Beast
Page 19
(Doug Merlino)
We rode back into Saint Petersburg in a small car. It was after midnight. Nevsky Prospekt, now empty, glowed yellow from the streetlights. On the right, we passed a bus shelter that displayed Monson’s and Ishii’s faces staring into the night.
At the hotel, Monson buttonholed M-1’s matchmaker in the lobby.
“I need another fight soon,” Monson told him.
The matchmaker told Monson he would try to get him on a card in six weeks.
Monson relaxed a little bit. “I’m not saying I need an easy fight,” he said, “but I need to get a win as soon as possible.”
I Finish
Mirsad Bektic leaned forward on the couch in his living room across from Will Lenzner, a sports psychologist. Bektic held a few sheets of paper in his hand, a script he’d been working on with Lenzner. He read out loud:
Today is the day I’ve been working so hard for, and mentally as I lie there, I know I’ve also already been here.
Lenzner, in his late thirties, played Division III football in college. After graduation, he’d started to train in MMA while living in Los Angeles and fought several times. He’d loved the sense of clarity and focus he got from training and fighting, how it zeroed him in on the moment, and the way it increased his confidence. When he began to have problems with his back, though, he’d decided graduate school might be a wiser course than professional cage fighting.
His primary job was working with tennis players at the prestigious IMG Academy across the state on the Gulf Coast, but he’d missed combat sports. When he approached Ricardo Liborio about working at American Top Team a few days a month, the coach was receptive. He’d taken Lenzner around the gym and personally introduced him to fighters, putting his imprimatur on the psychologist.
I close my eyes in peace for a while. It’s time to wake my body up a little and start going over combos I’m going to use.
The two house dogs, Taz and Thor, who were locked up together in a kennel, howled and mewled.
“Shhhh! Shut up!” Bektic yelled.
Lenzner preferred working with fighters. He found that tennis players at the academy often had an air of entitlement; they expected other people to do things for them. Many had their parents trailing them, carrying their gear, picking them up and dusting them off when they fell. Fighters, more often working-class, he felt had a better work ethic. They had no reason to think life would be anything but hard.
But while most tennis players didn’t have a problem talking to a sports psychologist—it was something they expected as part of training—Lenzner found that a lot of the fighters at ATT said hello, maybe chatted a little, and then did everything in their power to avoid him. As one told me, “I punch people in the face. Why do I need to talk with someone about my mom and dad?”
It was a common issue in the field, which was why there was an effort to rebrand sports psychology as “mental toughness training” or “mental conditioning.” Lenzner tried to work around it by telling the fighters he was not there to do clinical work like what they saw with shrinks on television, but to help them with things such as managing their time, visualization, and working toward goals.
Bektic was very sensitive about gaining and keeping the approval of figures such as Liborio; he had a nagging fear that if he lost in the cage all the love and care he’d earned outside of it would go away. He wasn’t, however, concerned if other fighters at the gym thought he was mentally weak for talking to a shrink. “I’d eat a plate of dog shit,” he said, “if I thought it would help me get better.”
As I wake from my meditations/nap I feel energetic and spirited. I get up and shake my body. I feel a sense of hurriedness but I keep myself and my muscles at ease. I grab my clothes and change, I’m zeroed in on the moment, in the zone.
“Beautiful,” Lenzner said. “How did that feel just saying it like that?”
“Natural, I guess,” Bektic told him. “It’s like when I wrote it a couple days ago.”
Bektic had a fight coming up in a week and a half, his first since demolishing Nick Macias in Denver. The call he’d been waiting for from the UFC had not come. Instead, he was traveling back to Nebraska, this time to fight in a local promotion in Omaha.
Lenzner was working with Bektic to script the day of the fight with the goal that Bektic would put himself in the optimal state of mind for the bout. The idea was that there would be no surprises, that Bektic would remain on top of his thoughts and mentally ramp up until he exploded the moment the bell rang.
