The Laws of the Ring

by Urijah Faber

  He had been a professional pool hustler, and he bilked people out of more money than he could count. For seven years he ran a couple of strip clubs where workers’ rights weren’t exactly a priority. He kicked down doors and beat people up when he went to collect money. He’d been shot twice and stabbed fifteen times and had the scars to prove it. He was, by his own estimation, “a horrible person.”

  So one day I asked Red: “What changed? What happened to make you leave all that bad stuff behind and change your life?”

  I discovered Red’s life turned on a simple question. About twenty years earlier, a live-in girlfriend who was studying psychology asked him, “Why are you so angry?”

  He didn’t have an answer. Why am I so angry?

  Sometimes, you are something simply because you never thought you could be something else. It doesn’t have to be anything as drastic as Red’s anger, but superficial qualities tend to seep into our subconscious until they define who we are. We accept them, oftentimes because the people in our lives accept them.

  (Apparently the girlfriend was doing a case study on Red for one of her classes. “She got A’s all the way through,” Red said with his gruff laugh.)

  Just because you have embarked on the wrong course doesn’t mean you have to remain on it. Every bad road has an off-ramp. The off-ramp might lead to a more winding and convoluted path to your destination, but the important thing to remember is that the off-ramps exist. They’re waiting for you.

  It’s an intrinsic part of our nature to want to belong. Whether it’s something positive (charity groups) or negative (gangs), we draw power from belonging. Being part of something bigger than ourselves creates a sense of purpose; groups empower the individual, and some of the most amazing and productive achievements in history have come when good people with a strong purpose bonded together for the common good. On the other side of the coin, some of the most remarkable accomplishments in life come when people who are drawing negative energy from their group break out and change their ways.

  Think of all the stories of gangsters who have abandoned the street life to pursue something positive—often something that runs directly counter to their previous lives. Shawn “Jay-Z” Carter is one of the most successful hip-hop artists in America; he is originally from the Marcy housing projects in New York City, and endured a traumatic and dysfunctional upbringing. In his music he refers to selling crack cocaine and being immersed in criminal activities. Yet today he has been actively making good. Recently, Jay-Z has used his fame to bring awareness to the battle against the global water shortage. He pledged over a million dollars in relief after Hurricane Katrina and was actively involved in the 2008 efforts to get young people to vote in America.

  Many ex-gang members reject their previous ways and devote themselves to keeping others from making the same mistakes as they did. I contend there is nothing more difficult in life than changing your affiliation, because doing this requires such a deep, personal change. It’s the equivalent of turning your back on your own identity. You change who you are, and there’s nothing more frightening than the realization that your identity—the thing you have clung to your entire life—needs to be abandoned.

  This is what happened to Red after his girlfriend asked him that simple question. Why are you so angry? For one of the few times in his life, he didn’t lash out in anger at someone who dared question him. Maybe it was something in her tone, or the directness of the question, or the fact that most people were afraid to ask Red Robinson a question that might force him to assess himself as a human being. The bottom line is that this girlfriend was the off-ramp. Now, an off-ramp can be a girlfriend, friend, advertisement for a MMA gym, whatever, but if you’re in a downward spiral, that’s when you should be consciously looking for one. They do come along. It’s a matter of whether or not we’re paying attention to them.

  As Red looked at her speechless, he realized it was the first time he’d been forced to ask himself that question. He was so stunned, he couldn’t muster up a response, but the question bounced around in his mind for days after and he came to a couple important conclusions: (1) anger was making his life miserable; and (2) life is empty when your happiest moments come when you’re being destructive to yourself and others.

  The first thing Red did was stop abusing his body with drugs and alcohol, which took care of a whole bunch of his worst habits. The second thing he did was reevaluate his life to figure out how he could maximize his happiness.

  Red asked himself an all-important question: “What do I like to do (other than beat people up), and how can I incorporate it into my everyday life to make myself a happier and more productive person?” His legitimate business, hanging drywall, wasn’t the answer. He hated it. But he liked to travel. He liked the feeling of heading out on the open road to see something he’d never seen. He liked adventure. So, at forty-eight years old, Red changed his life and took a job as a truck driver.

  He loved it. He was sober, which made his disposition better, allowing him the full opportunity to enjoy his work and his travels through America. In turn, this made him less prone to anger. Before long, he made the decision to save his money, and within three years, he bought three trucks and opened his own trucking company. To drive the other two trucks, he hired friends who were down on their luck, but far more positive influences than the characters with whom he’d previously associated.

  Predictably, given Red’s new outlook, the trucking business did well for many years, and as he approached the age of sixty, Red found himself in position to retire with a good chunk of money in the bank and a farm to live on. But after a few years, he became more aware of this unhealthy body he had ravaged with drugs and alcohol for so many years and for which he never accepted accountability. He was also a fiery-spirited redhead, and had always loved competition. In his youth he trained in boxing and judo and was an accomplished horseback rider, in addition to his street-fighting prowess. Red was drawn to the world of MMA, and it was something he wanted to pursue in his new quest to get his health in line. It was natural for Red to be associated with the toughest dudes in the area; the legitimacy and growth of the Sacramento fight scene provided him with a healthy way to join some tough “peers” (even though he had a few years on most of the other fighters on Team Alpha Male).

