Beast

by Doug Merlino

  Nine more to go.

  “You’re all right,” Barzini said. “You got a whole day tomorrow, bud.”

  Bektic toweled off. Barzini helped him dress.

  Before Bektic’s last fight, he had made weight at nine thirty in the morning while still in Omaha and then made the three-hour drive to Kearney for the five P.M. weigh-in. It was too long to be hungry and dehydrated, and Barzini felt it had weakened him in the fight. Much better to cut gradually, hit the target at the last minute, and minimize the time your body was in an extreme state of desiccation.

  Back in his room, Bektic checked out the pay-per-view offerings. He ordered Parental Guidance, a comedy in which Billy Crystal and Bette Midler star as laid-back grandparents who look after their three grandchildren when their Type A mother and father are away. Everyone learns important life lessons. I raised my eyebrows at Bektic. “I like family movies,” he shrugged.

  Bektic picked up a spiral notebook with a photo of a golden retriever nuzzling a cat on its cover and flipped through it as the movie ran.

  In Florida, I’d asked Bektic what he wrote in his notebooks. In response, he gave me one to read.

  It held a compendium of notes on his training—what he’d learned and what he needed to practice—as well as his dreams and aspirations.

  Since I’ve been 18 years have gone by before my eyes. “Time” the most prized possession we all let be misused and tossed around like those meaningless clothes on the ground. Ever since the beginning I’ve had my eyes set on being number 1 in the world but even more as being a UFC champion. All the sacrifice, time, effort, lonely, depression, anxiety, happiness is worth it.

  Having the belt around me would bring a sense of accomplishment, a sense of fulfillment, a sense of “pure” joy. Being the first ATT champion, the first Bosnian champion, first champion in my family.

  It was a cliché for fighters to claim they were going to be champion. There was something different about Bektic, though—more openness, a vulnerability that he rarely hid with bluster. His self-doubt was always apparent, always in duality with his ferocious will to achieve.

  . . .

  The weigh-in took place the next evening in a room at a Dave & Buster’s restaurant in the shopping mall across from the hotel. In the front, a black and red banner for the Resurrection Fighting Alliance hung behind a wood stage a few inches high, on which stood a lectern, a microphone on a stand, and a scale. About a hundred people, friends and family, looked on from rows of chairs.

  One by one, the fighters approached, stripped to their underwear, and had their moment. Emaciated from their cuts, they sported an array of tattoos hinting at spiritual yearnings—Celtic crosses, Greek gods, Japanese characters, Bible verses. Behind them, two ring girls in black boy shorts and red halter tops smiled unwaveringly.

  Bektic stepped onto the scale. His physique, stripped of body fat and water, was skin stretched over muscle.

  “One-forty-five even!” the announcer called.

  Bektic flexed in a bodybuilding pose, a tight-lipped smile playing across his face as he looked to the crowd. His biceps popped from his arms, his thighs bulged, his abdominal muscles delineated as if drawn onto his body with a marker.

  The BELIEVE tattoo above his left pectoral shone in the glare of a halogen light a photographer had set up.

  Bektic’s opponent, Nick Macias, came next. After he had adopted the same pose, the two squared off with each other, their fists raised. They dropped their hands and the ring girls, still smiling, came forward to flank them.

  (Doug Merlino)

  Macias put his arm around the woman standing next to him as if posing with a girlfriend. Bektic ignored the one to his right, scowled, and went back to his fighting stance, leaving the girl standing there awkwardly.

  Barzini sat in a black parka a few feet away and studied Macias. He saw something in the dart of his eyes, his tense smile, the deference when he shook Bektic’s hand. This kid is scared, he thought.

  . . .

  By the next evening, a storm was headed toward Denver. The snow started to fall as Bektic, Kakai, Barzini, and Ricardo Liborio, who had just flown in, pulled up at the suburban arena. Wind gusted across the parking lot as they hurried toward the back entrance.

  They dropped their gear in the locker room and walked into the arena. Dance music blared from the sound system while spotlights zigzagged across rows of empty seats.

