Got Fight?

by Griffin, Forrest

  You May Have ZERO Self-Confidence If…

  1)…you plan your after-party at the emergency room. (Although I’ve never done this, I did have an after-party in the hospital after I fought Stephan Bonnar. Stephan’s girlfriend picked up some McDonald’s and Rory purchased some beers. When they walked in, Stephan and me were sitting next to each other. It was quite fun.)

  2)…you don’t pee before a fight because you don’t want to get discouraged by your small pecker.

  3)…you titter nervously in your corner, giggling uncontrollably and covering your mouth with your hand like a little girl.

  4)…your eyes fill up with tears during the announcements of the fighters.

  Make the Extraordinary Ordinary

  (Get in the Zone)

  Someone a lot smarter than me talked about the importance of making the extraordinary ordinary. I have no clue who that somebody was because apparently I was born punch-drunk, but it is an excellent aspiration. Fighting, I suppose, can be classified as extraordinary because it triggers something in the brain and causes chemicals to be released into the body. Again, not sure what those chemicals are—adrenaline, estrogen, Neosporin, who the fuck knows. All I know for sure is that conceptually, when you walk down that aisle under those lights, and then climb into a cage to perform in front of thousands of screaming people and dozens of cameras, it’s pretty fucking extraordinary.

  For guys like Michael Jordan and Anderson Silva who’ve somehow found a way to unequivocally get the best of their opponents in their respective sports, it’s just another day at the park—another game to win. For them, it’s the losing that’s extraordinary, ’cause neither does a lot of it. But us mere mortals tend to get nervous, and that nervousness tends to affect us in negative ways. Your heart starts beating wildly, you can’t catch your breath, and your balls tingle. And don’t forget about those chemicals—all that Astroturf and kerosene floating around through your veins will jack you up big-time. While the Jordans and Silvas (the Anderson Silvas—not to be confused with every other person in Brazil) of the world may be few and far between in terms of their athletic ability, it definitely pays to aspire to the way they approach the game. Try to make the extraordinary moments seem as ordinary as possible. And start simple: for example, figure out what warmup routine you want to do right before the fight, and then do that routine each day leading up to the bout. Your environment and the people around you will be different when you do the routine on fight day, but at least you can take shelter in the routine itself. It helps make the upcoming scrap seem more like practice and less like a pivotal moment in your life. When I was a coach on The Ultimate Fighter, I used a similar tactic on my guys. If one of them had a fight the following day, I’d throw on his entrance music and have him walk to the cage, take off his shirt, and then do three rounds of shadowboxing. The goal wasn’t for him to improve techniquewise, but rather to get him comfortable with the whole process so it was less jarring on him the following day.

  At the same time, you don’t ever want to get to the point of being devoid of emotion altogether. Retain the excitement, but become familiar enough with your surroundings that you have perspective. This all comes with doing your homework and establishing a game plan about which you’re confident. Striking a balance between ordinary and extraordinary is what musicians do all the time. They rehearse enough so that playing a song becomes instinctive, but they don’t play a tune so much that it becomes stale in performance. (A note to my former roommate—you know who you are: fuck you for making me hate a-ha—I used to love that band before you played that goddamn “Take on me” into oblivion, dick.) Believe me, holding on to the excitement that anticipation offers is so important—that wash of emotion doesn’t last forever, and when it fades, I’m sure you’d give just about anything to get it back.

  Plan B Isn’t Just a Morning-After

  I feel it is important to have a backup plan both in fighting and in life. It can even be good to have a Plan C, Plan D, and Plan E. You don’t want to think about these plans on a daily basis because that would take your focus away from Plan A, but you want to come up with a few and tuck them away in the back of your mind—an “Oh Shit” list for when you find yourself in a downward spiral. After all, it can be hard to find the perfect game plan your first time around. I love jujitsu so much because more than in other martial arts, the diversity of moves and locks affords you the opportunity to develop secondary and even tertiary strategies—you go for a kimura (chicken-winging the guy and cuffing his arm behind his back), and if it doesn’t work, you go for an armbar (i.e., creating a joint where there is none and forcing the arm in the opposite direction) on the opposite side. If the armbar doesn’t work, then you maybe try a guillotine choke (need I explain that one?) or go back to the kimura. You keep cycling through things so that you’re never lost and hopeless and, eventually, you will find some game plan that does work.

