by Josh Samman
Chael visited the house often and was cordial to our team. He was excited to be a part of the whole thing and took a different approach to the coaching gig than many of those before him. The norm was to keep fight picks private, shrouded in mystery to thwart the other team from knowing who would be fighting next, who would have to make weight in the coming days. Chael would be forthright, and tell us who he thought had a good chance to win, and sometimes even what order he wanted to pick the fights. The show, to him, was less about silly games of deception, but rather determining who was the best fighter swimming in the deep talent pool of our season.
“I want to win the tournament. And I want to fight Jimmy next,” I told him. Jimmy and I were still butting heads, and I thought he was an easy scrap to advance to the following round. I explained to Chael that I was there to win, and take the least amount of damage doing so. I was already injured from the Tor fight and wanted someone I knew I could put on a dominating performance against. I set my sights on Jimmy, and I was going to talk it into existence. Chael seemed to be pleased with my approach.
Usually, when fighters were asked who they wanted to fight, the tough guy response was whoever you put in front of me. When I was asked, I always had a response prepared. We had the same conversation, moments later in Dana’s office, with him and Jon both present.
“I think Uriah wants to fight you,” Chael said. Fight picks in the opening frame of the tournament were determined by which team had won last. When given the option, Uriah had chosen Adam, the least experienced fighter, to take out. It didn’t bother me that he wanted to fight me.
“Why should I care who Uriah wants to fight? If he continues winning, then we’ll get the chance sooner or later anyway.” I knew that Uriah and I were the strongest two seeds in the house, and so did they. Dana saw the same thing I did; that the most climactic possible finale was between Uriah and I. Everyone expected us to keep winning. Grandiose visions filled my head of toppling the favorite, on a live stage in front of thousands. The climax would be much more dramatic after a whole season of build-up.
Chael pulled me aside again, after our meeting. “I like what you did in there Josh. That was impressive. Remember, the squeaky wheel always gets the oil. Use whatever you can to your advantage, whenever you can.”
I left the room knowing I’d made an impression on him. I was taken aback that he was going out of his way to instill any success in my future while I was preparing to punch a hole in the head of one of his team members.
The remaining eight contestants convened on the mat, where 14 had stood just weeks earlier, and 28 only days before that. The picks had been made, and I’d gotten what I wanted. I was matched with Jimmy while Uriah drew Bubba, who was brought back for a second chance. Dylan would be fighting Luke, and Kelvin would face Colin. We were down to the final couple fights, and the suspense was building.
32.
Spring, 2003
I was arrested at 14 years old and booked for burglary, grand theft, and resisting arrest. I spent the night in juvenile detention center.
While detained, my mind shifted back and forth between being remorseful for what I’d done and wanting to get home to my bottle of painkillers. I was drug tested while I was there, and my mom discovered I’d been smoking weed again, and eating opiates I hadn’t been prescribed to in six months.
She asked if I’d been doing it the whole time. She couldn’t accept that drugs were the cause of all this, that it had all happened under her nose. I lied, told her I hadn’t. I’d hid the pills and weed in a different place from the money. I knew she hadn’t found them because the police didn’t mention them. They were more concerned where the rest of the money had gone. Baxter had the other half. I didn’t rat the bastard out.
They released me the following evening. When I got home, the dope was still where I’d left it. I ate a few, and went to sleep in my own bed, happy. I swore to never go back to that place, to stop being a troublemaker.
It wasn’t just about not wanting to be in a cell again. I cared about hurting my mom. I’d never seen her so angry. My dad and I had grown apart since I moved out, and it was just her and me, as it had been much of my life. I didn’t want her to give up on me. As soon as this pill bottle was done, I told myself.
Last one.
I didn’t get a chance to finish them. I showed up to school the following day, and a girl I’d been dating said Baxter had been calling non-stop. He said he had to talk to me, but wouldn’t tell her what about. I called him back at lunch. He said the police had been at my house all day. I knew what they were there for.
My mom had waited til I went to school that morning, and continued her search. She had a feeling the things I’d failed my drug test for were still in her house. She found them and called the police.
My next class was AP science, with Coach Mike Crowder. They called him Coach because he led the high school wrestling team at Lincoln. He talked to me once about joining. I wish I would’ve listened.
I went to my next class, not knowing what else to do. It was out of my hands. I watched the seconds tick by on the clock, the longest hour of my life. When the deputy finally entered, I didn’t run. I grabbed my book bag and walked calmly towards my fate.
33.
“Strive to be a man of value, rather than success.”
- Albert Einstein
We had a couple days until I’d fight Jimmy. The matchups were determined, the remaining players left with nothing to do besides train, wait, cut some extra pounds, and talk, which really was the only thing to ever do.
I walked into the kitchen the afternoon after the picks were made, and found the whole house engaged in a conversation over the dining room table. Rarely did a topic have the whole group involved, and I was curious what they could be talking about.