  Bektic and Kakai took off their shoes and climbed into the cage; Liborio and Barzini looked on from outside, fingers resting on the fence. The fighters shuffled back and forth, testing the canvas for imperfections.

  Kakai’s career prospects were looking up. Early in 2013, the UFC had told Kakai that it was going to start a new flyweight division at 125 pounds, ten pounds lighter than the current 135-pound bantamweight grouping. If Kakai could make the weight cut, it looked like the UFC would sign him.

  Shortly after, the promotion had come back and told Kakai that the next season of its Ultimate Fighter reality show was going to highlight 135-pound prospects. The show featured fighters living and training together, competing against each other for a UFC contract. He was invited to try out. Instead of cutting to 125, he’d decided to do that—it seemed like a good way to build up his name. The show was to start filming in May.

  Meanwhile, Bektic’s hype kept growing as MMA websites singled out his fights—the one this evening would be broadcast nationally on cable—as must-sees for hard-core fans. He was getting impatient to make the UFC.

  Backstage, Pat Miletich, who was commenting on the fight on the cable broadcast, entered the locker room with a camera crew to interview Bektic.

  Miletich introduced Bektic as the “Balkan Butcher” and asked how he felt going into this fight after getting knocked down and going the distance in his last one. “Did you take your opponent lightly?” he asked.

  Bektic stood with his hands in the pockets of his bright blue sweat suit. “No sir,” Bektic said. “I guess maybe ten seconds of the fifteen minutes I had a misfortune, but for the fourteen minutes and fifty seconds I pretty much dominated the fight. Overall, no, I didn’t take it lightly, I guess it’s just one of those things that needs to happen.”

  “If things go as planned tonight,” Miletich continued, “how many fights do you wanna have before you go to the UFC? How many fights do you think you need?”

  “I’m not sure,” Bektic said. “When the UFC contacts, I’ll be ready.”

  . . .

  Two hours later, Bektic warmed up, grappling with Kakai.

  Liborio poured water into his mouth.

  “Every time you train, you train hard,” he said. “The crowds, the lights, it’s just a show.”

  Bektic nodded.

  The door opened. “You’re on deck. Fight before you is about to get started,” a man said.

  Bektic paced the room, drawing breaths, hopping from foot to foot, walking back and forth across the mat, stopping occasionally to shake out his arms.

  Kakai and Barzini started to pace as well.

  Liborio picked up his mitts and pounded them together in a four-beat rhythm:

  Thunk, thunk-thunk, Thunk.

  All four men—Bektic, Barzini, Kakai, Liborio—were up now, walking in circles around the room.

  “This is what the Vikings used to do, right? When they started rowing?” Liborio said.

  Thunk, thunk-thunk, Thunk.

  “Almost time.”

  Thunk, thunk-thunk, Thunk.

  Bektic rolled his head from side to side.

  “There you go! Mirsad Bektic, champion of the world!”

  Thunk, thunk-thunk, Thunk.

  Bektic jumped high off the mat, his knees rising to his chest.

  “I know how much it cost.”

  Thunk, thunk-thunk, Thunk.

  “You know exactly where you want to go!”

  Bektic threw punches at the air.

  Thunk, thunk-thunk, Thunk.

  “Champion! Mirsad Bektic! Best fi
ghter to ever be!”

  The man returned. They were ready.

  “There you go!” Liborio shouted.

  Bektic sprinted out the door. Barzini and Kakai hustled after him, down the hallway toward the entrance to the arena, where a set of stairs led to the walkway to the cage.

  Bektic waited behind the curtain, bobbing and hopping. He held his gloved hands at his chin, throwing short uppercuts. Kakai, Liborio, and Barzini formed a half-moon around him. “Enjoy this!” Liborio yelled as Bektic disappeared into the light and smoke.

  Bektic’s older brothers, Senad and Suvad, stood on the floor of the arena. They had made the seven-hour drive from Lincoln that morning through a snowstorm.

  In the stands behind them, a small group of local Bosnians, less rowdy than those in Nebraska but still enthusiastic, waved a blue and yellow Bosnian flag.

  Mirso! Mirso! Mirso!

  The fight started. Bektic and Macias squared up and traded jabs.

