Beast

by Doug Merlino

  When the time got close, Liborio called Straus and his corner men into a huddle, their arms wrapped around each other.

  Liborio prayed: “God, this kid worked his whole life to be right where he is now. His whole life. Through all the difficulties, everything, all the bumps in the road, to be here, right now. To be here, to turn himself into a champion. To provide for him and his family and for his team. God, I know he’s not going to disappoint us, and whatever you decide to do, we are going to be okay with that. But I know one thing, if there’s one person who deserves it, if there’s one person who wants it more than anybody else, it’s Daniel Straus.”

  They moved to the door of the locker room.

  Straus shadowboxed, bobbing left and right, bouncing on his feet. He fired a one-two at the wall, punching his fist through the drywall.

  The opening riff of Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” shook the arena.

  “You’re up, Straus,” a man said.

  He walked to the edge of the curtain, shaking out his arms.

  A path led through the arena floor to the cage. People leaned over the barricades, holding out their arms and yelling.

  “MAKE SOME NOISE!” the announcer shouted.

  Straus took a couple steps into the arena and then started to run, sprinting toward the cage. It took his corner men by surprise. They grabbed the gear and hustled after him.

  The fight started as Liborio expected. Straus was more aggressive; Curran held back, kept his defense intact, and waited for his chance to counter. Both were technical fighters who made few mistakes. In the third round, with Curran clinched at the fence, Straus took him down, but he lost his grip as they hit the canvas. Curran scrambled to his feet first.

  As Straus tried to get up, Curran grabbed him and kneed him under the chin. Straus’s head jolted back with the force.

  He collapsed back against the cage, staring up, his eyes vacant.

  Curran slapped his forehead. Kneeing a grounded opponent is banned.

  Straus lay back on the mat, his arms spread, his legs twitching.

  The ref knelt next to him. “You okay? I need you to take some time here, Daniel. How do you feel right now?”

  Straus struggled to come to. Under the rules, he had a “reasonable amount” of time to recover from the blow.

  He groaned but then rolled to the side and pushed himself to his feet.

  A doctor came into the cage and stood in front of him. “What happened to you? Are you ok?” he asked.

  “I don’t know,” Straus said.

  “Look right at me,” the doctor said, holding up his index finger in front of Straus’s face and looking in his eyes.

  “I’m fine,” Straus said.

  The doctor and referee conferred. “How is he?” the ref asked.

  “He looks a little dazed,” the doctor said.

  Straus paced nearby. He put his mouth guard back in.

  The doctor indicated the fight could go on.

  The ref deducted a point from Curran.

  When the ref restarted the fight, Straus was still pacing with his back turned. “Daniel! Daniel! Fight!” the ref yelled.

  Curran and Straus squared off. Straus locked Curran up and threw him down.

  The momentum had changed. The knee to the head had fueled Straus; Curran, on the other hand, had lost his edge.

  Straus spent the next two rounds grinding down Curran with punches and kicks and takedowns. It ended with Straus in top position. As the bell rang, he pulled Curran to his feet and hugged him.

  Straus won the unanimous decision. The ref raised his hand as Bjorn Rebney came up behind him to wrap the Bellator belt around his waist. Though Straus had savored the thought of looking Rebney in the eye at that moment, he took no notice.

  The television announcer entered the cage to interview him. “Daniel, with the ups and downs and the year you’ve had, how does it finally feel to have Bellator gold around your waist?”

  “It feels like twelve pounds, man,” Straus said.

  Straus gestured out into the crowd with his left hand. His voice cracked. “Junior and Tracy, I love you all, I really love you all. Martie, Ray, everybody’s that’s been there for me. I appreciate it so much. I appreciate you all for having me. I appreciate you all for believing in me.”

  He turned to look at Curran. “Pat Curran is a tough dude. I will see him again. I will. I know it.”

  As Straus left the cage, Martie greeted him. They embraced. He made his way backstage. His corner men slapped each other on the back.

  The entourage trailed, smiling, crying and hugging.

