Fighter's Mind, A

by Sheridan, Sam

  “So I called a friend of mine, Peter Hoovers, a Dutch guy who lives in Thailand—he knows everybody—and I asked him about it. He laughed and asked me, ‘Have you ever heard of a white guy fighting a Thai in an exhibition match? No such thing, you’re gonna fight the kid.’”

  Mark had actually been slated to fight this same fighter some years earlier. “He was an ex-military guy, had something like four hundred fights. I had nothing to bank on but being totally relaxed.”

  Mark jumped in the back of the truck with his trainer and went to the fight. “Right before the first exchange I knew it was on. You could feel the energy.” It was a real fight, no holding back. But Mark smiles.

  “It was probably my best fight ever. I kept chipping away at him, and in the third round I finished him with a series of head kicks. I was in the worst shape of my life, I was overweight. But some guys are like that. I was a nervous fighter, my business was based on my reputation. For some guys, it’s better if they don’t even know. They’re just training hard and sleeping well, and then you tell ’em: ‘the fight’s today.’ I didn’t have time to think about it, to scenario the fight to death. When a fighter has too much time to think about it, he actually clutters his thoughts.”

  Mark recounts seeing this with the older Thai trainers, something I’d seen as well. “The retired champions, I’d see them drinking and smoking and not training. But they could take fights and stay so relaxed because they had so much experience. I saw one retired champ who was horribly out of shape take a big fight, and by the fifth round he was putting on an old-school clinic—spinning elbows, climbing up on the guy. I could relate to that now. If you got no pressure, nothing to lose, and you’re mentally content, you can fight and not get tired, stay within your parameters.

  “I learned a lot about the mental game from the Thais. I think the biggest thing about what they do is they’re very proud of the art, of their camp. They have the utmost respect for muay Thai. It’s really the one thing they claim as theirs. The only reason Thailand has always been free is that muay Thai has always been around to protect it. When you have something you hold dear, you consider sacred, it’s harder to take it from you. For the kids who fight, it becomes about business much later on, but they always have that base pride to rely on.”

  On the other side of the country, at the Fairtex muay Thai gym in San Francisco, I spoke to an old-school Thai fighter named Jongsanan, the “Wooden Man.” He’d earned that nickname because he took so much damage and never seemed hurt; when opponents kicked him he seemed made of wood. Jongsanan is a decent-sized Thai but still short, with a big round head, battered doughy face, and heavy scars over his eyes. He was smiling, enjoying himself, his mind sharp and his grasp of English good, even though his accent is thick, and he speaks in a soft Thai burble. His real name is Anucha Chaiyasen, “Noom” to his friends, but to me he was Jongsanan. He was a little bored with me, but still happy and pleasant with that natural Thai goodness and warmth that is so refreshing. He had been a two-time Lumpini champion and an ISKA welterweight champion, among other things. He was a Fairtex lifer, brought to San Francisco to help anchor the gym in America. He spoke quickly and laughed all the time at himself.

  “I’m really quiet. I’m not mean or an asshole. I listen to my trainer. That’s it. My trainer tells me one thing, I do one thing. If he tells me two things, I do two things.” He grinned and shook his head. That’s it. In Thailand, that’s the mental game. It’s not complicated.

  “I am slow. In the gym they call me big head, balloon head. Twenty years ago in the camp they call me balloon, at Bang Pli.” Bang Pli Fairtex was the same camp I had spent six months at, back in 2000.

  “My first trainer, Molit, was the big trainer for me. He brought me up and took care of me. When I was at the top it was different. ‘Jongsanan’ becomes my style. ‘Forward, don’t show pain.’

  “It all comes down to my trainer. If you don’t listen to them you out. Because of gambling. They control you, to be wooden man. I don’t want to be wooden man, I want to be a smart guy.” Here he makes the arm gestures of a muay Thai fighter with a shifty, smooth style. “But my trainer control me, and Philip [the owner of the camp] behind me, too. He wants strong fighters, good fighters that are aggressive and strong. Every trainer has a different technique of looking at the body, to teach him how to be a forward fighter, or a technical fighter. Or fast fighter, or heavy punch, or leg kick, it depends on body style. I’m tall and lean, and I have ‘big lung’ bod dee—good stamina. They just see big lung. I can run with the top fighters, when I am young. I follow them in everything.”

