CHAPTER 7

DOWNS AND UPS

I should mention here that, although I claim to have escaped to Hawaii and to have left my troubles 2,600 miles behind in Washington, I actually did not cut Lisa out of my life completely until years later. A couple of months before the Bisping fight, I reconnected with Lisa and asked her to move to Hawaii to live with me.

“The girl from the codependent abusive relationship that previously nearly ruined your life?!” my reader asks in shock.

“Yes, that one.” I reply.

“You are a complete and utter dumb fuck,” says my reader.

“I know.”

I wasn’t in the best mindset after I tested positive for steroids. In the few weeks prior to the report, I had made a lot of progress toward opening my Ultimate Fight School in Oahu. I had lined up some investors and some pretty badass sponsors, who were going to provide much of the equipment. But, when the PED news came out, they dumped me like a satchel full of cow pies. It cost me a lot of money.

I was kind of lost at sea spiritually, and, like a good addict, I went back to the drug I knew best. In this case, that drug was Lisa—the woman who had already once ripped my balls off and shoved them deep up my ass.

At some point I drunk dialed her and told her how much I missed her and how sorry I was that things didn’t work out between us. The next thing you know, she appeared at Honolulu Airport. We decided to move forward with opening the gym despite the setbacks, and soon found a great location near the University of Hawaii. And, to top things off, we rented a little cottage to share that was within walking distance of the gym. We were snug as a bug in a rug.

I scraped together all the money I needed to set up the fight school, but I didn’t really know what the fuck I was doing. I had never started a business before, so I let Lisa deal with the lawyer and handle most of the necessary startup paperwork. Once we got going, she ran the front desk while I focused on building out the gym and finding the best coaches I could get my hands on to join my team. Things actually started to come together nicely, and in a short period of time, we had a sizable membership. So, in addition to preparing for my occasional UFC fights, I was now the head coach of my very own MMA training center. It was a fighter’s dream situation.

If only it could have been that simple.

As you would expect, my relationship with Lisa picked up right where it left off. We got drunk a lot and did our fair share of drugs. We were constantly at each other’s throats and had blowout fights almost every week. I wasn’t faultless in the least, but I remember thinking to myself over and over that I would have done almost anything for us to experience a little bit of peace and happiness. On the other side of the equation, Lisa was very hard on me. Often, she flat out treated me like shit. In retrospect, I think that she had a neurotic need to tightly control our relationship and she felt that crushing my confidence was the best way to achieve her goal. The result was a toxic and unstable relationship that was like spiritual quicksand; every time I made an effort to improve my life, I got dragged down deeper. Sometimes I bit back when she insulted me, or belittled me. But after a while I got into the habit of bending over and taking it. Why? Because that’s the way I deserved to be treated, or so I thought. I felt that a hillbilly from the sticks of Oregon couldn’t do much better and I should be grateful for the bitter table scraps the gods were offering me.

Soon things became intolerable. I tried to break up with Lisa, but she simply wouldn’t accept it. She wouldn’t move out of the apartment, and she staged public meltdowns every time I tried to push her away. She bought red paint and painted Fuck you, motherfucker! all over the walls of our house. Numerous times she attacked me physically, and we started getting domestic disturbance visits from the police.

Once, in the middle of the night, Lisa got upset about something and, yet again, started smashing a bunch of my stuff. I can’t remember what started the episode or exactly what she was destroying, but the only way I could prevent her from obliterating the entire cottage was to grab hold of her and wrap my arms around her until she calmed down. This did not have the effect that I had hoped it would. She bit me as hard as she could and twisted herself out of my grasp. She ran to the phone and called 911 and started screaming at the dispatcher about how I was attacking her.

Well, as a UFC fighter and well-known brawler, I didn’t expect to get the benefit of the doubt when the cops showed up to address her claims of domestic abuse, no matter how popular I was on the island. So I ran out the front door and down the street about half a block. I found a hiding spot in some bushes and waited for the situation to resolve itself. As I crouched there in the dirt I had flashbacks to the other time I hid from the cops in the bushes, at the Civil War football game when I was busted for going AWOL.