  A film crew tracked Straus. He posed in front of a black backdrop with the Bellator logo and then collapsed on a chair, his shoulders slumping down toward the golden belt heavy on his lap.

  He took a breath and spoke to the cameras crowded around his face. “It means a lot,” he said. “It means a lot for me. It means a lot for a lot of other people that are around me.”

  He reached up with his right thumb and wiped tears away from his eyes.

  (Doug Merlino)

  Part Eight

  Endings

  Force is as pitiless to the man who possesses it, or thinks he does, as it is to its victims; the second it crushes, the first it intoxicates. The truth is, nobody really possesses it.

  —Simone Weil

  Mirsad Bektic

  (Doug Merlino)

  Edmonton

  The producer from the cable channel was telling Joey Mocco that his brother had the potential to be a star. Steve was perfect: a clean-cut white guy with a family. Exactly the type of fighter the audience, which was mostly white, could identify with. He asked Joey if Steve liked hunting. He loved it, Joey said. Even better, the producer responded—they could hook him up with sponsors. After the fight, he said, they should talk about doing a piece on Steve.

  We were at one end of the West Edmonton Mall, a gargantuan complex that, in addition to eight hundred shops, included a water park, ice rink, roller coaster, a tank of sea lions, and a full-size replica of the Santa Maria, Christopher Columbus’s flagship. Steve, in a black sweat suit with an American Top Team logo on the back, listened for a moment and lost interest. The nearby HMV store was going out of business; he wandered through racks of clearance DVDs.

  It was late February 2014. Outside, it was frigid, the roadsides heaped with snow. Mocco had come to Canada for his first fight in the World Series of Fighting, a promotion that had launched a little over a year earlier. It seemed to be vying for a place in the hierarchy similar to that of Bellator: It signed either UFC cast-offs with residual name recognition or up-and-coming talent that needed more seasoning.

  The desire at American Top Team had been to get Mocco six fights and entry to the UFC, but it had proven difficult to find the competition he needed to ramp up.

  He’d had two bouts since fighting in Iowa eight months earlier. In Los Angeles in August 2013, he’d faced Lew Polley, a veteran who’d been kicking around the sport since 2006. Mocco took Polley down in the first round and subjected him to a barrage, but Polley managed to survive. Both slowed down in the second round and by the third were openly heaving for breath.

  Mocco took the unanimous decision but received a withering assessment in the locker room from Ricardo Liborio, who told him if he gassed out like that against a better opponent the ending would not be happy.

  It was a difficult problem to address because Mocco trained and sparred hard at American Top Team and didn’t slow down. The conditions of an actual fight could never be fully replicated in a gym. Your adrenaline ran hotter and your opponent came harder than a sparring partner ever would. Like almost all new fighters, Mocco had not learned to manage his energy yet. Even years of wrestling against the world’s top competition could not prepare him for the primal intensity of a fight.

  After the fight in Los Angeles, Mocco took a local bout in Fort Lauderdale where he faced an overmatched opponent with a 3-3 record. Mocco submitted him in the third round, b
ut, as with his fight in Iowa, it served more as experience than a test of his ability.

  Eighteen months into his MMA career, Mocco was 4-0. There was nagging concern in the gym over his striking. Fighters and coaches both said he needed to “let his hands go”—he still looked hesitant, like he was thinking too much.

  The World Series of Fighting, which mostly held its fights in the United States, could offer him bouts on a regular basis, more money, better opponents, and exposure on cable. Mocco signed a four-fight contract with the thought that if all went well he would be UFC-ready at the end.

  For his debut in the promotion, Mocco was facing Smealinho Rama, a twenty-one-year-old out of Calgary. Tall with a long reach, he was a good striker with moderate skills on the ground. Rama had fought professionally seven times. He’d won each of his first six fights in the first round by knockout or submission. His seventh fight had gone to the second round, in which Rama had been knocked senseless by a kick to his temple. Here in Edmonton, Mocco would be his first opponent since that setback.

  There was a stage in front of the HMV that faced a few rows of chairs. About a hundred people showed up for the weigh-in. Mostly men, they shed their parkas and hoodies to reveal inflated biceps, sleeve tattoos, and T-shirts that encouraged you to NEVER TAP.

