Let’s Get It On!
Page 4
One day, I got on my motorcycle and just started riding. To where, I couldn’t really tell you. Both figuratively and literally, my life suddenly lacked any sense of direction. We are all creatures of habit, and sports had always been mine. Without sports, what was I supposed to do?
On my way back home, I stopped at a random gym on East Chapman Avenue in the city of Orange. Samson’s Gym was a no-frills operation, where only serious lifters needed apply. In the corner, the gym had what they called the Power Pit, littered with racks of black weights, dumbbells, plates, and benches.
I worked out at Samson’s Gym for the next few months and caught the eye of the owner, Jim Dena, a former Anaheim police officer who would often come onto the floor and lift with me. Jim turned me on to bodybuilding and eventually gave me a job at the gym.
A group of powerlifters also worked out at Samson’s Gym, and one day they called me over to them. “You shouldn’t do that pretty posing lifting,” one of them told me. “It’s always better to be stronger than you look than to look stronger than you are.”
Turns out, I wasn’t getting advice from your typical muscled meatheads. These were some of the greatest powerlifters of the time. Terry Shaw had been a world’s record holder in the dead lift, and Terry McCormick was the world’s record holder in the dead lift (848 pounds), while Marv Phillips, also a police officer, held twenty world records and was called the King of the Squat.
So I dropped my weights and migrated to their side of the Power Pit to do some powerlifting. You know those lifting competitions you see on TV, where a constipated-looking guy in a uni-tard and tube socks squats, grunts, and huffs and puffs to stand with a massive weight bar on his shoulders? That’s powerlifting. It’s pure strength lifting and differs from bodybuilding, where you build and tone specific muscles to get an aesthetically appealing appearance.
In powerlifting, there are three lifts: squats, dead lift, and bench press. There is no powerlifting in the Olympics, but there is Olympic lifting with maneuvers like the clean and jerk and the snatch, which require speed, agility, and of course strength. However, Olympic lifters’ weights are light compared to the ones professional powerlifters use.
When I started lifting with the pros, it was a rush to feel myself getting stronger. I dedicated so much of my time to it that they decided I should try a competition. At my first show, down in Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corp Recruit Depot in San Diego, I took third place.
After I got a taste, I didn’t want to stop. My lift numbers kept going up, and I started entering competitions every couple of months. But my body could go only so far on its own. It was time to take the next step, my teachers told me, and if I was serious about lifting and keeping up, there was something else I had to do.
This is when I started taking steroids, which at the time weren’t illegal or frowned on. In these circles, it was just a part of the program. The pros gave me the name of a doctor who gave me a prescription. Always careful to follow his cycle instructions, I took them for about two years.
I won’t lie. Back then, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. And you could certainly feel and see a difference. In steady increments, my squat increased from 535 to 802 pounds, my bench press from 320 to 455, and my dead lift from 505 to 802. You couldn’t argue with those types of gains.
I guess if steroids had been illegal back then, I would have thought twice about taking them, but they wouldn’t become a political hot potato for another five years, when Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson ran against Carl Lewis at the 1988 Olympics and won, then tested positive for Stanozolol. I was off them long before then.
As an MMA referee years later, I could usually tell which fighters were on steroids. You’d be surprised to know how many fighters were taking steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. It’s illegal, and I don’t think it’s ever right to break the rules, but I understand why fighters do it. Yes, it’s cheating, but sometimes it’s cheating for a paycheck to feed their families. Sometimes it’s to work through or prevent injuries. I’m not saying all this to condone steroid use. I don’t. The bottom line is that it’s illegal and shouldn’t be done, but I’m smart enough to know guys still do it, cycle off, and never get caught.
I won’t say steroids are addicting physically, but I think they can be psychologically. People start to see results and want more. Human beings are that way. We think if two will do, then four is better, eight is even better, and so on. People can start to abuse, and I think that’s where problems arise.
The one issue I had with steroids was ‘roid rage. I didn’t get mad easier, but if I was going to get mad, I’d get mad. And once I did, I couldn’t let things go. I wanted to hurt whoever had done me wrong.
Dead-lifting 730 pounds at a competition in Pomona, California
If the image of an albino Incredible Hulk comes into your head, you’re on the right track. I was 300 pounds strong. I was winning a lot of local tournaments and was getting ready to go to the Junior Nationals.
But there was one small problem. Powerlifting would never pay the bills no matter how much I lifted, and someone was about to enter my life who’d cause me to reassess my priorities.
My first picture ever with my squeeze, Elaine
ELAINE
To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.
—Mark Twain
Some men promise their women riches and a life of luxury. Others—mostly the poor ones—promise the sun, moon, and stars. I bribed my wife to marry me with a five-gallon tub of peppermint ice cream.
Romantic, I know, but it’s a true story. I swear. In my defense, have you seen a five-gallon tub of ice cream?
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. I should probably tell you first how I met Elaine, the woman I’ve been married to for twenty-seven years now, because she plays an intricate role in my story.
