Fighter's Mind, A (34 page)

From my very first real fighting experience in Thailand, I saw that the best fighters were the most humble. But, much like jiu-jitsu, you start to see it’s a “chicken or the egg” question. Is it that great fighters lose their ego? Or is it that you cannot become great
unless
you lose your ego? Your ego keeps you out of the zone? Guys who can naturally control big egos do better?

“You have to live through it,” Dr. Lardon said. “The eighteenth hole at the PGA West is all water up the left, and if you hit it there you don’t have a job. When you’re not at peace with that, then you’re in trouble.”

But what about the huge egos of guys like Michael Jordan, who needed control over the court? Or Kobe Bryant? Their monstrous egos obviously don’t keep them out of the zone—Jordan’s the defining athlete of the concept. I would imagine it’s because they can compartmentalize and, in the moment, remove any trace of self-consciousness from what they do. They control it, like they control everything else. And they’re at peace with it, with taking the pressure shot. They’re at peace with failure or success; as Schjeldahl wrote, they take an “impersonal joy” in what they do. They see themselves from the outside, as impersonal constructs, which may lead to the oft-ridiculed referencing themselves in the third person.

Andre Ward told me, concerning his faith, “My faith and understanding is that God placed me here for a reason. He has work for me to do. That encourages me and keeps me going. I’ve said this before, and so does Virg, as a professional, that without God I wouldn’t be in this business. I just wouldn’t.”

Andre paused. “God has me here for a reason, he’s in control of everything and his will will come to pass. My job is to work hard, give him all I have in preparation, and leave it to him. It’s everything, the centerpiece, the cornerstone of my career. He’s brought me this far, he’s not going to leave me high and dry. He won’t pull the rug from under me, there’s work to be done.” I could hear in his voice two things—a way to avoid ego and a way to avoid fear. His faith was perfect for fitting him into the zone.

I thought of Liborio, of the importance of acceptance, of Manny Pacquiao, almost a kind of fatalism. The mentality that accepted the possibility of the worst, with a deeper understanding and without fear, because fear would keep you from attaining the no-mind.

What does all this mean, in a practical sense? You have to be simple, uncomplicated, pure, just to have a shot at falling into that zone state. And of course you need your ten thousand hours, too. Jordan and Kobe worked harder in the gym than everyone else. You can’t just stay superrelaxed, talk a bunch of shit to keep your opponent out of the zone, or have the deep philosophical revelation and win the fight (the
Karate Kid
trap). You need to have outworked him in the gym. The more you immerse yourself in the subject, the deeper you go, the closer you come. There’s no secret to the zone, the void. It comes only after mastery.

Paul Theroux, the great travel writer and novelist, calls it the “awkward question,” when an innocent adventurer, back from some hellhole, gets asked, “Why?” at a cocktail party or on the street. Fighters and adventurers will go to great lengths to avoid answering. Dr. Horton replies, “Why not?,” something I used with mixed results for years. Something I’d probably still be saying if I hadn’t taken the money to write the first book.

Theroux stuck it to Gerard d’Aboville, about rowing a small boat across the Pacific in 1993, with “enormous personal risk.” Gerard resisted the question, and then Theroux recounts the answer.

The
why?
of fighting is the elephant in the room, and I would be remiss if I didn’t take a stab at it in a book about the mental side of fighting.

Any attempt to understand why begins with the nature of the beast, with understanding what fighting is. Paul Lazenby wrote an article about the Japanese fighter Masakatsu Funaki. This is the same Funaki that Frank Shamrock fought and who trained Ken. Now he was fighting long past his prime and getting beat up; the same old story. Paul had also lost to Funaki and was aware of Funaki’s legend—he’d started the “first ever pro-wrestling group with no preordained finishes,” called Pancrase, in 1993—the year the UFC started in the United States.

Paul’s article was about the debt he felt was owed to Funaki. Funaki had recently fought as a shadow of his former self, just an old man getting pounded on. Paul was disgusted by some disrespect he overheard from fighters who couldn’t remember what Funaki had been in his prime. As Paul noted, “It becomes painfully clear that the Herculean task of laying the groundwork for the sport that we know and love has taken more from Funaki than he could ever recover.”

I had the same feelings when I listened to Thomas Hearns talk about making a comeback, with his mouth full of cotton, at the age of forty-six. Boxing writers, that sagacious lot, implored him not to fight. They didn’t want to see him lose to a no-talent club fighter. A guy who couldn’t carry Hearns’s jock-strap when he was in his prime might get to say he beat Tommy Hearns? Why would Tommy want to fight again? But the pundits, fans, and outsiders weren’t walking in his shoes. Hearns had lost some of his biggest fights, and the shadows couldn’t let him go. I understood his need and felt like we owed him something.

What is the debt we owe great fighters? Is it owed them because of what they’ve shown us about courage and resiliency? Is it about what they have given to inspire us? The insight into the human heart and mind? The simple thrills? Why is there such reverential tragedy to Muhammad Ali, and now to Evander Holyfield? Why do I find such compassion and even love in my heart when I listen to Gabriel Ruelas?

The price you pay as a fighter is real, a throwback to the old days, the days when human life wasn’t so precious. Throughout the past three or four centuries, a human life has become increasingly valued—but this is an exception not the norm of human history.