  When Mocco’s turn came to cross the stage, he stripped off his sweat suit and stood on the scale in shorts, his arms off to the side. He stepped off when his weight was called. He refused to flex.

  Smealinho Rama came next, pulling off his shirt to reveal a tattoo of a crouching tiger snaking around the left side of his body, and the face of Mike Tyson—Maori tattoo and all—on the side of his stomach. He weighed, flexed, and shook Mocco’s hand. “Did you have a nice flight?” he asked.

  . . .

  The next evening, Joey Mocco pulled his rental SUV into the parking lot of the Edmonton Expo Centre. Steve rode shotgun, and I sat in the back with John Hackleman.

  Mocco’s usual corner men—Ricardo Liborio and Roger Krahl—couldn’t make it to Canada. Krahl had flown to Macau to corner another ATT fighter in a UFC event. Liborio had to travel to Brazil to be with his mother, who had just been diagnosed with lymphoma. None of the other coaches at the gym were available to come. In desperation, Liborio had asked Hackleman to fill in.

  Hackleman, who was in his early fifties, had been around MMA since its beginnings. He’d started martial arts as a kid in Hawaii, was later on the Army’s boxing team, and had fought professionally after his discharge. He’d worked as a registered nurse and in the 1980s opened a gym in San Luis Obispo, California, known as The Pit. He was most recognized as Chuck Liddell’s trainer.

  I’d run into Hackleman that morning at breakfast in the hotel. He had arrived late the night before and was uncomfortable with his assignment. Although Mocco had spent a week in California at Hackleman’s gym (he was close with one of his fighters, UFC light heavyweight Glover Teixeira) and had worked with the trainer a few more times when he visited ATT, Hackleman felt it wasn’t enough for him to have a feel for Mocco’s rhythms.

  We made our way to the locker room. The fights started. In one of the preliminaries, two veterans—one guy was nearly fifty—brawled until one was finally so battered the ref called it off. The cage had been placed at one end of the arena, so that the stands rose close to the sides. The liquored crowd of a few thousand hooted approval.

  The promotion didn’t have extra-large gloves for Mocco, so he had to borrow a pair from a heavyweight who had already fought and won. The guy asked Mocco to return them when he was done—he wanted to give them to his kid.

  Mocco’s was the second to last fight. When his time came, we followed him through the crowd, felt its restive energy, watched him enter the ring, circle, shake out his arms.

  He came out hard at the bell, taking Rama to the mat, but as Mocco tried to get position, the Canadian slipped away, twisting his hips so that Mocco couldn’t hold him in place.

  They scrambled, Rama rose. Mocco took him to the canvas again, the two men thudding down just a few feet in front of us.

  “Posture up, Steve, and hit him!” Joey yelled.

  “This is your world!” Hackleman added.

  Mocco tried, but already, midway through the first round, he looked like he was deflating.

  Rama reversed Mocco, taking his back. Mocco stood and Rama hit him, from behind, in the side of the head.

  They separated, and Rama stepped back and began to use his reach, popping Mocco with long jabs, crosses, and kicks from a distance.

  (Doug Merlino)

  The bell rang. Mocco came to the corner, laboring for air.

  “Breathe, breathe, breathe,” Hackleman said. “You’re doing good. Now, let your hands go, do not move backwards.”

  He poured water in Mocco’s mouth. “Do not move backwards. He is more tired than you. You’re a fucking world-class wrestler. Now go in there and fuck him up this round.”

  But Mocco, so relentless in training, was sputtering. It could have been an adrenaline dump, his body reacting to the shock of getting hit. It could have been the change of climate and time zone. It could have been the shift in his warm-up routine from Liborio and Krahl to Hackleman.

  Rama started the second round intent on roughing up Mocco from afar.

  Jabs, crosses, and front kicks thudded into his flesh.

  Mocco advanced, but he was moving too slow to be much of a takedown threat. Rama relaxed and peppered him with strikes that smacked Mocco’s body and face.