  He’s talking about the camp system in Thailand, a whole different universe. The fighters there are essentially chattel, property. They have no options, owned by the camp. If they want to leave and fight elsewhere, the new trainer or camp has to buy their contract. So you do what your corner says, what the boss says. It’s what happens in the third world when you’re poor—you do what you have to do to eat.

  “Sometimes when they try to teach me smart things, I can’t get it. I can only do one thing, keep coming forward. They try and teach me fake here, step back.” He is laughing, short and quick, shaking his head. “I can’t do it. That’s why my trainer teach me the style of knee knee knee, come forward. I have to train very hard for that style, but I am healthy, lucky with that, fighting all the time. I come very fast, and I win first eight fights at Lumpini stadium. Then I lose one, then I win for another seven times or so, and always the same. First three rounds I get beat up, because I start slow. Techniques are not good, but I have good heart and I can take it. And now I am glad to beat them up, after they beat me first. After that punishment. So they call me ‘Wooden Man.’

  “I hate the balloon head nickname, so I don’t say it when the newspaper ask,” he said gleefully. But Jongsanan turns thoughtful about what having a nickname and public identity can do for a fighter.

  “For me it was the same thing as ‘Golden Boy.’” He was talking about Oscar de la Hoya, and Golden Boy Promotions.

  “It was his promotion name, and he has to represent it. It is a real thing for him. He has to be the Golden Boy. Rampage is the same, Quentin Jackson. The nickname and the personality in the ring have to mesh up. Even if you are a nice guy, in the ring you have to mesh with your promotional personality. They call me that way, I have to be that way, that’s how I feel.”

  It goes back to what fighting is all about: honesty and identity. You have to know who you are. There is no dissembling about your character in the ring. There is deception—fighting involves faking one thing and doing another. As Randy Couture said, “No lies get told when you’re in there.” You can’t lie about being in shape, about knowing the techniques, about being faster than him, about being stronger or tougher. The truth will out.

  “You have to listen to the corner. Think of nothing, listen to my trainer and Philip. They control you to be that way, and the Thai fighter has to be like a robot. I fight you eye to eye, I see you. The cornerman, the third eye, he see everything, he see me and you. The corner change the game.”

  The reason for such strict controls over fighters? Jongsanan smiles at the innocence of my question, the naivete.

  “Gambling. Ninety-five percent of fans are there for betting, to make money. The fan can make you fight different way. In the U.S. the fan come to support you, to see your skill, to see a show. Over there it’s for betting, and it makes me upset. If muay Thai fighters in Thailand could get respect like here, it would be so good for the Thai boy. But in Thailand they can’t afford the ticket unless for gambling to make the money back.

  “If you love muay Thai here, you can be a good fighter. Here they respect you, and nobody will beat you up if you lose. You won’t lose your home, your living, like in Thailand. Here they admire you even if you lose. Seventy-five percent of American fighters survive by themselves. They fire you if you aren’t a good corner. Totally different in Thailand. In Thailand you have to do what corner sa
y, you can’t fight anywhere else. If somebody else wants to train you he has to buy your contract out from me.”

  When you watch a muay Thai fight, you become aware of how important composure is. The Thais fight with epic, steely composure, never showing pain or emotion—unless it’s to try and sway the judges. They act with their faces about how they feel the fight is going. It’s almost like soccer players when teams try and draw a foul, or the B-movie acting in the NBA. I asked Jongsanan about it.

  “Use face, it comes to the judge—you kick me hard, but I show it’s okay, maybelai [the ubiquitous Thai word for “never mind”]. The judge say oh, he’s okay. For the judge, for the system, for the crowd, for you, for the gambling guy.”