  Here’s a personal anecdote to illustrate a life lesson. (You bought the book, so presumably you want to know something about me—besides my cup size, freak.) My plan was to be a professional MMA fighter. I trained my ass off for a number of years and competed in as many shows as possible, but I was stuck in the smaller promotions, which, surprise fucking surprise, resulted in a serious lack of funds. At times, I didn’t make enough to put food on the table. It was rough going, and I probably would have tried something new had I not read the book An Actor Prepares by Konstantin Stanislavsky. Although the book, nay, bible (some self-help guides fall into the category of “biblical”—that’s the exception to my no-self-help-guides rule) primarily gives advice on how to act, the author offers one really cool story about how a group of pirates used to jettison and then destroy their life rafts before going into battle, destroying any escape route. It seemed like a pretty smart tactic because every last pirate fought his ass off. I mean, what other choice did they have? Either they destroyed the enemy ship or they died trying.

  Stanislavsky’s telling made it seem like a truly awesome tactic that I should apply to my life, so that is what I did. I told myself that no matter how destitute I became, I would not give up on fighting. I did everything I could in training to excel in the sport. But then I suffered a rather severe injury back in 2004, when I took on Edson Pardue in the Heat Fighting Championships 2 down in Brazil. Toward the beginning of the fight, he threw a leg kick and I dropped my left arm to block it. I felt a burst of pain in my forearm, but I forgot about it as he pummeled me repeatedly in the face. A few minutes later, I knocked him out with a hard right hand. After the fight, the pain in my arm set in. Adrenaline, piss, and vinegar can numb an injury in the heat of a fight, but that numbness doesn’t last for long.

  I went to the emergency room in Brazil, which turned out to be an experience in itself. First off, everyone was sitting on the floor. There were a bunch of chairs open, so immediately I thought, FOOLS! I jumped into a seat before anyone could snatch it away, but just before I made contact, I realized why it was vacant—it was filled with vomit. Growing frustrated, the promoter of the fight went to the front desk and bribed the receptionist so I could be seen more quickly. They took me in the back, and soon I was visted by this Indian lady that spoke with a British accent. She appeared quite intelligent, which pleased me because I knew I would get proper treatment. She took some X-rays, told me my arm was broken, and then called in someone to fix it. The guy that entered the room did not appear nearly as intelligent as the doctor. He was a big, burly guy in overalls who looked like he laid bricks during the day. I looked around for the smart Indian lady, but she was nowhere in sight. I was terrified, but without many options, I let this guy get busy on my arm. When he finished, I had this massive cast that looked like a two-year-old kid had gone nuts with papiermâché.

  The instant I returned to America, I went back to the doctor and was informed that the break was rather severe and I needed surgery to implant a steel plate. My choice of profession had left me without insurance or money (sometimes, my purses
were five figures—with a decimal point right after the third), making the proposed surgery out of the question. And, on top of my not being able to fight, my broken arm also cost me my job as a bouncer.

  It wasn’t a lack of drive that caused me to say, “Enough is enough,” but when you find yourself at risk of going hungry—and I don’t mean living-in-a-tight-studio-and-chowing-down-on-lentil-soup-nightly hungry, I mean, skipping-breakfast-and-lunch-so-that-you-can-afford-that-nightly-can-of-lentil-soup hungry—you’ve gotta have a Plan B to go to, which, for me, was be a cop. And my Plan C was to go back to fighting. (That was about as far in the alphabet as I could get at that point, so there was no Plan D—now I can almost get to Z without singing the song.) I kept the dream alive in my head, so when I heard about the first Ultimate Fighter television show, I sent in an application. The rest you might have seen…Probably not.

