented times. Men, coursing with testosterone and impatience, were stubborn and slow to adapt. The “patriarchy” was over and we were entering a new era with women ascendant. The Marlboro Man, the old symbol of masculine ruggedness according to the author, had ceded to the Old Spice Guy, a parody of machismo.
It was an entry in a decades-long debate about the nature of masculinity. One mantra that grew out of the feminist movement was that “gender is constructed.” This argument holds that because there are supposedly few, if any, biological differences between men and women, we are taught to “perform” our gender—a little girl given a Barbie doll learns one thing, a little boy with a toy gun another. According to this line of thought, women are traditionally trained to be subservient, men to be aggressive; change the training and men and women will behave completely differently.
The other side held that men are more aggressive and violent, and that they behave the way they do because of biological hard-wiring. To try to change that would result, in the words of Dana White, in the “Pussification of America.” And science supported the conclusion that there are biological differences between the sexes, including a greater male propensity toward physical aggression.
The debate, however, is entrenched. Most males now grow up with no idea what is expected of them to “be a man.” The old model, exemplified by strong, silent types like John Wayne, has been relegated to the past. Nothing has risen to take its place, resulting in bewilderment.
We desperately need a new model of masculinity, one that can allow men to be assertive and physical, but also kind and nurturing. They need not be mutually exclusive.
MMA, with the UFC as its most prominent example, was a piece of this larger puzzle. From some angles, it could be seen as reactionary. Unabashedly rough in an era in which the trend was to make everything safer, it sold an image of manhood that looked back to an idealized earlier time, when success came from grit, determination, and toughness, not from advanced degrees and cooperative skillsets. The images of fighters emerging for their walk-outs, confident and self-contained, bobbing their heads to music, backed up by their corner men, slapping hands with fans who leaned out over railings, underlined this.
In reality, a large number of fighters at American Top Team, like most people not in the upper financial classes, scraped by with the help of wives and girlfriends. They were working-class guys trying to make a living.
And even with its reactionary tendencies, the culture of MMA held a surprisingly large umbrella, reflecting shifting concepts of masculinity and a willingness to adapt to change. Women trained with men. There were fighters with disabilities such as Matt Betzold, who I met in Las Vegas, and Nick Newell, an American Top Team fighter with one arm. There was Fallon Fox, a transgender fighter.
There were also Christians who found in cage fighting an ideal of masculinity and a microcosm of their religious beliefs that they needed to fight for their values in a secular society. One popular T-shirt pronounced that JESUS DIDN’T TAP.
Some of the sport’s detractors, especially from elements within boxing, made homophobic jokes about MMA, employing the sophisticated argument that, with fights that ended up on the ground, it was “gay.” These usually came from older men and seemed to indicate a generational change; it obviously didn’t turn away the younger males who made up the core audience.
That attitude shift was apparent in 2012, when the UFC included a fighter named Dakota Cochrane in its Ultimate Fighter reality show. When he tried out, Cochrane told the producers that he was not gay, but had acted in gay porn while in college to make money. When the news broke on MMA websites, the result was a collective yawn in the comments’ sections:
Who cares about the porno work.
He isn’t a criminal and he isn’t hurting others with the stuff he’s done in his past. So none of that stuff matters, in my opinion. All that matters is how well he can smash another man’s face.
I’ll be watching
Not because I want to see the other fighters’ reaction to him, but because he might be a beast in the ring. I won’t have done the gay porn thing cause I’m not gay. But to each his own. Wishing him and all the guys in the house the best of luck.
So what?
Really not that big of a deal. i go to gay bars all the time, cheap drinks, very receptive people and hotass single girls.
Certainly the sport was also more involved than most with the objectification of the male body. There were the weigh-ins, which featured fighters stripped to their underwear, posing in front of an appreciative crowd. And fighters’ bodies were constantly discussed in the comments sections of MMA websites—they were “ripped,” “jacked,” “pumped,” “cut.”
It reflected a wider change in the ideal of the male body. To see it, just watch an old John Wayne movie or a James Bond film with Sean Connery. Wayne, the epitome of manhood during his time, was hardly muscle-bound—he even had a paunch in some of his films, though it didn’t stop him from punching people ou
t. Connery was fit but hardly what anyone would consider “jacked.” Compare them with Daniel Craig’s James Bond emerging from the ocean, water glistening on his bulging chest and sculpted shoulders, or with any current young male Hollywood star in an action movie, which will certainly find the opportunity to show off his chiseled physique.