Familiar voices bantered back and forth. One was getting louder as the conversation progressed. I recognized them as Jimmy and Kevin Casey. They were on the same team but argued often. Last time they’d gotten into it, it was about the legitimacy of Casey’s Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt, and his accomplishments on the international grappling circuit. Jimmy had won multiple world titles at his skill level, and Casey was claiming the same. Jimmy called bullshit. He’d earned points for being a skeptic, gained a few more for calling Casey out on it, and hit the jackpot by admitting he was the only other nerd that had actually scouted the other fighters extensively.
The argument this afternoon was different, and struck my interest as I began to listen. They were having an ideological discussion, rare in a house of fistfighters. They were speculating specifically on the origin of the universe, and creationism. The conversation intrigued me, but I preferred only to spectate for the moment.
“C’mon man. You supposed to be smart. You tellin’ me that we’re here just by chance, that someone didn’t make all of this?” Casey put his arms out as he spoke, motioning to all of us, the giant house we were in, the spectacle we were all a part of. He was animated and convincing.
I had heard the same words from Isabel and several others many times. I’d been a part of this back and forth; one infinitely firm believer, one equally doubtful non-believer, neither of which understanding how the other didn’t see their point of view.
The astonishing thing to me was the specifics of Jimmy’s rebuttal. Almost verbatim, he said to Casey the same things I’d tried to express to others. It was music to my ears, and had it not been for his awful accent, I’m not sure I could have said it better myself.
“Yes. I think it’s all a giant coincidence. I think that if we were to somehow lose all the information collected here on Earth, and forced to start over, that the religions of the world would be different than the scripture written today. The scientific information would represent itself identically.” Tor was the only one sitting on the side of the table with Jimmy, nodding in agreement. I realized I’d be fighting the only two people in the house with the same belief structure as me.
The rest of the
group seemed incredulous to the idea of someone blaspheming, so confident in the absence of a higher being. Whether or not Jimmy convinced them otherwise was not important, because the interaction had served its purpose; with those couple of short sentences of conversation that I’d caught, Jimmy had successfully changed my whole perspective of him.
I cooked dinner as they argued for a few more minutes, before they finally agreed to disagree. Once they finished, Casey went to the living room to play pool, one of the only recreations afforded to us, while Jimmy went to help Kelvin cut weight for his fight against Collin.
Cutting weight was an acquired skill, with all sorts of different techniques used to get down to the required weight one competes in. A method in particular that Kelvin was using involved covering himself with layers of blankets and hot towels, in order to break a sweat and lose some of the water weight the body carries. He was struggling, and Jimmy came to the rescue, in one of the most amusing ways possible. He was sitting next to Kelvin as he sweat.
“A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away….”
It wasn’t more than an hour after discovering Jimmy’s cosmic views on the world that I was hearing him comfort Kelvin by telling him, from start to finish, the entire story of Star Wars.
No way.
It was a strange and confusing thing, Jimmy going from the person I disliked the most, to becoming one of my favorites, just two days before our fight. There was no avoiding it now, and I didn’t mind fighting friends, but it made me less excited about it. We had a conversation that night, after my revelation.
“How are you feeling?” I asked him, genuinely curious. It was such a unique situation, living amongst those that we were competing against.
“I feel good. Almost on weight. You?”
“Another 10 lbs or so.” We small talked for a few minutes before I brought up his earlier debate with Casey.
“I heard you talking earlier. You sound enlightened.” He laughed, unsure of whether I was being sarcastic or not. I assured him I wasn’t. We discussed our beliefs a bit, getting cordial, before he seemed to not be able to contain the question much longer.
“So, what is it about me that you don’t like?”
“I’m not sure,” I confessed. “Something about you just rubbed me the wrong way.” Had to have been the accent.
“Why is it you don’t like me?” I asked back, assuming he didn’t.
"You have a confidence about you that makes people uncomfortable. It’s abrasive. You think you're smarter than everyone. I can tell you’re bright, and you might even be brighter than all of us, but I don't think you're as smart as you think you are." His answer was clear and concise, as if he’d spent time thinking about it before I asked.
I knew already that I had this problem, the character flaws he described. It was something I didn’t like and was always trying to rid myself of.
He gained a ton of respect with his answer. I told him I appreciated the honesty, and that he had changed my opinion about him within the course of the last few hours. It didn’t matter much how much I liked him. One of us had to lose, and sympathy for my opponents wasn’t something I could allow.
34.
Summer, 2003
After my latest run-in with the police, I was institutionalized for the second time in my life. The juvenile jail was no different than adult jail. Four-inch thick metal doors with electronic locks kept us in. There was barbed wire around the fences, and the food was the worst I’d ever had.
The jail that summer was overcrowded and understaffed, and spent many days on 23-hour lockdown because of it. When we did get out for an hour, violent criminals mixed with non-violent offenders. Many were in gangs and got in fights while inside. Each time they were handed another assault charge and put on lockdown.
I had internal struggles of whether I belonged there for what I’d done, or if it was all just a case of bad luck. I talked to a therapist for the first time in years and tried to convince her I wasn’t like the other teenagers there. It was the second time I was surrounded with dysfunction, and began to wonder if this pattern would continue.