  If I had truly jettisoned all life rafts and stuck with fighting when I broke my arm, I have no idea where I would have ended up. It’s possible that I could still be stuck in the smaller shows, pissed off at the world because I failed to make anything of my dream. Who knows? But a Plan B should not be an excuse to give up. That’s the danger with creating a Plan B—reverting to it too early. You have to be honest with yourself—are you abandoning your dream because you realize you’ve hit rock bottom (you look like Christian Bale in The Machinist) or are you simply quitting because things have become too hard (your boss yelled at you and made you cry)? This is a question you have to answer, and if you are unable to answer it honestly, you might as well jettison the life rafts (i.e., have plans that go so deep into the alphabet you find yourself in double letters and numbers) because you’ll most likely quit everything before you give yourself a chance to succeed. My advice: don’t think of Plan B as giving up—just think of it as a modification of Plan A.

  Love What You Do

  (and Who You Are Doing)

  A lot of people ask me why I fight, and the answer is pretty simple: I see mixed martial arts as the ultimate form of competition. If you’re a hockey or football buff, you might disagree with me. After all, both sports are competitive and oftentimes violent. But what do the players from either sport do when they can’t settle a dispute on the field? They don’t challenge the person they have a problem with to a race or a goal-shooting contest. No, they rip off their gear and throw down. Why? Because fighting is the ultimate form of competition. If you get beat in Ping-Pong or darts or basketball, you can always save face by saying, “Well, I could still kick his ass.” If you lose in fighting, you simply got beat. Never once will you hear a fighter say, “He might have beat me in the cage, but I would slaughter him in shuffleboard.”

  I enjoy a lot of sports, but fighting is by far the most gratifying because it allows you to skip all the nonsense. Back when I was a cop, I made twenty-six thousand a year. Fighting was always on my mind, and I told myself that if I could pull in twenty-six thousand by stepping into the cage, I would give up the badge and take up fighting full-time. I had no hope of someday making six figures per fight because, at the time, the sport was scraping by on the underground and showing no signs of gaining in popularity. Even now, making considerably more than twenty-six thousand a year, I live below my means because it makes what I do seem less like a job and more like a passion. I purchase a new car approximately once every five years, and I spend roughly fifteen thousand dollars. It has been crashed into three times, and on each occasion I didn’t even ask the other driver for his insurance papers. If I had purchased a hundred-thousand-dollar car and a bunch of other fancy shit I don’t need, the bills would pile up and fighting would seem more like a job and less like a passion. I don’t want to make any connections that will take away from what I love to do, which is punching other people in the face. There. I said it.

  I don’t think there are right reasons and wrong reasons to fight—I just think there are different reasons. If you get into MMA because you want to have an excuse to get a bunch of tattoos and pick up floozies, hey, as long as it makes you happy, why the hell not? If you climb into the cage because you clamor for an organized, legal way to hurt people, more power to you, you fucking sicko. With MMA having exploded on a global level, I’m sure there are guys out there fighting for every reason under the sun. Regardless, as Ben Franklin said, “If you get a job you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Me and ol’ Ben Frank would have been homeboys.

  Underdoggy Style

  If you’re one of those guys who bounces around all the time happy as shit, I hate you. In addition to annoying chronically cynical guys like me, you’re also screwing yourself in the long run because you create expectations. The first time you have a bad day, people will be like, “Oh, what’s wrong with you? You need a tampon?” Fucking annoying. Trust me, you don’t ever want people to expect anything from you, and the best way to accomplish that is to consciously calm yourself down when you’re too fucking bubbly. It also doesn’t hurt to have a healthy smattering of self-hate. If you’ve read the book sequentially and you’re not all ADD’d out, skipping around the pages ’n shit, you’ve probably already got this down, but just to reiterate, maintain an even temper. The villain is always cackling away like he’s got a hard-on and is relishing this dirty little secret he has with himself. The hero—Rocky, Daniel, Alex Grady (a word to the wise, check out Best of the Best)—is stone-faced, calculating, relatable-to. If you’re an underdog, as long as you fight your ass off, people will be pleased with your performance, win or lose. Let me just tell you, if you are the favorite and lose, you basically become a heel overnight. (Come to think of it, I’d better check the odds on my next fight…) I don’t care how confident you are that you can kick the shit out of your opponent, you never want to tip your hand. I’m not saying that you have to be tense and pissed off all the time. You should still relax and have fun in life; you just don’t want to say or do things that will generate expectations. For example, if you tell a chick you have a massive schlong, she’s probably going to be disappointed when you take your pants off. After all, women have an entirely different definition of massive. Once that word is mentioned, they start picturing things like the Leaning Tower of Pisa. However, if you tell a chick to judge for herself, when she takes your pants off and discovers an average-size meat stick, there’s a 50 percent chance she won’t be as disappointed.