  “John” Wayne Parr is an Australian muay Thai legend, and he provided more insight into the Thai appreciation for composure. Wayne lived and fought in Thailand from 1996 to 2000, and has since continued his professional muay Thai career. He’s been fighting the best in the world for nine years in Japanese megaevents such as the K-1 Dynamite show. In 1999 he was a rising star, featured in the first kickboxing magazine I ever saw, “on the beach” in Darwin, Australia. I remember the Thai publicity shots of him posing with six-guns, like a cowboy. That same magazine had the advertisement for the Fairtex muay Thai camp, which looked pretty good to me after sailing across the Pacific. He and I discovered each other on Myspace as I was finishing this book, and I asked him about the mental game he’d learned in Thailand.

  “The first lesson I learned is never show any emotion while fighting,” he wrote me from Australia. “And if you want respect from the Thai fans, you never give up until the final bell. I’ve seen some Thai boys fight their heart out, for four and a half rounds, getting a sound beating. Then, for last half of the the last round, they stopped fighting and waited till the clock ran out. When we got back to the camp the boys would cop an ear full from the trainers, till the point where they would start to cry. They would be ordered, even though they were busted up, to run and train the next day—because they didn’t deserve a day off until they learned to fight till the end.”

  He continued, “If you fight with all your heart, take punishment, get cut yet still manage to wipe the blood out of your eye and keep walking forward, the Thais will accept you as a warrior. It might sound strange, but to have the respect of the Thais is just as important as a win, because they have a very high standard. If they give you the thumbs up you’re halfway there to becoming a champion.”

  Wayne told stories of seeing other Westerners come in to Thailand to fight but quail at the first sight of their own blood. Muay Thai utilizes the elbows to attack, and the tip of the elbow can cut like a knife. Many foreigners would fold up their tents when they got cut, but not Wayne.

  “I would rather go out with half my face missing, losing the fight, but still getting a pat on the back from the Thais. They would say, Jai Dee, or good heart. If you can prove yourself in Thailand, then once you come back home fighting other Westerners feels easy; you have already faced the scariest of scary. There is nothing that they can do that the Thais haven’t done. I fought an English guy in 1998, he cut me five times in five rounds, I ended up with fifty-four stitches after the fight. Not once did I think about giving up; I kept walking forward, applying pressure. I lost the fight but even now I have people coming up to me, saying how they love to play that fight in front of their friends who have never seen muay Thai, to show them what being a warrior is all about.”

  Back in Boston, Mark and I talked about Thailand. Years ago, I spent six months training in Thailand, and by the end I felt the disconnect between Thai trainers and Westerners. It goes deeper than just language, although that’s a big part of it. The foreigner coming in has a hard time understanding the system, who’s in charge, what it all means. The Thai trainer can’t easily communicate the more complex ideas of timing, breathing, or composure— and they might not anyway. They train together in the ring but watch each other across a cultural chasm. I thought Mark would probably understand this as well as anyone. He speaks fluent Thai and has spent a good portion of his adult life in Thailand.

  Mark muses aloud. “It was hard for me, figuring out what makes them tick. I watch Kru Yotong raise everybody, and he’s watching to see who wants to be there. When two little kids argue, they get the gloves put on and go fight five rounds in the ring, with all the adults cheering like crazy. I realized what it’s all about—it’s ranking.” Mark’s face lights up with the remembered revelation.

  “When the fighters eat, they eat in order—like a wolf pack. The alpha eats first, the omega eats last. The whole camp is like that. The champs go first, and the little kid who lost, he gets fed last and gets picked on for a few days. The fed stay fed. It’s survival. A lot of those little kids, their parents couldn’t afford them.”

  Mark develops this theme, and he’s got a destination in sight. “Kru Yotong takes them in, they don’t have anything else to fall back on. When you have nothing, and then you have a father figure or mentor, and food and training, you become connected to that person. I do the same thing here. After training we hang out, we eat together, our families know each other, they’ve all been to my house and I’ve been to theirs. Camp means camp—food, shelter, and fire.”

  Mark smiles when he says this, for he’s revealed the secret.

