The Laws of the Ring

by Urijah Faber

“And then what?” the vendor asks.

  “Well, isn’t it obvious? Then you’ll be able to retire. You’ll spend your days hanging out at the beach with your family, playing the guitar without a worry in the world.”

  The peanut vendor looks at the businessman and says calmly, “But that’s what I do right now.”

  The lesson? Be careful about imposing your judgments on people whose values or talents don’t mesh with yours. Relish small victories and never minimize happiness. Success, contentment, and ambition are all in the eyes of the beholder.

  It’s harder to let your passion lead you when your entire upbringing has been based on what I call the “scramble-for-security model.” If your parents lived their lives fixated on conservative principles of working for status, saving every dollar, and planning for every negative possibility, you’re going to have a harder time breaking free of that mentality.

  I give motivational speeches to many groups in and around Sacramento—corporations, schools, youth sports organizations—and one topic that frequently arises is the difference between having a “job” and having a “career.” This is an important distinction, and one that everybody should address. Is your work merely a job, something you do because it affords you the benefits of pay and security, or do you have a career that is both financially and emotionally fulfilling? Your answer to this question may have its roots in the environment and culture of your childhood.

  I made two hundred dollars to fight Jay Valencia at the Colusa Casino, one hundred to win and another one hundred as my commission from the tickets I sold to family and friends. Those were heady times for me—first pro fight, a win, and some promising signs that I could please a crowd and make a few bucks in the process of pursuing my passion. A five-hundred-dollar night was a significant event for someone who was busing tables and earning eight grand a year from a coaching gig.

  And I left the casino that night with the promise of another fight. It was really happening, and I was really pumped to keep training and keep fighting and see how far this crazy dream could take me.

  But about three days after the fight, after I was finished coaching for the day and before I began busing tables, I walked in the front door of our house in midtown Sacramento to see my friends Dave and Dustin hanging in the living room, dour looks on their faces.

  This was not what I was used to with these guys. It looked like something really bad had happened. They asked me to sit down.

  “We don’t think you should fight anymore,” Dave started in. “It seems like it could get . . . addicting.”

  At first, I was relieved that the problem wasn’t something more serious.

  “Well, guys, I don’t think that’s going to happen,” I said dismissively, returning to check the messages on my cell phone. But when I looked up, I realized they were dead serious. Apparently they felt my journey into professional cage fighting necessitated an intervention. I summoned a more serious tone.

  “Look, this is what I’ve always wanted, and I’m stoked about getting ready for my next fight soon.”

  “We know, we know,” Dustin said. “But you can’t keep doing it. It’s just crazy.”

  Were these the guys who were standing and screaming when I put Valencia away? Were these the guys I was looking at while I screamed, “Those are my dawgs!” after the ref stopped the fight? Were these the guys who . . . wanted me to stop?

  I started laughing, but in a “what’s really going on here?” kind of way. “Guys, you were there. You saw how cool it was.”

  They both pleaded guilty to having had a blast at the Valencia fight. They admitted that they got caught up in it, but they were worried I might get hurt. They said that once they had a chance to digest the event, they concluded that the sport was brutal and dangerous. And, honestly, I completely agreed. That was what I loved about it: the brutality and the edgy feeling I got putting my pride on the line.

  But despite my protestations, I had to stop and acknowledge my fundamental attraction to what’s essentially a violent activity. Of course, it’s not like I wasn’t aware of how my sincere enthusiasm for fighting could cause the slightest bit of discomfort to the people closest to me. Honestly, I didn’t tell my mom about my fight until two weeks later, when I sat down and showed her the tape.

  As she sat there watching, I could see her face drop and the look in her eyes change from slightly concerned to appalled. She had seen many wrestling matches, but nothing that could have prepared her for the level of violence and mayhem in which her son was now engaged. She didn’t have much to say, but when the tape was finished, she was certain about one thing, and one thing only: If it was up to her, I would stop fighting. Now, remember, she was a free-spirited person who had raised a free-spirited son, but she was also the kind of mother who made her children go without Novocain at the dentist’s office because she didn’t believe in altering the mind with drugs, legal or not. In her mind, this sport—this brutal combat sport—was a drug that would surely damage her son.

  “You need to stop this,” she said with a laugh that was a little uncomfortable.

  I looked at her with a crooked smile and chuckled. She wasn’t amused.

  At this point I was twenty-three years old and had been living on my own since I was nineteen, and while I know a parent’s acceptance of a child’s decisions varies from family to family, my mom had by now become accustomed to reasoning with me rather than prohibiting.

  “Are you going to do that again?” she asked.

  When I responded only by looking at her and giving her a sly smile, stating the obvious without saying a word, she said, “I’ll pay you not to fight. How much money will it take to get you to stop?”

  I pondered her proposal. I ran the Valencia payday through my mind. “Five hundred dollars every minute and a half,” I said.