Die-hard UFC fans might have noticed the beautiful blonde sitting cageside at virtually every event I’ve ever refereed. Elaine has been with me from the start, before I became a police officer or a world-traveling referee or anything else of any substance. She is the one person who truly knows me. She’s seen the good and bad in me and has stuck with me through all of life’s ups and downs, even when we didn’t have the money to buy food. She’s stood with me through it all, and she will forever be the love of my life.
I met Elaine by chance. While I was working at Samson’s Gym, a coworker named Mark helped me clean and organize at night to get the gym ready for the next day. One evening, he confided in me that he really liked this girl who worked across the street at Del Taco, but he was having trouble getting up the courage to speak to her.
“Dude, you can sit here and look stupid, or grow a pair and go talk to her,” I told him. “She’s no better than you.”
Each night at the gym, I took my best stab at being Mark’s relationship coach. At one time I’d been just like him, shy and afraid to talk to girls I liked. It had finally dawned on me that if I was waiting for the girls to come flocking to me for my looks, I’d be waiting a long time, so I’d quickly learned that holding a conversation and scoring some laughs went a long way with the girls.
After I’d done my best to get Mark feeling confident enough to go ask this girl out, he finally found his balls and made his way across the street to sweep his damsel’s feet right off that fast-food joint’s floor.
A few minutes later, he walked back.
“How’d it go?” I asked.
“It was good. We talked,” Mark said, busying himself at the gym counter, “but she likes you.”
“She likes me? She doesn’t even know me.”
“Yeah, she says she saw you run across the street and thinks you run good.”
Run good? I tried to think of all the times I’d sprinted across the street to Del Taco. I’d gone over a few times to get their chicken taco salad, but of all the things to notice, my swagger wasn’t one of them.
Mark watched me contemplate the si
tuation. “Do you want me to go tell her anything?” he finally asked, resigning to his new role in the matter.
“Yeah, tell her I like the way she walks,” I said. I was being a complete smart-ass, but I couldn’t help myself.
I think Mark got the picture pretty quickly. He never talked about Elaine again.
If you ask Elaine, she’ll tell you I started going over to see her, but she actually made her way to the gym more, even if she won’t admit it.
It was attraction at first sight. Elaine reminded me of Princess Diana, except she was far cuter with her short, blonde bob to complement her tall, thin body. She lied and told me she was eighteen years old. I was nineteen at the time, and it didn’t take me long to figure out she was really sixteen. For our first date, I took her to dinner and a walk in the sand in Newport Beach.
Elaine was nice and sweet, but I actually broke up with her after two months. One night, I was supposed to pick her up for a date and just didn’t show. I stopped calling. I know it was wrong and cowardly, but it just seemed like the easiest way.
Generally speaking, at times I wasn’t a good boyfriend for any girl. I’d treat them fine while we were going out, but there would come a time when I’d get bored and stop calling. I would basically disappear. Right after I turned twenty, I did it to Elaine.
Imagine my surprise when Elaine walked into Samson’s Gym about four months later. She’d thought I’d left the gym because I’d traded in my car, a 1966 Ford Econoline surfer van with a 302 V-8 engine and jacked-up Cragar rims, for a black Pontiac Trans Am. When she didn’t see the van parked outside the gym, she assumed I’d moved away.
When she ran into one of my gym buddies, though, he told her I was still around, so she decided to pay me a visit. Shockingly, she wasn’t all that mad. We talked a bit and ended up going on another date. Elaine was tenacious, I’ll give her that.
When did I know Elaine was the one? It was when she played the theme to the film Ice Castles, “Through the Eyes of Love.” I know it sounds crazy, but she played the piano so beautifully and looked so pretty in that moment that I told myself, I’d better not screw this up again.
Elaine proved to be my match in every way. In the past, I’d always gotten tired of being around girls, but after that I never got tired of Elaine. Okay, I’ll admit I did get tired of talking to her on the phone—the girl could go on for hours—but our time together was fun.
Elaine became my best friend. She took a great interest in me and everything I was into, like my lifting, motorcycles, and suped-up cars. She never tried to change me but allowed me to be who I was, for better or worse.
I’ll admit that couldn’t have been an easy thing for her to do sometimes. Did I mention I have a temper and a stubborn streak? But Elaine was always brave enough to tell me when I was acting crazy or getting out of control. This is not a feat for the fainthearted.
Elaine’s and my unique relationship dynamic was clear the day we played Zimm-Zamm, an inane game involving paddles and a tennis-sized ball attached to a pole with a cord. It’s like tetherball, except one player is trying to get the cord wrapped around the top of the pole while the other is trying to hit it to the bottom.
After playing a couple games, Elaine sat down to take a break, while I kept hitting the ball.
Elaine got annoyed. “Stop hitting it so hard,” she said. “You’re going to hit me.”
Now, I was standing there with a ball on a cord attached to a stake pounded into the ground. There was no chance of that ball going anywhere outside of the arc the cord allowed it to travel.
“Elaine, it’s physically impossible for me to hit you with the ball,” I said with complete certainty. “You’re sitting ten feet away.”
But she insisted I was hitting it too hard.