The therapist believed I wasn’t like the others, but it wasn’t up to her. I had to stay until my court date, where it would be up to the judge. The court relied on a shirt system for the jail employees to communicate with the judge in the simplest way possible; colors.
Blue was reserved for the worst behaved. Any day that an inmate would violate a rule would result in a demotion back to blue shirt status. After three days of uninterrupted good behavior, an inmate was promoted to green shirt. After a week, they earned a red shirt.
I touted my red shirt with pride. I wasn’t a hooligan, as my dad had called me for years. I thought the red shirt would save me. It might have, had I went to court with it.
I was there for almost three months. Just before my day in court, the jail did a cell inspection and found a JS I’d etched into the concrete bed when I’d arrived at the beginning of the summer. They took my red shirt and threatened charges of vandalism. There were initials and profanities etched all over the cell from people over the years. I tried to say it wasn’t me. They checked the cell logs and found no one else with the same initials.
It sounded trivial, but what happened to kids when they went to court was heavily determined by shirt color. It told the judge who adapted quickly, who felt bad for their mistakes, and who continued to cause problems.
I went that day with a blue shirt on, like the rest of the thugs that had been punching each other in the head for months. The judge looked at me like he looked at them, and sentenced me in the same way. I was forced to yet another institution. It was a six to twelve month military camp in the middle of the woods, named West Florida Wilderness Institute.
This is not happening. This can’t be happening.
I cried. I wouldn’t be seeing Tallahassee for a long time.
35.
“Victory belongs to the most persevering."
-Napoleon Bonaparte
I knew, he knew, the whole room knew who wanted it more. The fight itself was more of formality, an afterthought. It went how most of us thought it would go. A takedown, even a good slam by Jimmy, some scrambling, me showing him I wasn’t one to go quietly, and him conceding that I indeed wanted it more. The fight ended the way the previous two fights on the show had ended, with the referee pulling me off my opponent. He wasn’t asleep this time, instead submitting to strikes before losing consciousness.
I did a slow victory lap after the fight, trying not to celebrate flagrantly after I’d beaten my new friend. I jogged around the perimeter of the cage and something on the outside caught my eye. A particular tattoo. A face tattoo.
Mike fucking Tyson.
Iron Mike was a well-known MMA fan that went to UFC events frequently, but his presence that day was a huge surprise. My favorite fighter of all time wasn’t even an MMA fighter. He was a boxer, and there he stood right in front of me clapping with a satisfied grin.
He came and congratulated me after the fight. “You’s a real violent fighta Mr. Josh. I liked that vewy much.” He spoke through his thick upstate New York lisp. I couldn’t believe the master of violence, a guy I’d watched and wished to embody in the ring, was congratulating me, complimenting me on my violence. It was an incredible moment on the whole adventure, and one of my fondest memories.
I talked to Jimmy a bit after the fight and sat down to watch the other three bouts that day. Dylan beat Luke in what would be the fight of the season, Kelvin knocked out Collin in perhaps the quickest fight yet, and Uriah knocked out Bubba, breaking his orbital bone with one punch. Both Uriah and my performances would help to grow the rivalry between us. Everything continued to be nothing short of fireworks.
We were told that we would be rewarded the next day for our performances, in the form of a field trip. It sounded silly, a group of men excited to pile up in a van and get out of the house, but it was something to look forward to. For over a month the only ti
me we’d left was to the gym twice a day.
Our coaches decided on the trip, a local state park in Nevada called Red Rock Canyon. It was a stretch of land nestled in the mountains, named after the color, blood red, with a large peak right in the middle, overlooking the city of Las Vegas.
When we got there, it was beautiful. It reminded me of trips to the Grand Canyon early in life with my mom; nostalgic memories of magical views, overlooking landscapes that made me understand the ideas of God and heavenly bodies.
Dylan and I were the most excited to be there. The terrain reminded him of his home in New Zealand, and he couldn’t hide the glee on his face. The two of us hurried to the summit, with the coaches and rest of the team trailing behind, and camera crew doing their best to keep up with 30 lbs of gear.
We made it halfway up the mountain before one of the producers entered babysitter mode, and told us to stop climbing. Coincidentally, or maybe not coincidentally, Dylan and I, the two so anxious to get to the top, were the only ones on our team to have a fight remaining. Metaphorically indicative of who wanted the most out of this thing, maybe. Either way, they couldn’t afford the disaster of one of us getting hurt.
We obliged, reluctantly, but not without hopping up another 20 feet to take one last mental photograph, as we still didn’t have phones or cameras. It was a refreshing moment, a helpful reminder of the world outside. We stayed until the rest of the team caught up, and made a promise to each other that we’d come back one day and get to the top, unbounded by limits to the heights of which we could climb.
36.
Fall, 2003
West Florida Wilderness Institute was an eye opener. It was isolation like I’d never known. We weren’t under lockdown like at the detention center, but instead 30 miles from the nearest town. Swamps and neighbors with shotguns surrounded the perimeter. Escape was not an option.