  Live Johnny Dangerously

  There are two excellent ways to get injured in a fight. The first way is to step into the cage thinking you’re going to get hurt. This mind-set, which we will call the pussy mind-set, is usually due to a severe lack of confidence, and although I don’t exactly know why, you’re prophecy will usually become a reality. The second way is to go into a fight thinking there is no possible way in hell you can get hurt. This mind-set, which we’ll call the king-of-crazy-fathers-never-let-your-daughters-near-this-cretin mind-set, is usually a by-product of a bloated confidence, and I’ve seen many “ain’t no way he can hurt me” douche bags get carted away in an ambulance. If you’re a fighter, for the sake of your longevity in the sport, try to be somewhere in the middle. But this also goes for people who do anything dangerous for a living and for thrill seekers. Realize there is danger in what you’re doing and map out the quickest route to the hospital (which you will have well researched—a list of ethnic doctors on staff not named Forrest or Griffin is usually a good sign), but don’t dwell on it. If you’re dwelling on it, rethink your profession. Stage fright is natural until you start puking your guts out before the big monologue.

  Be Passionate

  (Just Don’t Go Humping Your Opponent’s Leg in the Half Guard Because That Definitely…Ain’t…Cool)

  I’m sending this one out to the fighters, but much of this philosophy applies to everyone. You’ll never be great at something you half-ass, and this is especially true in fighting. If you want to reach the top of the MMA mountain, you’ve got to have a pretty intense passion for scrapping in the cage. When you’re tired and beat up,
going to the gym can be worse than going to the dentist. Such days suck in a major way, but you’ve got to bounce back. True success in MMA cannot be attained without a passion for resiliency, which is tantamount to being passionate for the sport. If you really feel the excitement waning (and you can tell this easily by how you approach the day you’re scheduled to do your favorite training exercise—if you’re a stand-up guy, and you’re dreading boxing practice, chances are you’re burning out), I recommend taking some time off. This is what happened to me—sort of. I was actually forced by a shoulder injury to take seven months off. But, in many ways, it was fortunate because I was so overtrained I could no longer protect myself. I still loved fighting, but my body and mind needed a break. Two months into the layoff, I was climbing the walls. Figuratively speaking. My shoulder wasn’t gonna let me climb shit. But the break was a mixed blessing, because it made me realize just how important training and fighting had become in my life. When I finally returned to the gym, my passion had grown tenfold.

  Close Your Piehole and Open Your Mind

  When you think of all the different techniques that can be utilized in MMA competition, it is mind-boggling. There is always something new to learn, so if you think or behave like a know-it-all, you’re, clinically speaking, pretty much retarded. I don’t care if you’re the best Brazilian jujitsu practitioner on the planet—there are all sorts of people out there who can show you new techniques and approaches.

  In order to keep up with the rapid evolution of the sport, you’ve got to keep an open mind. A few years ago, I would have told you that there was no way in hell crazy karate kicks would work in the Octagon. Lyoto Machida made me feel foolish. The best way to grow as a fighter or as anything else is to keep your mouth closed and your mind open. Absorb all you can, keep what works, and throw out what, for you, doesn’t. HOWEVER, once you get about six weeks out from a fight, it’s time to close the doors to new techniques. The last month before a fight is not the time to learn new tricks—it’s the time to hone the skills you already have.