But the early twenty-first century was a time when men could do more to “enhance” their bodies than ever before. Testosterone Replacement Therapy, which allowed men to boost levels of the hormone in their bodies, became a two-billion-dollar-a-year business in the United States. It was marketed as a “fountain of youth” that did everything from heightening energy levels to increasing sexual drive. Taking it was also essentially the same as using anabolic steroids, which are synthetic forms of testosterone.
Human growth hormone, said to aid in muscle repair and recovery, and erythropoietin (EPO), which increases the amount of red blood cells in the bloodstream, also became available at any of hundreds of “anti-aging” clinics that opened around the country. All these drugs have associated dangers: Testosterone use can increase the risk of heart disease; human growth hormone can speed the growth of tumors; EPO thickens the blood and increases the risk of heart attack and stroke. But the commercial availability of these hormones meant that—in the short term—men could get the same or even better effects as taking steroids but without breaking the law.*
With all the marketing suggesting that it was within our reach, the body of the MMA fighter became aspirational for men. Magazines such as Men’s Health and Men’s Fitness published workout programs promising adherents the “chiseled out of rock” physique of a fighter.
. . .
Beyond questions about manhood, MMA tapped into other modern anxieties.
Some observers tied the sport’s sudden rise in popularity to the post-9/11 world. One theory proposed that Americans felt vulnerable after the surprise terrorist attacks, and MMA gave them a way to feel in control of their bodies and personal safety. Following off that, some pointed to America’s military mobilization and drew the conclusion that cage fighting was a logical outcome of a wartime society that placed a premium on martial behavior.
The UFC made attempts to tie itself to the armed forces, calling attention to the small number of fighters who were or had been soldiers and holding an annual Fight for the Troops event on a military base, but the connection was not overly strong. The more natural martial corollary is probably professional football, with its emphasis on valor, teamwork, and military-like strategy and precision—and still America’s most popular sports-entertainment.
MMA was an individual sport: It didn’t matter if you were conservative, patriotic, anarchist, or social democratic as long as you could fight. If there was one dominant ideology, it had nothing to do with nationalism; it was about toughness in the face of adversity, the one quality that everyone in the sport respected.
It fit with the times. In the decades after World War Two, when the middle class was robust and decently paid jobs could be had with a high school diploma or simply a willingness to labor, it was bowling leagues that proliferated. They were about community and friendly competition. MMA fit a leaner, more insecure, more unequal America, one in which the average worker, like the average fighter, was told there was no real job security and encouraged to build a “personal brand.”
MMA gyms, with their jiu jitsu and kickboxing classes, did provide a sense of community, but also supplied an edge of self-improvement. If bowling meant bad shoes, drinking beer, and chatting with your friends, MMA training was about fitness, discipline, and personal transformation. The appeal was similar to other exercise booms of the new century such as hot yoga, or, especially, CrossFit and Tough Mudder obstacle course racing: a way to show you were tough enough to make it no matter what came your way.
In both these activities and MMA, the greatest compliment was to be called a “beast.” Implying a certain kind of implacable toughness, it was a relatively new use for the word. When I was in high school, the most similar term in use was “stud.” The Stud was, for one, always a male, but also the center of a community, the pitcher, the point guard, the quarterback who led the team. Like his namesake, the retired racehorse relaxing out in the pasture, the Stud was pampered and rewarded with the most desirable mates. His was a slot in a stable hierarchy.
The Beast was different. Either a man or a woman, the Beast summoned something from deep within and overcame its surroundings. “Beast Mode” was accessible to anyone, whether it be an NFL running back, a CrossFitter trying to get through a daily workout, or a white-collar worker gritting through another memo for the boss at the end of a long week—life was tough and you needed to bare your teeth and claw ahead.
It was an ideal for times in which daily life was safe but also always vaguely threatening, with endless wars, terrorist threats, an economy that could plunge into freefall, little faith in corporate leaders or politicians to do anything besides enrich themselves. Unlike the Stud, the Beast was not a creature of the community, but one that rose above its limitations.