  When he first walked into the gym, Red was 217 pounds; he’s now about 180. But it’s not just weight loss. He has gotten in such great shape all around. He has a blast hanging out with world champions at the gym, but he also competes in jujitsu tournaments. The man is a beast.

  Oh, and one other thing: As of this writing, he wants to take a fight. Seriously, at sixty-four years old, Red Robinson wants a cage fight. We’re not going to let him—there are times when passion can lead you astray and cause you to forget yourself—but the point is that Red readily acknowledges that he’s the happiest he’s ever been, and his transformation started with a question. The question triggered a much-needed self-examination, and that ultimately led Red to put his passion first—the passion being himself.

  His story makes me think back to the saying on my mom’s refrigerator.

  Dream impossible dreams. When those dreams come true, make the next ones more impossible.

  Red’s first “impossible” dream was getting sober. So much of his life was wrapped up in drugs and alcohol that quitting was more than a simple lifestyle change. His second impossible dream was to rid himself of the anger and become a happier person, which he achieved by first getting sober and then recognizing his passion and finding a way to maximize it. His third impossible dream was to get his body as healthy as his mind.

  He’s proof it’s never too late to achieve the impossible, and never too late to evaluate and change the most fundamental part of your being, so long as you have the courage to face who you really are.

  The 12th Law of Power

  Fight Adversity with Passion

  This b
ook has been a lot of years in the making. I first began thinking about writing a combination motivational/self-help book four or five years ago. One of the first people I consulted was my friend and neighbor Jim Peterson, a high school vice principal and a specialist in behavior modification.

  Jim and his wife, Renata, had become a great part of our community. They helped to develop a series of life-skills workshops that we put on for the team over the years. I even gave Jim the nickname, “the Mind Coach,” to officially add him to the staff of MMA specialists who were building our team stronger. Jim and I sat down and discussed concepts that would resonate with people who were looking to extract themselves from a personal or professional rut. A theme I believe to be one of the most important is overcoming adversity.

  This is obvious, right? In order to make big changes in your life, you’re going to have to work through hard times. You’re going to have to lower your shoulder and surge forward when you might be the only person who truly believes in you.

  It occurred to me that overcoming adversity is a term that’s easy to dismiss. It’s vague and somewhat clichéd. And so Jim and I discussed ways to illustrate this concept, to make it real and tangible and attainable.

  To take control of your life, you have to take control of expectations. The ability to overcome adversity is a valuable asset, but it avoids a major truth: So often, adversity is imagined. Much of what we expect from ourselves is a reflection of society’s insistence on promoting the idea of the instant success story.

  There is no such thing, but we fool ourselves into believing there is. We look at the people on television and hear their abridged stories—from nowhere to hero in no time—and miss out on all the difficulties in between. America has attached itself to so many rags-to-riches stories that we start to fool ourselves into thinking it’s the norm. And if we aren’t getting as much attention or money as someone in a similar field at a similar age, we tend to view ourselves as unable to measure up.

  This leads to a poison known as envy.

  Jealousy and envy are often used synonymously. The two words have become so interchangeable in common usage that most people think they convey the same meaning. They don’t, but the confusion is understandable. Linguists, psychologists, and other deep thinkers have pondered the difference for years. Philosopher John Rawls draws the distinction this way: Jealousy is the desire to keep something you already have but fear losing, while envy is the wish to have something you don’t have but someone else does.

  Envy and jealousy are poison, and both are unnecessary roadblocks on your way to a more passion-filled life. We are aware that the phrase enjoy the journey contains wise advice, but we rarely follow it. We’re in such a rush to reach some goal, and we’re always looking around to see where everybody else is.

  “We all start from different places,” Jim said. “That’s something that everybody needs to understand and accept before they can achieve any real self-improvement.”

  To drive the point home, Jim told me about an exercise he does with high school students. He credits this exercise to Pat Quinn, a national teacher trainer.

  Jim walks into a class and asks the students to stand up. He says to them, “We’re going to do an exercise for the next few minutes. I just spoke with your teacher and she’s agreed that anyone who successfully completes this exercise is going to earn fifty extra-credit points.”

  At this point, the students usually do something—smile, pump their fists, cheer—that indicates they’re okay with Jim’s plan.

  Then Jim says, “All you have to do to earn the points is touch the light switch on the wall over by the door by taking no more than one step.”

  He continues by saying, “All right—we’ll start with the first row.”

  This is the row closest to the switch. The students are all easily within one step of the switch. Usually they have a look on their face that says, Cool. We’ve got the hookup.

  The students just outside the reasonable-reach zone always enjoy the exercise the most. They get to show off their cleverness or athletic ability as they jump or stretch their way close to the switch. Jim makes a point of noting that most of these students are able to complete the task in the same amount of time as the first students because the first ones—those closest—never try to reach the switch quickly.