  She looked at me and shook her head. She knew a lost cause when she saw one. Those sly smiles that probably got me into a lot of trouble that first year at Davis told her as much, and she relented. Fighting might have seemed abhorrent to her, but my happiness meant more. Always had. After all, she was the one who had filled her children with confidence in themselves. She was the one who had exposed us to modeling and acting. She was the one who suggested we could sing and dance when there was no evidence to support it. The idea that I would pursue something outside the mainstream for the sheer joy and challenge of it was nothing if not consistent with my upbringing.

  In the first few minutes of this powwow with Dustin and Dave, I dismissed my friends’ concerns, not because I was indifferent to what they had to say, but because while they thought what I was doing was crazy, I thought that their desire to see me stop was crazy. Why wouldn’t you want to see your best friend happy? Then it really hit me. Sure my natural tendency is to be positive, but there’s no doubt I was nurtured to wish for everyone to get what they themselves wished for. My parents led by example. But though Dave and Dustin were two of my best friends, their views on my pursuit of a fighting career stemmed from their upbringing.

  Therein lies the beauty of my background: Because it was as unconventional as my decision to fight, it freed me of any of these hang-ups. My mom wasn’t thrilled with what she watched on the tape of my first fight, but she wasn’t going to be shamed—or worse, shame me—for wanting to be a fighter. Her judgment was based solely on the physical risk attached to the endeavor. A blanket condemnation would have been inconsistent with her mentality. But Dave and Dustin’s view was one that was shared by the majority of society. It wasn’t that they didn’t want to see me happy; it was that, basically, they thought I wasn’t in my right mind. The sight of my getting punched in the face wasn’t their only concern. What bothered them was that they believed that a decision to make something so outrageous my livelihood would surely lead to great unhappiness. To them, the risk and the reward didn’t match up.

  Not only high school students in high-achi
eving families but many high school students in general are often pressured to get into the best colleges. If their parents guide them through high school and support them emotionally and economically through college, there is an unspoken expectation that they will repay this investment by getting a job their parents can be proud of. When formal education ends and full-time employment begins, parents want to be able to say that their child is a productive member of society. There’s nothing inherently wrong with this, of course, but “aspiring MMA fighter” didn’t exactly spring to mind as a socially acceptable and productive occupation for a recent college graduate in 2003. That is the mentality Dustin and Dave represented when they sat me down for the big talk.

  To Dustin and Dave, it was more like People like us go to college, earn a degree, and leave their childish ways behind. They get good jobs with benefits and potential for advancement. They don’t fight hard-luck toughs in casino ballrooms in front of crowds of bloodthirsty, dentally challenged fans. To me, though, fighting was fun—a blast, really—and it challenged me in a way that nothing had before or since.

  Passion is intensely personal, and everyone has a different passion and a different definition of what expressing this passion gives them. Clearly, not everybody can be a professional athlete or have a high-profile job. That’s not the point. Occupations and career paths that some of us consider mundane are absolutely perfect for others. There are no rules, and if I have a problem with the plumbing in my house, I want the most passionate plumber around to be the one who shows up at the door to fix it. But what I say is that if you have an intrinsic fascination with hand-to-hand combat, then be a fighter. If you have a penchant for repairing the infrastructure of residences, then be a plumber. Striving to get a job simply for its social acceptability is—at least in terms of reaching your potential—doomed to failure in the long run. In the short run you get comfort and stability. But then you become so entrenched in a certain way of life that it can be difficult to break out. Dreams become casualties of economic realities. Passion becomes lost. The vibrancy of life becomes an afterthought. Work becomes toil, and toil becomes misery. To me, that’s sad.

  Now, some people start off on this path and actually sustain this trajectory for a long time. Some actually get the house and the boat and the wife with the regular hair appointments and the kid with the pitching lessons and the daughter on the traveling soccer team. But then, years later, when you ask yourself if you are happy and the answer is no, it’s tough to retrieve your passion. You’ve exposed yourself to the elements, so to speak, and there’s no umbrella in sight. You’re forced to continue on the unhappy path to . . . where? Retirement? When you finally get a chance to cultivate the passions you’ve allowed to wither and die over the previous forty years?

  These words aren’t meant to be harsh, but think about it: Even if you get joy out of your family and your hobbies and your remodeled kitchen, that’s one hell of a tough bargain. Forty-plus years of passionless work for forty-plus hours a week, just to be comfortable and socially acceptable? Just to be comfortable? That equation doesn’t work for me, and it never did. You shouldn’t let it work for you either.

  If you truly want to break free, you’re going to have to do the toughest thing imaginable: escape the comfort zone. Don’t let convention and comfort lead. Let passion lead.

  There was one overriding theme about my lifestyle at the beginning of my fighting career: It had nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with passion. I did what I wanted to do with a sense of confidence that announced to the world that I believed I could do anything. But don’t think I’m coming at this subject with a total lack of perspective. Practically speaking, there were moments when I thought the business of fighting might never reach the level of my passion in my lifetime. Accordingly, inside, my confidence wavered. And I confess to wondering if it would be feasible to continue to follow my passion from one Indian casino to another. But over time, with the knowledge that I gained from observing the changing landscape, I mapped out how to make this crazy vocation a reality.