I see the director come back and say we’re up and my mind right away gears up, it’s go time. At that moment “the now” is the only thing that truly matters. It’s as if everything in the world stops for this brief moment. As I’m walking out I’m light on my toes jumping around feeling my body’s reaction time and everything is just right.
Lenzner felt that the majority of fighters said they wanted to be the best but were content to settle with being good. They were happy to get near the top but then found ways to self-sabotage. It was easier to give yourself an out and then think, “If only things had been a little different, I could have been champion” rather than, “I tried my hardest, but I wasn’t good enough.” Bektic, he thought, was different.
Once my song starts playing I jump on the stairs and see the cage and camera in front of me, but I see the crowd and hear the crowd as soon as my favorite part of the song comes up, I sing along and start walking down the runway towards the cage.
Bektic was constantly reminded of the perilous nature of MMA careers, most immediately in his closest friend at the gym, Sirwan Kakai, who had slid back down the sand hill from being on the verge of signing to the UFC.
At his tryout in Las Vegas for The Ultimate Fighter, Kakai had been leveled with a punch in the first thirty seconds. He was badly shaken, but hung on through the round, and even came back to win the second. By the third, however, he was exhausted. He lost on decision, which meant he’d failed to get on the show. The chance to join the UFC’s new flyweight division was also gone.
Several months later, in September 2013, Kakai fought in Japan. He and Bektic spent the week before the fight wandering around Tokyo. Liborio, who had planned on cornering Kakai, had to divert to Brazil when his mom fell ill. Bektic had to fill in. Kakai felt unfocused and fought a lackluster bout, losing on decision.
It was a tremendous setback. He had returned to Sweden, where he was living on a friend’s couch. He had decided to take a break from MMA and was lifting weights and thinking about his life, he’d told Bektic when they spoke over Skype.
Bektic searched for explanations for Kakai’s reversal of fortune, mainly to find a way to inoculate himself against a similar fate. Kakai had been taking days off when his body was rundown; he felt that earlier in his career he had overtrained and worn himself out. Bektic now determined to keep training no matter what.
As soon as I step into the cage, I run around twice and back to my corner, focused at what’s in front of me but aware of the cage surroundings. As my opponent’s coming I hear the crowd cheering for him and booing. I hear it but I re-direct my mind, I focus on my breathing deep breaths out of my stomach.
Taz and Thor continued to howl in their cage. Lenzner let them out. Taz, a large bulldog, charged Bektic, his claws clattering on the wood floor.
“Hey!” Bektic yelled, grabbing the dog by the collar and settling it to the floor.
Bektic and Kakai had both lived the lifestyle of MMA monks—no money, no girlfriends, their lives given over to training. Both knew it was unsustainable in the long run—the older they got, the more they would desire the comforts other people enjoyed.
Poised in my corner prepared to unleash, the ref checks with me and I’m quietly exploding inside. I love this feeling, giving myself permission to unload the countless hours of elite training inside me and allow my body to perform above the rest. This zone I’ve created for myself is my oasis, it’s where I thrive, excel and dominate.
S
everal months earlier, while at the beach, Bektic had met a woman. They’d started dating and had become serious. Now he was dealing with new challenges—feelings of jealousy, trying to meet her emotional needs, and his own need to keep enough of his time free for training; there were days when he would have preferred just to hang out with his girlfriend. When they talked about a possible future together, she expressed concern that he might get hurt.
He moved on to the final paragraph of his script:
My strikes explode with lightning speed leaving my opponent dizzied and looking for a way out. This is my freedom, my happiness. Here I remove my conscious self and give way to my elite unconscious mind-body, where everything I do happens free of thought. Here I excel above the rest. Here nothing else matters but me finishing. What do I do? I finish.
. . .
Ten days later, Bektic circled the cage in front of five thousand people at Ralston Arena in Omaha.
His opponent, Joe Pearson, waited in his corner. Pearson was thirty-five years old; he had first fought in 2002, when Bektic was eleven. He had compiled a record of 43 wins, 18 losses, and one draw.