One of us was wrong, and it wasn’t going to be me. I’d prove it. I tossed the ball up and swung the paddle like I was Pete Sampras at the US Open. Sure enough, I knocked the ball right off the cord and hit Elaine in the throat. A direct hit.
She staggered back, eyes big as saucers, and started gasping for air.
“I’m so sorry!” I told her. I couldn’t say it enough.
When she could finally speak, all she said was, “You did that on purpose.”
I’m not sure I’ve ever fully convinced her I didn’t.
To this day, when my stubbornness clouds my judgment and I think it’s no way but my way, my wife has to utter only two syllables: “Zimm-Zamm.”
Elaine and I became inseparable. We went to parties and the movies together, I took her to her junior and senior proms, and I got to know her family.
Elaine’s mother’s side of the family had come from money. Elaine’s grandfather had run Farmers Insurance, a nationwide operation with millions of customers. I wouldn’t say Elaine’s family was rich, but she lived in a middle-class neighborhood and got most everything she wanted.
Elaine’s mom, Lynn, was always working. She was a computer wiz at a time when one computer system would fill an entire room. Lynn was a little savant who could write super complex computer programs, but nobody knew how she did it.
Elaine’s father, Ted, was a smart man and had graduated from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. He’d even worked on the rockets that allowed the Lunar Excursion Module to land on the moon, but from the day I met him, Ted never had a job, and I never figured out why.
I usually have a hard time respecting someone who doesn’t work, but I always seemed to get along with Ted. I also would not have normally associated with someone like him. Not only was he an intellectual, but he belonged to clubs that had table tennis and pellet pistol shooting and was always trying to figure out what activities he could beat me in. These clubs definitely weren’t the types of places you’d find me in on my own, but it made him happy, so I went along.
I always thought Ted should have been a politician. The man loves to talk and meet people. If it’s a homeless guy on the street, Ted will strike up a conversation like that guy’s the most interesting person in the world.
Ted’s gift for the gab got us all into some sticky situations, and sometimes I had to jump in and get us out of them. One time, Elaine and I went on vacation with Ted and Lynn to Cabo San Lucas. Ted struck up a conversation with a little Norwegian man sitting at a nearby table during breakfast, and before we knew it, we were all on a boat with this perfect stranger heading off for a day of diving.
The boat driver dropped us off on a shore about twenty-five feet long and ten feet deep. While the Norwegian and Ted prepped the diving equipment, Elaine and I swam. Then I noticed a boat hauling ass in our direction. Once it got close enough, I could see the Federales symbol on its side. I left Elaine in the water and started swimming for shore.
It was as if we were in a scene of a Chuck Norris movie. Two of the four uniformed men, one of them toting an AR15, jumped out of the boat, grabbed the Norwegian guy, and proceeded to kick the shit out of him. Ted started yelling at me to help the guy, but I glanced at the officer holding the AR15, then at Ted as if to say, “Are you fucking kidding me?” then back at the Federales, who dragged the Norwegian man onto their boat and split his chin on the rail.
It turns out our friendly tour guide had been warned numerous times not to poach business from the local dive shops.
Diplomat Ted tried to tell the Federales they didn’t need to use so much force on our Norwegian guide, but I told him to can it and tried instead to negotiate our trip back to shore. The head Federale said another boat would be by shortly to pick us up, revved his engine, and sped away with his men just as quickly as he’d arrived.
There we were on a shore that was about to go bye-bye with the tide coming in.
Minutes, then hours passed with nary a boat in sight. Ted kept talking, trying to minimize his involvement in marooning us in the middle of Cabo San Lucas Bay.
Meanwhile, it was obvious to me that we’d soon be climbing the rocks. I said good-bye to Elaine, put on some fins, dove into th
e water, and started swimming in the direction of the harbor. About an hour of swimming later, I made it to the marina.
By the time I returned to Marooned Island on a rented boat, Elaine and her family were huddled on the rocks like a pack of pelicans. Ted tried to sputter out his reasons why he shouldn’t be blamed for all this, but the last thing I remember was telling him to just shut up and sit down.
My fishing improved over the years: a dorado (mahi-mahi) I caught in Mexico
I know everybody has crazy stories about their in-laws, and I have a ton I could tell you about Ted that still make me chuckle. Unfortunately, Elaine never really got along with her dad, so I felt like I was always trapped between them trying to keep the peace. Based on my own experiences, especially my own relationship with my dad, I valued family greatly and always felt she should try to work things out with her own dad.
I figured he loved her and Elaine just didn’t understand him. I always encouraged her to talk to him, but it would take me years to understand her point of view. I learned later that just because someone is family doesn’t mean you have to love them, like them, or even put up with them. Some relationships work, and some don’t.
Whoever came up with that “for better or for worse” phrase was a freaking genius. When Elaine met me, I was living on the edge. Some days I think back and wonder why she wasn’t scared off altogether. I guess I was lucky she was into the rebellious type, because I had plenty of that to go around.
I was a big, immature twenty-year-old powerlifter who thought he could handle just about anyone. I know now there were plenty of people who could’ve handed me my ass, but back then I was a six-feet-four, 300-pound guy who thought he was invincible.