Sure enough, a few minutes later, a police car with its lights on came speeding down our street and stopped in front of the cottage. From my position I could see two policemen go into the house, and I could hear Lisa shouting and crying. At some point it seemed they were able to calm her down. And about an hour later the cops left. I never heard from the cops about the incident, and, when I returned to the cottage the next day, Lisa did not even bring it up.

Yep, believe it or not, my situation with Lisa in Hawaii was turning out to be even worse than the situation back in Washington. As our relationship fell apart, Lisa began doing shit that was disruptive to my business. She had the phone service at the gym turned off. Then she cancelled the credit card service contract so I couldn’t sign up new members. With time, as the end drew near, Lisa’s tactics evolved to become more personal. She tried to get my coaches and members to quit and go to other gyms. She posted libelous shit about me on the Internet. And she tried to interfere with some of my most important personal relationships. What’s really disturbing is that I don’t believe she loved me any more than I loved her at this point. I don’t think she wanted to draw me back into her life, and I don’t think she saw a future for us. It seemed to me that, to punish me properly for leaving her, Lisa wanted to fucking bleed me dry.

During this time Lisa even insisted that she was a partner in the gym, and that she would only walk away if I paid her a lot of money. Obviously she was crazy. As dumb as I was to bring her back into my life, there was no way I was going to make her a partner in the gym. So I went to my friend Brandon Ito—a lawyer on the island—and asked him for help. He told me to bring over all the paperwork that I had signed in the creation of the gym.

Unfortunately, after a brief review of the documents, he gave me the bad news.

“Chris,” he said. “I hate to say it, but Lisa is right. These documents indicate that she has a fifty percent ownership in the Ultimate Fight School.”

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” I yelled. “There’s no way. We never even discussed that.”

He read me a section of the operating agreement. It said in plain words that “for services rendered” Lisa was given half of the ownership. When we were setting up the gym I didn’t take the time to read the legal documents I was signing, due to both my laziness and my illiteracy. I would never have consciously agreed to giving Lisa a piece of the ownership. But the provision made it into the agreement and, like a lamb to the slaughter, I signed off on it.

“You’re not in a good situation,” Brandon said with a frown.

As I left his office I felt like I was going to shit my pants with anger.

I decided to leave town for a while and just get away from the situation. I would be fighting again in August in my hometown of Portland against a tough All-American wrestler named Jake Rosholt. That was just about four months away. So I flew to Seattle and began training with Matt Hume at AMC. But the bad news kept coming. While I was there, Lisa went on a major spending spree. Of course, she was the one who created our bank accounts when we got started, and, of course, she made herself a co-signer on all of them. So now, with me out of town, she took a bunch of money and bought herself a new Toyota Tacoma and rented herself an expensive apartment. I started to worry that soon we wouldn’t have enough cash to keep the gym afloat.

I had to deal with the shit storm that had erupted. So after little more than a month in Seattle, I returned to Hawaii for a few days to take care of the business. The good news was that Lisa had moved out of the cottage. The bad news was that she wasn’t done tormenting me.

A few days after I arrived back home I got a phone call from Matt Hume. “Chris,” he said. “I got a phone call from your girlfriend. She said that you’re doing drugs again.”

“What are you talking about, Matt?”

“She said that you are getting messed up day and night and that you are a danger to yourself and to other people. This is disturbing, Chris.”

This was not good. I was in the middle of a training camp and my coach seemed like he was about to tell me to take a hike.

“Matt, of course I’m doing drugs and drinking. You know me. You’ve always known me. It’s what I do. But I’m not doing anything worse than I have ever done before and this stuff about being a danger to other people is absolutely untrue. You have to believe me.”

Matt hesitated for a moment, and I thought I had gotten through to him. Then he said, “Chris, I don’t know what the truth is anymore. But I do know that you have some issues in Hawaii that you need to figure out. And I also know that I can’t be part of it. I’m not going to enable you, and I’m not going to put my reputation at risk.”

