by Urijah Faber
I headed out onto the street, covered in blood, barefoot, panicked, not knowing where I was going. Most of the stores along the street were closed, but this being a third-world country, the shopkeepers hire people to sit in front of the stores overnight to keep people out and safeguard the merchandise.
I spied a Billabong shop ahead and to my right, and in my exhausted state I created a logical equation in my mind: Billabong . . . America . . . civilization. I jumped into the store, and the guys guarding it were trying to get me out. I’d lost my shirt by this time. I was barefoot. I was wearing board shorts with no underwear. I was covered in blood, and I was sure they were worried about losing their jobs because some crazy American was bleeding all over the merchandise.
I started begging them: “Please, help me, these people are trying to kill me.”
They couldn’t understand me. They didn’t know the dynamic of the situation. They didn’t know if I was chasing someone or if I was the one being chased. They just wanted me out of there.
At this point the guys with the bottles and the brass knuckles ran in. They were with another guy who stood in front of me holding a small hammer, which looked to me like something one of the shoemakers on the street would use. They stood there, furious.
A buzz ran through my body. I might fucking die here.
I thought fast. I pleaded with them.
“Please don’t kill me. Please don’t kill me.”
They had me surrounded. I was trying to sound defeated, to make them believe I’d surrendered. They were mocking me. “One by one.” “One by one.” It had become a taunt. More bodies piled into the shop. There were now five or six of them with me in the dead of night on a dark street in Bali. They were all chanting.
They had no intention of fighting me “one by one,” they weren’t playing by any rules and had already seen what happened to their buddy, the one who started all this in the first place. He was the one who first decided one by one might be a good idea.
The gang members paused in confusion as they figured out what to do. They weren’t finished, but my apparent resignation caused them to rethink their plan. The guy with the shoe hammer, who I identified as the ringleader, was doing a lot of talking and waving. It seemed clear he was going to be the one who took the next step, which they undoubtedly saw as the first step toward finishing me off. He held the hammer up and started walking toward me.
As he got closer, I had to think quickly. I was beyond the point of trying to reason with these guys. I truly believed they were going to kill me for sport. But I couldn’t give up, and I had to think of something that would extricate me from this situation. Something . . . creative.
My decision was like something out of a movie script: I’d continue to pretend I’d given up. The shoe hammer got closer, and I began fake-begging him to leave me alone. “No, no, no,” I said. He got closer, smiling, and I put my hands up on either side of my face as if I were ready to simply take my beating.
His devious little smile vanished. He jumped at me and attempted to swing the hammer. But before he could hit me, I drilled him with an overhand right. I felt him crumple to the floor as I raced out the front door.
It took the other guys a second to respond, but they did—loudly and quickly. Any hope I had for mercy—and I had very little—evaporated in the thick tropical air. I ran, thankful for my training, and heard them running behind me. Their chatter had gone from mocking to angry. I was faced with another decision: If I ran to my right, away from the club, there was darkness—homes, maybe, but definitely less civilization. If I ran left, back toward the club, I would be more likely to find people who might be willing to help.
Of course, running back toward people meant running the risk of being met by more people who wanted me dead.
I was exhausted, barely thinking clearly. Blood was streaming down my face. I was shirtless, barefoot, bloody. It seemed impossible to me at this moment to be more exposed. Or more afraid.
I chose to run left, back toward the club. I had to keep running, but I’d never been so tired. I ran down the street as fast as my legs would allow. As I neared the spot where all my troubles began, I saw a van on the side of the street and a taxi behind it. There was a driver in the taxi, but otherwise it was empty.
I had put close to fifty yards between me and my pursuers, and I was thinking the gap—and this taxi up ahead—is what I needed to survive. All of my positive thinking culminated in this moment.
If I could only get into the passenger seat of the taxi, I would be okay.
I started to run toward the right side of the car, and then I remembered I was in Indonesia. The passenger side was on the left. I took this as a good sign; it showed I was thinking clearly. It might not seem like much, but after having the back of my head bashed in by brass knuckles, the realization lifted my spirits. My sole focus was on that left front door. It was my finish line, my lifeline.
I jumped into the cab and the driver recoiled at the sight of me. He was freaking out. I was covered in blood. He didn’t see the guys running up the street. He had no idea about any of this, but I didn’t have time to explain. “Go go go!” I yelled. He looked at me, eyes as wide as dinner plates. “Money, I have money . . . Go go go!”
Before he could get the car in gear, they attacked it. They were wild, enraged. This had become something more than a pursuit; their honor was at stake. They continued to be outwitted and outfought by a crazy little American, and they were furious.
I scrambled to find the lock for the door. I was fumbling, clawing at the door like a crab in a pot. Their faces were at the window, their teeth flashed, their fists pounded.
I couldn’t maneuver the lock. The door swung open.
It was like they were all trying to get into the car at the same time. I thought I was dead. This was the first time my positive attitude began to waver. There was little room for creativity left. How could I get out of this? I was trapped, like a turtle on its back. They were shoving and angling to get at me. I wasn’t going to give up, but I was down to my final option.
