The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment (5 page)

However, the one aspect I will share with you about my upbringing has to do with wrestling. And believe me, this has far more relevance to my current position as a fighter than does a story about how some haunting figure in my family used to beat me with a buggy whip every time I opened my mouth. I started wrestling for two reasons: because it was expected of me, and because there wasn’t much else to do. And when I say there wasn’t much else to do, I mean it. I grew up in West Linn, Oregon, which is pretty much the definition of “the boonies.” My daily routine went like this: get up at the crack of dawn, do some chores, go to school, attend wrestling practice, come home and feed the animals, and then go to bed when the sun went down. We had a television, but it was black-and-white. No remote. And I didn’t have neighbors, at least not any who weren’t a long bike ride away, so except for the time I spent on the mat, there was zero interaction with other children.

I didn’t have friends, but I didn’t know that I didn’t have friends. That’s just the way things were. When I got to high school, I constantly heard people talking about crazy parties, and I thought they were nuts. The only type of party I knew about was the one where you showed up with your parents, gave some kid you barely knew a birthday present, ate some cake, and went home. Every time I heard someone mention a crazy party, I thought to myself, “I wonder whose birthday it was?” I had no idea that a group of my peers were going out into an abandoned field, lighting a huge bonfire, and plucking beers from a massive cooler.

Even if I had been invited to these parties, which I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have gone. My life was defined by wrestling. It’s where I got my excitement. I happened to live in the nicest place in all of Oregon (seriously, West Linn wins awards for its pulchritude), but when it came time to wrestle, I was transported to Northeast Portland. At the time, Northeast Portland was nationally infamous because it was home to two of the most violent, notorious street gangs, the Crips and the Bloods.

Back in the day, Portland judges didn’t just drop the hammer on criminals and send them to jail for life. If a judge looked across the courtroom at you and saw even a hint of goodness in your eyes, he would often give you an option. If you were an adult, he would give you the choice of going to prison or joining the military. If you were a juvenile, he gave you the choice of going to a detention center or reporting at five-thirty every afternoon to Coach Roy Pittman’s wrestling practice.

As a result, I spent my youth wrestling with hardcore gangbangers. I was one of the few white kids in practice, but I never thought anything of it because it had been my life since the age of nine. The Crips wore blue and the Bloods wore red, but they were not allowed to wear their colors in the training room, so I never knew a rivalry existed between them. I never even knew any of them were in gangs because when you were on Coach Pittman’s mats, you didn’t get a drink of water or tie your shoes, let alone talk. At the end of practice, the Crips would leave through one door and the Bloods through another. I didn’t even think anything might be amiss when I started routinely going to funerals. I had all sorts of teammates die, teammates who I looked up to, who were national champions and Olympians. I just thought it was all a part of growing up.

But for every boy we lost, ten more were saved, which is why I truly wish there were a lot more men like Coach Pittman around. The world would be a better place, and there would be a lot fewer kids in prison, or in the grave.

In addition to changing the lives of hundreds of youths, Coach Pittman was also a very interesting guy. Unlike most coaches, he had never wrestled in a single match. He didn’t even own a singlet. Despite having never wrestled, he was the best darn coach on the planet. Why? Because he was a master motivator, and even more important, he was
consistent
. He never missed a practice, not once. And he expected us to be at practice every single day, including Christmas Eve. The only day he allowed off was Christmas Day.

I remember him showing up to practice one Friday night all dressed up. He arrived in his Corvette with a do-rag on and a beautiful woman in tow. He had asked Anthony Amado, who had placed fourth in the Olympics, to fill in for him so he could go on his date, but apparently he didn’t fully trust Anthony and wanted to make sure practice got off to a good start. Just as Coach Pittman was about to leave, he saw something he didn’t like. “I need
more
, Anthony,” he shouted. Immediately Anthony changed the warm-up, but Coach must have found it still unsatisfactory because he flung off his do-rag, and the next thing you know, he’s on the wrestling floor. His jacket comes off. Then he disappears for a moment and comes back dressed in his workout clothes. It doesn’t take more than ten minutes before he is fully immersed in practice and his hot date is walking out the door. At the time, I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t like Coach Pittman was leaving us high and dry—he had an Olympian overseeing practice, but he still couldn’t step away from the team for even one night.