Bektic closed his eyes and breathed deep, his ribcage jutting out. When the announcer called his name, he stepped forward and raised his hands to a roar from the Bosnian-flag-waving section of the arena.
Pearson and Bektic circled each other for the first forty seconds: One of the goals Bektic had worked on with Lenzner was to break his habit of bull-rushing at the start of every fight. When Bektic finally moved in, he landed a right straight into Pearson’s ear.
Pearson jumped up and wrapped his legs around Bektic’s waist—he appeared to be going for a triangle choke, his signature move.
It was a bad idea. He ended up cradled in Bektic’s arms. Bektic hesitated a moment and then slammed Pearson down on his back. He stood over him and pounded him in the face with his right hand.
Pearson’s legs remained around Bektic’s waist. Bektic lifted him back off the canvas, carried him to the fence, and threw him down again.
Pearson was trapped. Bektic loomed above him, raining punches and elbows into his face.
A minute and a half into the fight, the referee pulled Bektic away.
Bektic sauntered back across the cage, his arms above his head. Behind him, Pearson sat up and shook his head in wonder. A cut man rushed in to wipe up the blood running down his face.
The chants of the Bosnians—Mirso! Mirso! Mirso!—reverberated through the arena.
Later that evening, Bektic went to a steakhouse/nightclub to celebrate. An enormous fiberglass cow stood on the roof. Inside, a cover band played Pink to a dance floor of heavily intoxicated revelers.
Bektic bought a round of Patrón shots and was soon surrounded by well-wishers, all of whom wanted to get a picture with him to post to Facebook: So proud of this guy! Future UFC champion!
I stood to the side with Will Lenzner and Mike Brown, who had cornered Bektic. It might have been the tequila, but Bektic was looser than usual. He smiled and made fists for the camera phones. He was becoming someone people desired to be around.
You Are Playing in My World
Late one afternoon in October 2013, I met Daniel Straus at the apartment of Rachel Lipson. They had decided to get serious. She had moved down from Tampa and found a job teaching at an elementary school.
He sat on the couch in front of the large-screen TV, a half-eaten Domino’s pepperoni pizza and an order of chicken wings on the coffee table.
His title fight with Pat Curran was approaching, and I’d come over to talk about his preparations. It was clear as soon as I arrived that something was bothering him.
He opened his laptop to show me a promotional video Bellator had sent a few hours earlier and asked him to share via social media.
“Now you tell me what’s wrong with this,” he said.
The thirty-second spot for Bellator’s upcoming event focused on the headline fight of former UFC stars Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and Tito Ortiz, both past their prime but still big draws. Next, it highlighted the fight between Eddie Alvarez and Michael Chandler for the promotion’s lightweight championship. “Titles on the line for King Mo and Pat Curran,” the announcer said at the end as photos of each fighter flashed by. There was no mention of Straus.
“This is what you want me to hype up?” he erupted. “That makes me mad, you know what I mean? Like don’t fucking do that shit to me, I don’t care who you might think I am, or who you don’t think I am. I’m not just some fucking guy that you’re going to make money off of.
“That makes my fucking blood boil, that’s what makes me go in there and win, you get what I’m saying? How do you fucking come to a guy and be like, ‘Hey, I want you to promote this shit.’ ‘Well, what’s in it for me?’ ‘Nothing. But I need you to promote this shit.’ Fuck you, I’m not promoting a goddamn thing.
“I played your guys’ game, and this is where it got me to. Still being disrespected, still being overlooked, and still being the underdog, so fuck you, I’m not going to do that shit no more.”
Straus understood it revealed an underlying truth about how his bosses viewed him—he was a top-level fighter, one win away from the Bellator featherweight title, but for some reason one they had little interest in promoting. If he lost, they would happily pile him on the trash heap.