  “That sense of pride that comes from camp, that is really important. There are other factors that are important, too, that are tied to that, like honoring your traditions. Then comes the modern world, which is the business aspect, making money. If my students don’t pay I can’t run this camp. And finally, of course, there’s the primal source in every fighter, gameness. Being cut out to do what you do. But the camp has room for everyone, guys who don’t fight hold pads or find another way to fit in.

  “I keep everyone so close to me, that’s what makes me successful. They’re part of a family. A lot of my students here have grown with me. It becomes a passion and makes them stronger. At the end of a hard training session, I have them all walk around with their hand up, because they’re all winners and they’re all MY winners.”

  He pauses, thinking long and hard.

  “That’s most of it, for a trainer. It’s about building that trust. You don’t marry someone you just met, right? The guys who are around long enough, they trust me because they see what I’m about, for the top guys and the amateurs. A trainer you don’t respect and trust you can’t learn from, so I have to maintain my integrity, you know?”

  I asked Mark to elaborate on his game plans, on all the success he was having in the UFC. How was he going about it?

  “That trust is crucial if you’re going to have success with a game plan in a fight. Of course, the first thing you got to think about is, Can my fighter listen to a game plan? Can he execute? Or will he be too emotional? Emotional fighters are useless to give game plans to. So are amateurs, someone too inexperienced. They can’t hear you, anyway. So with a guy like that, you don’t even tell him what the game plan is. You just train him so that what he’s doing is the game plan and he doesn’t know it.”

  I think it was Cus D’Amato, the legendary boxing trainer, who said, “I get them to where they can’t do it wrong even if they tried,” meaning he would train his fighters to do the right thing until it was instinctual.

  “But if a fighter can listen and stay composed, the first step is understanding the opponent. I don’t watch tape over and over, I watch just enough to know what’s happening. You have to go with your gut reaction, the first time you see the fight. Because the more you watch, the more you can convince yourself of something else. You clutter your mind. When I was a fighter, the more tape I watched, the more I’d be surprised by stuff.” Mark breaks into a surprised voice, playing the confused fighter. “He didn’t look like he had power but he hits hard! I never saw him throw a left lead kick but he’s been doing it all night!” He laughs. “So I watch enough tape to get an understanding, then I shut it down.

  “W
ith MMA these days, everyone’s traveling. So I find out where he’s preparing, who’s in his camp. Is he in Thailand? Or is he at Team Quest? If everyone at whatever camp he’s at has a great single-leg takedown, we’ll work on defending that.

  “Always, there is the individual you’ve got. Like Kenny Florian, he doesn’t do well if you overbuild his confidence. His brother helped me understand that. He relaxes too much. Jorge Rivera is similar, but he’s also nervous, so I keep him relaxed, telling him ‘you’ll kill this guy’ through training so he’ll sleep well and train hard. But then right at the fight I’ll start making him nervous, ‘You better watch out for this guy he’s really tough,’ because Jorge needs that edge.

  “I definitely watch the opponent and his trainer on their way into the cage. How smooth are they operating, how relaxed are they? Are they nervous? Where’s the ice? Where’s the mouth guard? Are they fumbling around? Well, if the captain of the ship is a nervous wreck, there’s a problem on board. And the reverse is important. When I come in, it’s like clockwork, everyone has a job, everything is on schedule. I keep it perfectly organized, like feng shui I know where everything is and everything is right. The fighter gets water the second he thinks of it, he gets his mouth guard the second the referee asks for it. He turns to me, and boom, I slide it in. If a trainer doesn’t know something, or is nervous, it’s the beginning of the end, because it will carry over into the fighter. When you see chaos in the locker room that’s a bad sign.

  “I still go to a lot of amateur muay Thai fights, and for a guy’s first fight I just make sure he knows it’s a sport. There are people here, this is a controlled environment, he’s not gonna kill you with a knife! In fact, when it’s over, you guys are going to be best friends for about a month.” He laughs. “I’ve just seen it so many times. I tell my first timers, ‘You may hate it or you may love it, but you’ll learn something. It’ll be a great experience.’”