Coach Pittman’s commitment to the team was insane. At one point, he was invited to go on
The Oprah Winfrey Show
to discuss how his wrestling program was changing the lives of kids who’d had a rough go, and he agreed to appear. But when he found out that he couldn’t tape the show on a Saturday or Sunday, that he would have to show up at the studio during the week and miss wrestling practice, he canceled. Yes, Coach Pittman gave up a chance to be on
Oprah
to ensure that we snotty kids got the attention he felt we deserved.

Another time after practice he held up two front-row center tickets to the Bulls–Trail Blazers game. The Bulls had Scotty Pippen and Michael Jordan then. With Nike’s headquarters in Portland, the only place Jordan was more popular was Illinois. So Coach Pittman holds up these tickets and asks which one of us wanted to go. Every last one of us held up a hand. Then he said, “The game is on Friday night at seven, the same time we have practice. Who still wants to go?” Every one of us kept his hand raised. And you know what he did? He ripped those tickets to shreds and vehemently threw the scraps to the ground.

“Do you know why you won’t go watch Michael Jordan?” he asked. No one said a word. “Because when you are competing on Saturday, he will be at practice. And that is exactly where you will be when he is performing on Friday.” With that said, he made us all do twenty-five pushups.

Excuses did not exist in Coach Pittman’s world, so he didn’t allow them to exist in ours. There were days when we could hear gunshots outside, and there were days when the windows high above us would shatter, either from bullets or rocks. We never knew the cause because we weren’t allowed to stop wrestling, not even for a moment. When sirens started howling outside, Coach Pittman would simply get up and lock the doors. He would say to us, “You can’t lose focus, not even for half a second. If you suckas think half a second isn’t a long time, then I want you to go home and turn on the burner on your stove. I want you wait until it is glowing hot, and then I want you to set your palm on that burner for a half a second. Then I want you to come back here and tell me half a second isn’t a long time.”

I can truly see the wisdom behind his words now. A half a second of lost focus can be an eternity, and it can also shatter a man’s hopes and dreams. Need an example? Look no further than my fight with Anderson Silva.

There were many such lessons Coach Pittman taught us, but perhaps the most important one was that you take your responsibilities seriously. It’s not about how you feel. There were dozens of times when the last thing I wanted to do was show up for practice, but I did because I had made a commitment. It’s the same now. When I make a commitment to fight, I fight. It doesn’t matter if I’m not feeling well or have a nagging injury. In the fight business, everyone feels sick before a bout and everyone has nagging injuries. That is why it upsets me so terribly when a fighter signs a contract to do battle on a certain night and calls in sick. And most of the time the reasons for backing out are pathetic. I’ve heard about guys calling in sick for staph infections. I’ve heard about guys calling in sick because they pulled their hamstring or hurt their hand. I have never missed a competition in my life because of illness or injury, and it’s not because I haven’t been hurt or haven’t been sick. If you say you are going to be somewhere, you suck up whatever pain or misery you may be experiencing and you show up.

If it were up to me, I would write a forfeiture clause into the sport of MMA. Every other sport has it. If GSP signs a contract to defend his title on a certain day and at a certain time, he should have to do that. For Super Bowl 2013, the time and date of kickoff have already been set. Same for 2014, 2015, and 2016. If one of the teams that make it to the Super Bowl decides not to play because, say, the quarterback has a staph infection or a pulled hamstring or whatever the heck any of those excuses truly mean, a Super Bowl champion will still be crowned that day. The same thing should happen in MMA.

These are the types of things I learned growing up. I didn’t have a tough life full of tough love, which doesn’t make for an exciting story. But at least I’m not a prima-donna crybaby who covers my body in tattoos and thinks he has the right to call in sick. I didn’t join the sport so I could cut in line at strip clubs. Fighting is an obligation, just like real life is an obligation. If someone were to kick in my front door right now, I couldn’t say, “Geez, you’re fifty pounds bigger than me, this isn’t really fair.” No, I’d get up off my ass and show him the way back out, which is what we should do with a lot of the current fighters.

So I just want to say, thank you, Coach Pittman for making me a real man.