  The students in the outer rows, as you might imagine, do not enjoy this exercise. A few always protest loudly, and it’s not uncommon to hear someone mutter, “Man, this is bullshit.” Before these students completely turn on Jim, though, he asks a question: “Is there anyone here who couldn’t get to that light switch if they had to?”

  The answer is always the same: “Duh?” (They are teenagers.)

  Jim then shows some creative ways to get within a step of the switch: the moon walk, electric slide, bear walking. The kids then start to understand that being creative can get you within one step of the light switch.

  Jim holds up a hand to quell their rising indignation and says, “All right, then. Anybody who goes over and touches the light switch is going to get the full points. Work with me, guys, I swear there’s a point.”

  After the students dutifully walk over and touch the switch, Jim unveils the lesson.

  “The purpose of the exercise is to point out to you guys that we all start from different places,” he says. “But just because someone heading for the same place as you starts from closer doesn’t mean we can’t all get to where we want to go.”

  The truth is, expecting a student to touch the switch in one step is as ridiculous as you expecting yourself to meet the same sales quota as a twenty-year veteran in your first month on the job. It’s not a reasonable expectation.

  The more Jim and I talked, the more we realized that the only way to overcome adversity is to be consistently persistent with your behavior.

  Persistence happens when nobody’s looking. I was a successful fighter at a young age, but nobody who sees me fight in front of twenty thousand people sees the hours of training that went in to perfecting certain techniques—or even one specific move. From the outside, it looks like I sprouted whole in the middle of a UFC cage, with thousands in the stands and millions watching at home. But of course that’s not true. Not true at all.

  After Tyrone Glover’s fight, which, by the way, he won, I asked him for the promoter’s number. He was hesitant to give it to me. He stopped and started a few times and then said, “Well, it’s kind of hard to get a fight. You have to go through someone to do it.”

  “I don’t care,” I said. “I’m going to do this one way or another. Just give me his number.”

  Tyrone shrugged and told me the guy’s name was Ted Williams. He gave me the number.

  Sweet. A good first step. I’ve got a name and a number. Time to get to work.

  I called. And I called. And I called.

  Finally, Ted Williams answered. After so many unanswered calls, I was a little startled and a little nervous at hearing his voice. I started talking as fast as I could, making sure I got it all out before he could respond. “Hi, Ted, this is Urijah Faber, and I want to fight. I’m a college wrestler and—”

  Click.

  He hung up.

  I called back. No answer.

  That was unexpected. From the seats at the Colusa Casino, this fight scene didn’t appear to be an exclusive club. There didn’t seem to be strict requirements for entry. I was a decorated Division I college wrestler, not a guy who sucker punched someone in a bar once and came away calling himself a fighter. Apparently I was unaware of some of the intricacies of the profession.

  My dealings with Williams provided a valuable lesson on pursuing a passion: You will be discouraged. It might happen right away, like it did with me, or it might be down the road. But make no mistake: It will happen. You will be told “No,” in no uncertain terms. You will have to fight through the negativity, and the only way to do tha
t is to be guided by a strong sense of purpose.

  As a result of being blown off, I took a different approach. I went to all the gyms in Sacramento that trained fighters. I figured if I showed what I could do against the guys who were getting the fights, I’d begin to make a name for myself. Word would spread, and Williams would be left with no choice but to take my call.

  At one of the gyms, I gave one of the jujitsu instructors all he could handle. The guy who ran the gym, a fast talker named Carlos, told me, “Yeah, man, I’ll get you a fight.”

  I had some reservations about Carlos, but who was I to argue? I wanted a fight. He said he could get me a fight. What did I do? I told him to get me a fight. He proceeded to do just that, but along the way he told Ted Williams he was my wrestling coach at UC Davis (completely untrue) and followed that with more claims of questionable veracity. I wasn’t going into this blind, though. At this stage of its development, MMA was a shady business, so it shouldn’t have surprised me to find shady characters running it.

  And so, if you followed the bouncing ball from Tyrone Glover to Ted Williams to Carlos and back to Ted Williams, you’d discover how I came to fight Jay Valencia. When it was over, after I’d beaten Valencia and sold a lot of tickets and brought the fans to their feet, Ted Williams came up to congratulate me. I was still a little pissed at the backdoor route I’d taken to get the fight, and so I said, “Hey, Ted. Now are you gonna call me back?”

  Unfazed, he said, “Everybody out there loved you, man. When are you going to fight again?”

  “Are you gonna hang up on me again?”

  “Oh, of course not. I’ll call you back now.”

  Nobody would have blamed me if I had given up my quest to secure my first fight. I easily could have thrown up my hands and said, “Well, I tried,” after my phone calls to Ted Williams had been repeatedly rebuffed and, worse, ignored. But I knew I could do this, and wasn’t ready to fall back on the excuses about the politics of ultimate fighting, or the unfairness of the promoter, or the lack of available opportunities.