  As for Dave and Dustin, from the moment they asked me to sit down, defeat was already in their eyes. I think they knew they might as well stand out in the street and argue with the wind, that my mind was made up, but they were earnest and well meaning. There was no envy or jealousy. To be honest, there wasn’t much in my life to envy back then. When I graduated from college, I had the tiniest room in our house, not much more than a closet, and I was working at the restaurant and bringing food home so I’d have enough fuel to get me through the days of long workouts. I was coaching and training and managing to remain upbeat through it all. Dave and Dustin were far more comfortable than I was—higher-paying jobs, wealthier families, less pressure to make enough money to get through the week. I honestly admired how together their lives were, especially since I was making it up as I went along. But their passion wasn’t my passion. That was the main reason they were sitting in front of me in the living room giving me their best undertaker faces; they had taken a good look at my experience, and it scared the hell out of them.

  “Look, guys, I appreciate your concern,” I said. “I know you’re my friends and you’ve got my best interests in mind, but I’m not giving this up.”

  They didn’t immediately accept the answer, but they came around. And as soon as they felt that “this fighting thing” made me genuinely happy, they dropped their criticisms and have been nothing but supportive since. In fact, after that conversation, the three of us would sit around and watch video of my fights over and over. Dave and Dustin would just sit there with their eyes bugging out and their jaws hanging open.

  “Dude, I can’t believe you’re doing this shit!” Dave would say. “It blows me away!” I’d overhear them telling their other buddies on the phone, “Urijah fought this big Mexican dude, and he kicked his ass.”

  Dustin and Dave did what they felt was the right thing for their friend, and they didn’t bring it up again. My fights became their guilty pleasure. They continue to attend . . . and they keep having a blast.

  The 15th Law of Power

  Emulate the Successful

  An Ohio paper-mill worker named Donald Ray Pollock, whose main contributions to society were drinking too much and doing too many drugs, decided he wanted to become a writer. He had no formal training as a writer and no means of acquiring that training, so he took a unique approach to finding his own voice.

  As recounted in a profile by the New York Times’ Charles McGrath, “[Pollock] began by retyping the stories of writers he admired—Hemingway, Cheever, Richard Yates. ‘I’d type one and sort of carry it around with me for a week, reading and rereading, and then I’d pitch that one and do another. I probably did that for 18 months. I’m not a real close reader and typing those stories out gave me a chance to see . . . how you make a transition . . . how you do dialogue. You don’t fill the page with blather. I knew that in the back of my head, but it still helped to see it.’ ”

  Imagine that: This man sat down with books by his favorite authors and painstakingly typed their words verbatim as a means of getting closer to the genius that created them. Obviously, there’s no one single way to give life to your passion. Everyone has a different process, but one thing is irrefutable: It starts with initiative. Whether it’s researching the hiring practices of a business you love or typing famous short stories, you need a catalyst in order to begin the process.

  Pollock proved that emulation is not a bad place to start. He let his passion lead and followed it wherever it took him. His rudimentary approach had some drawbacks—he admitted that his early stories read like cheap imitations of the men he admired—but eventually he discovered and developed his own voice. He went back to college and developed a style that blew away his professors first, editors and publishers later. He published two excellent books, Knockemstiff and The Devil All the Time, in his midfifties. Not surprisingly, the critics and the literary world fell
in love with his stories.

  Pollock merged his unique perspective with the technique of his favorite authors and his passion became his life.

  We all need role models. Even the most driven and focused person draws inspiration from the success of others. Passion is a great GPS for life, but you can’t just punch in an address and go flying past all the landmarks on your way to the destination. Over the course of allowing your passion to lead, you need to stop and learn a few lessons from those who have traveled the same path.

  One of the most influential fighters in my early career was Bas Rutten, a Dutch kickboxer, MMA heavyweight. Rutten’s eclectic style of fighting and his use of body shots to put away opponents changed the way a lot of people viewed MMA as a combat sport. He beat just about anybody who was anybody in the UFC in the early days and, no one will disagree, is one of our sport’s true pioneers.

  But Rutten’s greatest impact on my career was his personality and style outside the cage. I remember sitting at home just a year into my fight career and being so excited to get Bas Rutten’s “El Guapo” technique DVD. I popped it in the player and got a little taste of the Bas personality. The menu picture on the screen was Bas in a Speedo, doing his signature jump-in-the-air splits, and a catchy song that he had written and produced was playing. The song told a hilarious story about a phone conversation with a girl. Bas was explaining to the girl, in musical phone conversation, of course, how he had just finished a big fight and that he wasn’t able to have sex for a few weeks before his competitions. As he put it, “It’s the rules, baby!” He then proceeded to try to convince her to come over to his house. The chorus was as follows: “I want to chill . . . (Kick back y’all) I want to relax . . . (Kick back y’all) I want to chill . . . (kick back y’all) and maybe have some sex (kick back ya’ll).” It was super unexpected, but had me laughing hysterically. I had to share the song and the DVD with all my training partners and learned some great techniques from Bas along the way.