  Bektic landed an overhand right.

  Macias came back with a right leg kick. Bektic caught it with his left hand. He moved forward, grabbed Macias, lifted him in the air, and smashed him into the canvas.

  He straddled Macias’s left leg and pushed his back against the cage, trapping him. He leaned back, poised above Macias, and punched him in the face with his right hand, his elbow moving rhythmically, forward and back as if it was a piston.

  Macias held up his hands to block the punishment. Blood streamed from a cut above his eye.

  There were twenty-four shots until Macias finally managed to grab Bektic’s wrist, momentarily stopping the assault.

  Bektic contemptuously wrenched it away.

  Thirteen punches followed.

  Macias curled up in a fetal position.

  The referee pushed Bektic off and waved his arms.

  . . .

  Late that evening, well past midnight, Bektic and Barzini sat in the bar in the Mexican restaurant at the Westin. Snow had piled up outside.

  Bektic had been taking advantage of free refills of Diet Cokes. Now, he allowed himself a glass of red wine. Barzini drank a local microbrew. Both men, naturally soft-spoken, leaned close to each other to be heard over the din of background music and the whoops of fellow customers who, fueled by Coronas and tequila, were growing increasingly raucous.

  “After that fight in Kearney, I knew it was going to be good for you, to have three five-minute rounds,” Barzini said. “I knew you were going to grow so much from that last fight, and you did.”

  “I just want to get back to training tomorrow,” Bektic said.

  He wondered if he should visit his family in Nebraska or head straight back to Florida.

  “Take a week off, but don’t take it too easy,” Barzini advised. “You don’t need to hit pads or grapple, but keep lifting and conditioning. Don’t let yourself go.”

  Bektic told Barzini that he’d gotten a text after the fight from a girl back in Florida. He was unsure of how to deal with the attention. “I guess everybody loves a winner,” he said.

  “You’re going to have a lot of managers and people interested in you now, but we’ll just take it slow and weigh our options and see what the next best step for you is,” Barzini said. “You did good in there tonight. I was proud of you.”

  Spasibo

  Jeff Monson waited beside Nevsky Prospekt, Saint Petersburg’s grand avenue, promenade of czars and revolutionaries, in a wet April snowstorm. A few feet away stood a diminutive Russian in a bear suit. He and Monson held the feet of a man who lay on his back on the pavement in a Spider-Man costume.

  A photographer busied himself around them, yelling instructions in Russian and English through the din of traffic. A crowd of onlookers snapped pictures on camera phones.

  “Jeff! Jeff! Can you point there with your left hand?” the photographer asked Monson, motioning to the entrance of the Grizzly Bar, a restaurant thirty feet away. “Like, ‘Let’s go there, bro!’ ”

  Monson and the bear pointed. The photographer bent to arrange Spider-Man’s arms.

  “More up!” the photographer said. He instructed Monson and the bear to drag Spider-Man to the entrance of the restaurant. When they arrived, Spider-Man got up and brushed himself off. The bear pulled off his head and conferred with the photographer.

  Monson walked into the restaurant, one of a chain of Americana-themed diners. Customers sat in red vinyl booths. The waitresses wore red, white, and blue cheerleader outfits. The Beach Boys’ “Kokomo” played over the sound system.

  The walls were hung with Betty Boop posters, a Confederate flag, an aluminum sign with crossed revolvers and the words SMITH & WESSON SPOKEN HERE. Star Wars and X-Men collectibles and busts of Scully and Mulder were arranged in display cases.

  (Doug Merlino)

  Monson watched one of the restaurant’s flat-screen televisions, which played a loop of clips of American television and movies—Home Alone, The Simpsons, Grease, Winnie Cooper in The Wonder Years, and, for some reason, Tango & Cash.

  Interspersed with these were scenes of Monson—giving an interview, shadowboxing, walking to the ring before a fight. He was the public face of the franchise.

  The TVs flashed images from his fight against Aleksander Emelianenko. While they were supposed to be highlights, they included Monson throwing a hook at Emelianenko, missing, and toppling to the mat under his own momentum.

  “Oh, that’s ugly,” Monson groaned.