Prizefighting’s roots lie in a time when life was cheap. The world has changed, and prizefighting has continued through it, undergoing paradoxical changes. The paradox of fighting lies in something Gabriel Ruelas (who knows better than most) asked me: “How safe can you make a sport that is about hurting people?”

Carlo Rotella wrote in his book
Cut Time
:

You, the fighter, you are paying a price. Fighters give us something irreplaceable—even the opponents, the bums, deserve to be respected for that. They can lose their wits, their intellect, their wisdom, everything a man has. Joe Frazier said, “Boxing is the only sport you get your brain shook, your money took, and your name in the undertaker book.”

There is an element of tragedy in fighting, even in victory. We feel gratitude to fighters because we owe them for our joy and excitement—for showing us the truth of courage. There is acting in a prizefight, and play-acting and image, but there is also something very real happening, something that can’t be faked. Even an expertly “worked” (fake) match isn’t as exciting or enlightening as a great fight.

Fighting is tragic, even in victory. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t worthwhile. Most of us in the first world live in the safe society, as Jon Wertheim wrote, where “aggression has become a bad word and testosterone a banned substance. Danger is something to be avoided . . . something to be neutered.” We have discovered that some things are worth the price. Fighters and those who train, who take shots to the head, they know in their hearts it can be costly. But there are reasons to fight and reasons to feel alive; there are prices worth paying.

Rotella again in
Cut Time
:

We have to be on guard, to make sure that we never drain the meaning from our hurt. It requires vigilance and understanding, particularly in fight writers, those who study so much and watch so much, without personal investment, with a connoisseur’s eye. The good fight writers and TV commentators never lose sight, entirely, of what this is all about, they never lose respect for the men fighting. The same can be said for any fan; never lose sight of what is happening when you cheer a bloody war.

Professional fighting is an awkward, uneasy thing. It falls in a strange place in society. It’s entertainment, yet it serves the participants and the audience with an intrinsic need, scratches a primal itch. It’s the manufacture of life-and-death situations for public consumption. The promoters and participants have to walk the line of entertainment and performance. There is some moral corrosion that happens, for the fans, for the fighters, for the promoters if they walk that line too fine.

One of the more interesting problems any trainer has to deal with is the difficulty of reconciling winning and entertaining. Mark DellaGrotte was the first guy I really talked to about it, in Boston. He has learned the lessons the hard way.

“I remember when Jorge Rivera fought Dennis Hallman, and Jorge survived and ground out a win. I kept telling Jorge, ‘be careful, he’s still dangerous.’ When I ran into the UFC match-maker, Joe Silva, later he was pissed off. He said, ‘That fight sucked, Jorge coulda knocked him out.’ I thought he was kidding. But he wasn’t. And I had to learn the same lesson with Patrick Cote. I realized that the fights gotta be exciting, or else everyone loses, we turn this back into boxing. You have to fight strategically, to win, but not overcautious, because you’re an entertainer. If people are turning off the TV, where are we going? Nobody makes money. Now the fighters themselves, the referees are slowly changing the formats, the ‘standups’ are getting faster and faster. It’s not always about winning, it’s about putting on a show, too.”

The history of modern prizefighting traces back to the 1700s and James Figg’s School of Arms and Self-Defense in England. It was an era of near-constant warfare, unbreakable class divisions, and personal violence. Europe was emerging from medieval darkness and practices such as dueling were gradually being outlawed because they were costing the Crown its best officers. Gentlemen of “the Fancy”—the gaming fans who went to prizefights, bull and bear baitings, rattings, and so forth—began to get involved in actually training and fighting. Their lives had value as members of the aristocracy. Gentlemen couldn’t fight bare-fisted, like common ruffians. The life of the fighter began to acquire a different value, and the rules began to trickle in, culminating with the 1867 Marquess of Queensberry rules.

In boxing, because of its long professional history, performance and entertainment have become very close—the fans and aficionados, well versed in fine detail, want to see the very best in boxing compete, even if they never get a knockout. Skilled defensive work is appreciated. Andre Ward, criticized for being “protected,” is picking his fights; he’s trying to win a losing game, make a career in boxing without getting his brain shook or his money took. He’ll take his risks when he has to—he’ll fight for titles against the tough guys when the money is there—but he won’t brawl for our thrill. And he is respected for it by anyone who knows anything.

MMA, with the dominance of one single promotion (the UFC) and an extremely varied fan base in terms of education in the nuances of the sport, features a bigger dichotomy between entertainment and winning. It’s something that promoters, fighters, and trainers struggle with. For the promoter, fighting is about “asses in seats.” For the top fighters, it’s about winning and taking as little damage as possible while inflicting the most.

There are extremely boring ways to win in MMA, and the UFC has tried to eliminate those—either directly, through rule changes (like gloves and standups), or indirectly, letting fighters who “win boring” go. The strategy works; exciting slugfests draw in raw fans. But fighters in modern MMA have an incredible line to walk, a line of self-sacrifice and damage, where it’s better to lose in an exciting fashion than to win. Promoters will actually tell that to the fighters. No one finds it disheartening—basically, take damage for our entertainment. Bleed for us. Wrestlers and ground fighters increasingly stand and brawl, hoping to be fan favorites or for the extra cash of a “fight of the night” prize.