It was, in its essence, an encouraging term: It assumed that people had another level they could go to when they really needed it, as if life were a video game in which you sometimes just needed to power up beyond your normal human frailties and access some primordial animal spirit.
* * *
* The UFC’s approach to testing for performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) has rapidly evolved. In 2012, drug testing was the province of state athletic commissions, which usually just did urine tests the day of the fights. Though fighters were frequently caught, it was an easy system to game; you just needed to “cycle off” far enough ahead of the test. Drugs such as human growth hormone and EPO were undetectable in urine: They required a more expensive blood test. The state commissions also allowed medical exemptions for testosterone use if a fighter had a doctor’s blessing. These were obtained by several aging stars, Vitor Belfort, Chael Sonnen, and Dan Henderson among them.
By 2014, testosterone exemptions had been ended and the UFC, working with state commissions and independent labs, had introduced a new program of random blood and urine testing in the weeks leading up to fights. This resulted in several more fighters getting busted for PEDs in 2014 than in the previous years, including Chael Sonnen, who was caught with EPO and human growth hormone in his system, among other drugs. Before a December 2014 fight, Jon Jones tested positive for cocaine metabolites. A month later and most shocking to nearly everyone in MMA, Anderson Silva, one of the all-time greats, was found to have two types of steroids in his system.
Life Is Standing There to Kick You in the Face
Two weeks after the UFC Fan Expo, the Thursday night sparring session was under way at American Top Team. Around fifty fighters faced off, exhaling sharp breaths as they punched and kicked each other, sweat flying off their bodies.
Daniel Straus and Dustin Poirier squared off in a corner. Poirier, at twenty-four, had already been in the UFC for several years and was a rising featherweight contender.
Straus moved in to throw a punch. Poirier responded with a kick into Straus’s lead leg. Crack! The sound of Poirier’s plastic shin protector smacking Straus’s thigh rang through the gym.
Straus backed up, circled, attacked. Crack! Poirier struck again.
The round ended. Straus rested his gloves on his hips and shook his head. Poirier, fully worked up, paced up and down the mats, his energy palpable from fifteen feet away.
The session progressed to the ground. Straus paired with a young fighter who trained at an American Top Team affiliate gym and had come in for the night to try himself against the pros.
The kid brought everything he had, tying up with Straus on the mats, his long red hair contrasting with Straus’s dreadlocks. When the session ended, they embraced and collapsed a few feet from one another, each lying in a puddle of sweat.
Straus sat up after a few minutes. Conan Silveira approached, looming over him. “You don’t look
like a champion,” he told Straus. “Pull yourself together.”
(Beowulf Sheehan)
Straus nodded. He stood, walked to a corner, and sat with his back in the cranny where the walls met. He slumped forward, his head between his knees, and buried his face in his hands.
. . .
The nearly five months since his arrest had been hard on Straus. Though his cast had been removed and his broken hand had healed, he was not making it to the gym regularly. Some days it just seemed like driving there and back only burned money he didn’t have on gas.
Worse, the situation cast doubt over the career Straus had worked so hard to build. The president of Bellator, Bjorn Rebney, stood by Straus in public, but his future was on hold until the charges were cleared up.
Finally, after three months of limbo, Straus went to court in Fort Lauderdale in June 2013. He pled guilty to misdemeanor charges and received two years of probation.
It was about as good an ending to a bad situation as he could have hoped. The case, however, had damaged Straus’s negotiating position with Bellator. His contract with the organization was to expire in 2014. Now, before it would give him his title fight, the promotion demanded he sign a several-fight extension.
Straus wanted to fight Pat Curran, beat him, and then negotiate. He was willing to take the risk that his value would go down if he lost.
The last thing Rebney, the president of Bellator, wanted was for Straus to win the featherweight title and then demand a big pay raise. His promotion was currently tied up in litigation with its 155-pound champion, Eddie Alvarez, who was trying to leave for the UFC.
It happened to be an especially important time for Bellator to retain its star fighters. In 2011, the UFC signed a deal with Fox worth a reported one billion dollars over seven years. While the UFC would reserve most of its best fights for its pay-per-view shows, Fox would broadcast other UFC events on its flagship station—the first time live UFC fights would be shown on free television—as well as Fox Sports 1, the cable channel it was launching to compete with ESPN.