  Two teenage girls approached. “Excuse me, may we make a photo with you?” one asked. Monson posed with them and they hurried away giggling.

  A minute later a squat man with an excited air came into the restaurant and put his face six inches from Monson’s. “I am Andrei!” he said.

  Using pidgin English and hand gestures, Andrei communicated that he was a massage therapist and would be happy to provide Monson with free service. He handed Monson a business card.

  Monson spoke slowly. “I will call you later this week. Thank you.”

  The photographer was not happy with the circus building around his shoot. “I think someone tweeted that Jeff is here,” he grumbled as he arranged the next scene.

  Spider-Man was to slump at a table as if he was drunk, while the bear posed next to a spread of cards and a pile of gambling chips. Monson was to stand by the table naked, handing his shorts over to the bear, as if he’d lost everything in a poker game.

  Monson gave his iPhone to Dmitry, the Russian tasked with getting him around town. “Get ready to film when I say.”

  Leonard Cohen played as the photographer started to shoot.

  “Rolling, rolling, rolling,” he said.

  Monson, already shirtless, slowly peeled down his shorts.

  “Working, working, working,” the photographer said. “One leg … second leg. Slowly, up, up, up. Legs together.”

  Monson stepped out of the shorts and cupped himself with his left hand. With his right, he held the shorts out to the bear.

  “Steady! Everybody freeze!” the photographer said. The flash fired. For several minutes, he moved around Monson and the actors, directing them to look here and there. People peering in from the street got a full view of Monson’s ass.

  The photographer called for a break. The man in the bear suit removed his head, sat it on the table, and leaned back in his chair, hair plastered down with sweat.

  Monson glanced at Dmitry, who was ready with the iPhone. He walked over to the bear, straddled him, and vigorously humped the startled Russian’s chest as Dmitry recorded the action.

  Monson grabbed his shorts off the floor, pulled them on, and retrieved his iPhone from Dmitry. He watched the video, laughed, and posted it to Twitter. “We have to get them to give us that bear suit for tonight,” he said to me. “Do you know how much fun we could have with that?”

  The photographer had one more scene to shoot—Monson and the bear arm wrestling over a glass of milk. By the time it was over, Monson had spent five hours at the restaurant, posed for dozens of p
hotographs with fans, and never complained.

  The photographer asked Monson to sit next to him in a booth. He set a black satin bag on the table and told Monson that he was one of the men he most admired in the world. He removed a piece of wood on which he had painted a hyper-detailed portrait of Jesus being crucified and presented it to Monson. “Thank you so much,” Monson said, “This is beautiful.”

  Dmitry conspicuously checked his watch. Monson was in no rush. Finally, Dmitry managed to lead him out of the restaurant. They walked several blocks in the frigid weather, Monson still in flip-flops, still getting stopped by pedestrians who wanted photos.

  The next stop was an upscale health club. A woman guided Monson to the locker room, where he changed into his training gear. She then walked him into a large workout studio, where some seventy-five Russians were waiting; each had paid fifty dollars for the grappling seminar. They burst into applause as Monson entered.

  . . .

  It had been five months since Monson had faced Aleksander Emelianenko. The next morning, he’d flown to Krakow for the world grappling championships, where he won the unlimited weight class. For the title match, he outpointed Juan Espino, a six-foot-four, 315-pound Spaniard who was a star in Senegalese wrestling, a wildly popular sport in which Espino, the only European to compete, was known as the “White Lion.”

  It was on to Korea from there, where he faced Dong Gook Kang, a grappler making his MMA debut. Most of the fight remained standing, and Monson landed several hard straights and hooks to Dong’s head, showing that some of Gavoni’s training had stuck. With only a few seconds left in the third round, though, Dong threw a punch and poked a finger into Monson’s left eye.

  Monson won the unanimous decision but finished the fight with blood trailing from the inside corner of his eye. It hurt, but he didn’t think that much about it. He had a fight in Serbia the following week. His plan was to return to Russia before heading down.

  He flew out of Korea to Beijing, where he had a layover. On the two-hour flight, his eye throbbed in pain and his vision went fuzzy.