But now the driver became a concern. Where was he? Whose side was he on? I felt a shift in the car and saw the driver get out on his side. This was not good. One of the attackers reached in and started pounding me on the head and pulling me by the hair. There were open wounds on my head, and the hair pulling made the pain very nearly unbearable.
That’s it, I thought. The driver bailed and I’m done. I’m the Rodney King of Indonesia. I’m never getting out of this cab.
Just then, the driver yanked the hair puller away from the car and hopped in. The driver was on my side! He was helping! He leaned outside of the car and yelled at the attackers. He told the onlookers to call for help. This backed them down some. I was now part of a huge public scene, and that worked to my advantage. At this point the crowd of helpers far outnumbered the attackers.
I leaned back, my head nearly in the driver’s lap, and started kicking. My experienced feet were like pistons: too quick for them to grab, too strong for them to overpower, and I was fighting them off. The only question that remained was how much longer I could keep this up. While I was repeatedly kicking—I must have been on my back for twenty or thirty seconds, but it felt like ten minutes—I noticed the other attackers were involved in some kind of commotion outside the car.
Finally, there was no one left to kick. I glanced outside the car and saw another group of people—foreigners, like me—prying my attackers away. Finally, some help. The door slammed closed. The driver started the car and floored it onto the street.
My attackers, or what remained of them, stood in the street behind me waving their weapons and shouting their chatter. I didn’t think the combination of happiness and relief I was feeling was possible. I was nearly crying, and I couldn’t stop thanking the driver. I was bloody, sore, and beyond exhausted, but I was alive.
I told the dr
iver to take me to the hospital. I counted seven open gashes on the top and back of my head. Just as I began to calm down, I noticed a guy following us on a motorcycle. He took one turn with us, then two. There were very few cars on the road.
I had no idea who he was, but I wanted to find out why he was following me. I told the driver to pull over so I could get out and confront him. There was no fear in me at this point and I wanted to make sure I wasn’t being followed. I had no idea if the motorcycle guy was friendly or not, but I wanted him out of my life either way.
“What’s up?”
He was a local who spoke decent English. “Are you okay?” he asked. He wanted to know where I was staying and if he could help. The adrenaline was still rushing inside me, and I didn’t tell him anything. I couldn’t trust anyone.
“Don’t worry about it, I don’t want you following me,” I said, and told the driver to continue.
He took me to a hospital; my hair was thick with dried blood. The first thing they did, given my bloody and battered condition, was make me take a shower to make it easier for them to examine my head. My shorts were soaking wet and bloody, and I wasn’t wearing underwear, so a hospital-issue towel became my only clothing. They thought I had a skull fracture, so they sent me to another hospital for an X-ray. My feet and legs were swollen, cut, and bruised. They sutured seven different spots on my head and put cotton balls over each. The X-ray, thank goodness, was negative.
While I was in the hospital, Virgil and Bobby, the local we had hired to be our tour guide, came to visit me. The guide was furious and said he had connections with the police. For fifty dollars, he told me he would get, as he put it, “justice.” I was forced to go to the police station to file a report, by Bobby, who insisted that we get “justice.” I was still sporting the towel from the hospital as they lined up a bunch of guys and told me to identify my attackers from the group in front of me. I looked at them and had no idea if I’d seen any of them before. They insisted that I just choose one, but really I couldn’t have cared less at this point and wasn’t interested in blind justice.
I sat with a police officer to tell him my story. What followed was one of the strangest scenes of my life. I was exhausted, lying on a table in the police chief’s office, wearing nothing but that hospital towel, talking to a cop who was typing on an old computer. How weird is that? It was ten in the morning and I hadn’t slept at all. I was so tired from the night’s ordeal that I barely wanted to stand up, let alone recount the story. I started out by sitting in a chair, and then I moved to the table. I was accompanied by a local witness who was telling his version of what happened to me. He said he first assumed that I was a crazy person, running around the club bleeding and causing trouble, then realized I was being attacked.
The officer was looking at me kind of funny, but I was too freaking exhausted to even care. When the officer left the room, the witness told me he couldn’t believe I had the nerve to lie on the chief’s table nearly naked. He would look up occasionally and laugh. Just another example of the crazy American, I guess.
Every couple of minutes, the power would inexplicably go out. When it did, I had to start my story over from the beginning. Finally, I asked for a pen and paper to write it all down.
My guide kept telling me, “For fifty bucks my buddy will get these guys.” Nobody could believe I wasn’t interested in their form of justice. “I don’t care if they get these guys,” I said. “I just want to sleep.”
The funny part of the story was my concern about the hospital bill: How was I going to pay? I didn’t have much money with me by this point in the trip. I had no health insurance. I had no idea what they would charge or how they would handle my situation. Would they send a bill to my house in Sacramento? Unlikely.