  “Hands up, Stevie, hands up!” Joey cried as his brother took a punch.

  “You got hands, too. Let them go!” Hackleman shouted.

  Rama thwacked a kick into Mocco’s left thigh.

  “You need to go forward, Steve!” Hackleman urged.

  Mocco heaved for air, his hands at his hips. As Rama advanced, he struggled to hold them up to protect his face.

  Late in the round, he managed to take Rama down, but didn’t have the energy to do anything. The crowd booed until the ref stood them up.

  “Breathe, deep, deep, suck it up!” Hackleman said as Mocco tried to recover between rounds. “Let him feel your punches, now, you hear me? You need to let him feel your power. When you get in, throw those punches, let him feel your fucking power.”

  There were five minutes left.

  It occurred to me we might have front-row seats to watch Mocco get knocked out.

  As the third round started, Mocco stood with his hands on his hips. He raised them as Rama approached, but now was moving at half-speed, unable to react fast enough to avoid the shots coming at him, his counterpunches hitting only air.

  Rama stood back and jabbed his face, Mocco’s head snapping back with the shock of each punch.

  “You need to go forward, Steve!” Hackleman yelled.

  Mocco threw a slow, looping overhand right.

  Rama slipped it and, as Mocco was off balance from the missed punch, countered with a hook that thudded into the side of his head.

  Mocco toppled to the mat.

  Rama stood above him. Over and over—eighteen times—he punched Mocco, who knelt and tried to cover his head.

  The ref told Mocco he had to make a move or the fight was done. Somehow, he found the will to grab Rama’s leg and tip him over.

  They climbed to their feet.

  Mocco backpedaled as Rama, also nearing exhaustion, stalked him.

  “Drive forward!” Hackleman yelled.

  “Stevie, you got to put him down, brother, you got to put him down!” Joey pleaded.

  Rama moved in with one last frenzy of jabs and crosses, trying to finish Mocco.

  The crowd perked up, alert, but Mocco stayed upright, and Rama was spent. They stared at each other with their hands on their hips as jeers poured from the stands.

  When the bell rang, Joey Mocco and Hackleman rushed into the cage to attend to Steve. His face, red and starting to swell, looked as if it had been ground with sandpaper.

  Rama won t
he unanimous decision.

  We returned to the locker room in silence. Mocco sat and stared at the floor. One of the corner men for another fighter said that someone on Twitter thought he’d won the first two rounds. Mocco did not look up. “I lost that fight,” he said.

  . . .

  As Joey Mocco gathered the gear, he remembered that they’d promised to return the gloves to the guy who had lent them to Steve. He asked me if I could do it, and I took them back onto the arena floor.

  Watching Steve get beaten had shaken me. We had arrived at American Top Team at nearly the same time. I’d been to his house many times, drunk beer with him, had spent Thanksgiving with him at Liborio’s house, knew his wife, had played with his kids. I was invested.

  At the start—which now felt like a long time ago—it had seemed like nothing could slow his ascent into the top of the UFC heavyweight ranks.

  But I had seen something in Mocco’s eyes during the first round of the fight, when he was on top of Rama and in a position to hurt him. It looked like hesitancy, like something was missing.

  During a training session one day at American Top Team, Kami Barzini and I had watched Mocco grapple with another fighter. Barzini said that when Mocco had wrestled at Oklahoma State, he had owned the room. Barzini felt Mocco had only got back to about 30 percent of that presence in MMA. Everyone was waiting for him to get to full power.

  That night was the first time it struck me that he probably wasn’t going to get there. The persona he’d had in high school and college—the psycho with a gleam in his eye who had appeared in the ESPN documentary a decade earlier—was just that, an identity he had taken on because it had suited him at the time. He had channeled the ordeals of his youth into wrestling—and he had achieved success.

  As an adult, he had those achievements behind him. He had taken on MMA as a challenge, the highest form of competition, a way of proving himself—as he always said, he just wanted to know. And he was a tremendous competitor. But I didn’t see the edge I saw in the other guys from American Top Team.