He’d been seething over his terrible year: the broken hand, the arrest and the ensuing embarrassment, the legal worries, the contract dispute with Bjorn Rebney, not fighting for a year, being dead broke. As the fight with Curran drew near, he seemed to be summoning all the slights that had ever come his way, tasting them again, and stoking himself further.
“I can’t wait to win because fucking Bjorn, he doesn’t like me, I know he doesn’t like me, but motherfucker you have no choice but to put that fucking belt around my waist,” he said. “I’m going to look at him in his eyes, like, ‘Yes, you don’t want to do this right now but you have to, you are playing in my world.’
“My daughter’s going to be out there, like really, with her being there this seals the deal for me. There’s no way I’m about to lose in front of her, there’s no way I’m about to lose in front of my friends. It’s just in here, you know”—he pounded his chest—“it’s so deep in here. Inside my heart, man, there’s nothing stopping me from winning this fight, I don’t know how, I don’t know when, whatever, there’s nothing stopping me from winning this motherfucking fight.”
. . .
A few weeks later, Straus led his entourage out of the Westin Hotel in Long Beach, California. It was a balmy Friday evening. Straus, who had made weight earlier in the day, made sure to find time to chat with each member of the group.
Here again were Junior and Tracy, the couple from Chicago.
Erin, his former sister-in-law, and her partner, Jay, who had flown out from Cincinnati.
Martie D’Andrea and Dan Ramstetter, another friend from Vision MMA.
His girlfriend, Rachel.
His one-year-old daughter, Mikayla, and her mother, Sam.
Straus loved that this wasn’t the typical group of strutting dudes in tight T-shirts, but white, black, and Hispanic; male and female; young and middle-aged. In the days before his fight, they wandered in and out of his hotel room at the Westin as if it was their own, went with him on trips to the grocery store, tagged along on walks around Long Beach, followed him to the weigh-in, shouting and clapping when his name was called. Straus, in turn, was more relaxed with them, not the diffident, guarded person who often showed up at ATT.
In quiet moments, Straus admitted he preferred being the underdog. To be the favorite and have everyone expecting him to win might be too much pressure. He loved the thought of proving wrong the people who doubted him; he hated the thought of disappointing people who believed in him.
They ended up that night at a group of restaurants next to a marina. A boardwalk ran along the water’s edge, where several yachts were tied up. Lights shone from cruise ships ancho
red in the distance.
They waited outside an Outback Steakhouse while a table was prepared. Straus laid Mikayla on a bench and changed her diaper. The group gathered for a picture, handing the host a stack of smartphones.
They were seated at a long table outside. As the conversation turned to gossip about the other fighters on the card, the staff brought crayons and a paper placemat with outlines of animals for Mikayla.
She climbed onto Straus’s lap. They each took a crayon and colored in the forms.
. . .
What had been designed as Bellator’s first move into pay-per-view television had turned into a fiasco. The event hinged on the headline fight, Rampage Jackson vs. Tito Ortiz, but when Ortiz hurt his neck a week before the fight, the pay-per-view had to be called off. Though the evening would still feature three title fights—including the Alvarez-Chandler rematch, King Mo fighting Emanuel Newton for the light heavyweight belt, and Straus vs. Pat Curran—Bellator decided it couldn’t sell the event without the headliners and moved it to the Spike cable channel, where it would be broadcast for free. The Long Beach Arena, which held thirteen thousand people, was only half full.
(Doug Merlino)
The announcer welcomed everyone to the Biggest Bellator Ever. It was now their chance to get on TV, but they needed to go crazy for two minutes. The house lights lit up the crowd as cameramen moved down the aisles. People sprang to life when the cameras pointed at them, raising their beers aloft, whooping and hollering. They deflated as soon as the lens moved away.
In the locker room, Ricardo Liborio, who had flown out in the morning, ran Straus through warm-up drills. Liborio was aware of Straus’s ups and downs, but knew he was also a fighter who rose to the occasion. His main concern was that Straus would come out too aggressive and walk into one of Curran’s counterpunches. Engage, throw your combinations, and then reset, he told Straus.