When the hospital released me, I was gritting my teeth wondering how I was going to pay for my stay. I knew what a night in the emergency room would cost in America. I was probably more nervous at this moment than I’d been at any time during the fight. Then they told me what I owed. It was the equivalent of thirty-five dollars U.S. I nearly laughed with relief. I gave the taxi driver a hundred-dollar bill and thanked him for saving my life. He was so grateful for the money, but not nearly as grateful as I was for the lift.
I was in Bali for two more days, in the house we had rented, recuperating for the flight home. I was supposed to corner Olaf Alfonso in Japan three days after the attack. The fighting organization, called Dream, wouldn’t book me a flight from Indonesia to Japan, so I flew from Indonesia to Sacramento and spent twelve hours on the ground before flying another fifteen hours to Japan, in order to keep my word to my buddy Olaf Alfonso. I wore a hat over the six cotton swabs that were threaded to my head. I’m sure I was quite a sight.
Would I do it all over again given the option? No. Not a chance. My escape from the murderous thugs in Bali makes for a good story, but I wouldn’t do it over again on a bet. I learned many lessons from that episode, none more important than this: Sometimes, the bigger man is the one who walks away.
There’s a temptation to think you’re invincible when you’re a successful twenty-five-year-old fighter with a nice buzz going. I gave in to that temptation, and it was a huge mistake. I took the challenge based on principle. You can’t pick on me. That’s all it was: false machismo. I failed to take into consideration that not everybody fights by the same rules. And not everybody values life in the same way.
Context is everything. In the aftermath of this experience, I learned a lot about the people I was dealing with—their situation and their motivation. I visited Indonesia during a time when the economy was in bad shape. For the most part, the people were extremely friendly and welcoming to us, but there were times when their desperation showed. Many of them sat on the streets attempting to sell jewelry or other trinkets, and occasionally they would flash anger when they couldn’t close a sale.
Young men in Bali—like my attackers—had precious few options in these tough economic times. I later learned that one of those options was to serve as “escorts” for female tourists. These guys were good-looking locals, and they would hang around bars and restaurants showering women—most from Australia or Europe—with attention. The women, in turn, would wine and dine these young guys and, if things went well, pay them for additional attention. I have no reason to think that the European girls with whom I was dancing knew anything about this, but it’s possible the Balinese men thought I was standing in the way of their finding out.
So I unknowingly violated several local customs. For a group that is downtrodden and already working for peanuts, it’s humiliating to have one of your own beat up by someone, an American, who was already viewed as a guy who was “stealing” potential customers in the bar. Their subsequent actions validated one of life’s basic truths: The less you have to lose, the more willing you are to lose it.
So, no, I wouldn’t do it again. I would do anything to avoid that situation. I would allow my pride to be hurt, and I would have let the instigator stare and scowl. And I would have been content to receive my satisfaction by looking at the guy and thinking to myself, I know I can kick your ass, but I’m not going to do it.
The 30th Law of Power
The Power of Friendship
Here’s a quick story that comes from a place about as far removed from the MMA scene as you can imagine, but illustrates how fun together with friendship can be a great ingredient for success.
Leonard B. Stern and his friend, Roger Price, were screenwriters in the early days of television. One day they were working on a script for The Honeymooners when Stern found himself at a loss for words. He was stuck, and so he asked his friend Price to give him an adjective.
Price gave him his choice of two: clumsy or naked.
Both of those words were hilarious to Stern, because he was searching for the right word to describe Jackie Gleason/Ralph Kramden’s nose. Price, of course, had no idea what Stern was at
tempting to describe, and when he found out, he laughed, too.
It dawned on them immediately: They could make some money on this. Imagine if you could give someone the framework of a story and they could ask their friends or family members to fill in words based solely on parts of speech. It could be a lot of fun for those who played, and highly profitable for the two friends who invented it.
Somewhere along the line, one of them came up with the name “Mad Libs.” Stern and Price figured this was an easy sell, but they quickly found that no publisher would touch it. They went from publishing house to publishing house, and each time they heard the same things.
It’s childish.
It will never sell.
Why would someone buy it when they could just make it up themselves?
It would have been very easy for Stern and Price to abandon the idea. After all, how could so many people in the publishing industry be wrong? They wanted to make money, too, and they’d publish the book if they believed it had merit, right?
Stern and Price didn’t give up. They didn’t say, “Oh, well, we gave it a shot,” before going back to their day jobs. Instead, they persisted. When it became clear that they weren’t going to be handed an advance and a publishing contract, they didn’t discard their passion and assume that other people knew more than they did.
Instead, they published it themselves. The first run of fourteen thousand copies had to be warehoused somewhere, so Stern decided the best available space was in the dining room of his Manhattan apartment. Part of the lore of the early days of Mad Libs is that Stern had to eat standing up for several months before they sold enough books to clear some space.
The result, of course, is a ridiculous success story. Stern and Price knew far more than the publishers. They sold more than 150 million copies of the various editions of Mad Libs and the word game has also become a huge seller as an app for the iPhone and iPad.