I couldn’t argue with the man. If I were in his position I would have done the same fucking thing. We agreed that I would make other arrangements for my training camp and that I would only get back in touch with Matt once everything had blown over.

Next, Lisa called my best friend Sam and told him that I was having serious drug problems and that my gym manager Steven Saito needed to talk to him to set up an intervention. Sam, concerned for my welfare, agreed right away. Lisa followed that with a call to Steven Saito with a similar yet vague message: Sam is concerned about Chris and wants to speak with you. So Steven then called Sam, and Sam poured his heart out, detailing my history of drug abuse and alcohol problems. What Sam did not know, however, was that Steven was completely in the dark about all of this. Steven had no idea that I struggled with these issues, and he might never have worked for me had he known. Steven promptly called me and quit the gym. It was a disaster.

For a long time I blamed Sam for what went down. I thought that he was trying to cut me off at the knees. Our relationship suffered badly. It was more than a year later before I learned and accepted the truth: Lisa had orchestrated the whole thing.

I was up shit’s creek. As much as I hated to admit it, Lisa had won the war. I threw in the towel and scheduled another meeting with Brandon Ito. I told him that I was willing to pay Lisa off to get her out of my life. Brandon agreed to take care of the negotiations. Unfortunately, the best we could do was arrive at a cash settlement that would wipe out my savings. We agreed that it was a small price to pay compared to the hell I would endure if we didn’t end it right then. I wrote a check on the spot.

There, more or less, ended the Lisa saga. In the coming year or two she popped up on the radar once or twice, but without causing major destruction. Unfortunately, all of the damage was done. I was in financial ruins and thought seriously about shutting down the fight school. My life, once again, was headed for the toilet.

That’s when a girl named Kaleena came to the rescue. Well, now that I think about it, actually, she’s the one who broke my heart and drove me back to Lisa in the first place. So maybe Kaleena didn’t exactly rescue me since she kind of threw me to the wolves in the first place. Let me explain.

I had first met Kaleena back in 2007 at Dave & Buster’s arcade restaurant in Honolulu. Before you start ripping on me for being a total dweeb and hanging out at a bar that features ski ball and whack-a-mole, let me just say that this place was off the hook on Wednesday nights. They had a killer rooftop deck and lots of people went there to get their swerve on . . . fuck it. You’re right. I am a dweeb.

Anyhow, I was there at Dave & Buster’s one night with my friend, former UFC fighter Kendall Grove. Kendall is a Maui native and a UFC veteran who beat good ol’ Eddie Herman in the TUF 3 Finale back in 2006. I also happened to be trying to hook up with Kendall’s sister at the time. A group of us were hanging out and getting drunk as usual when this stunning islander with a flower in her hair approached me.

“You’re one of those fighters, aren’t you?” Kaleena asked with a fair amount of sass.

“Yes, I am one of those fighters. Do you like fighters?”

“I like some fighters. But I saw you on that UFC reality show and I couldn’t stand you. So I guess I don’t like all fighters.”

That made me laugh and spit out my drink. Kaleena gave me some hardcore shit right off the bat, which is a great way to find a place in my heart. We spent the rest of the night talking and laughing and downing beers and shots. Then, when it got late I came up with a clever move. I gave Kendall my car keys and told him to go ahead and drive it home. Then I told Kaleena that I didn’t have a car and would need a ride back to my place. She needed a little convincing, but ultimately obliged.

Kaleena slept over at my place, and we were inseparable for the next two weeks. It was awesome. We just totally clicked. We spent hours on end, just the two of us. And when we needed a social atmosphere, we’d go out together and meet up with some friends. Shockingly, she liked to party almost as much as I did. This girl seemed flawless to me. I was in love and I started professing my emotions almost immediately. I was convinced that we were going to be together forever. I told her that . . . repeatedly.

Then, just two weeks after we met, Kaleena called me up and broke up with me. She didn’t offer much of an explanation, other than to say that I was “too much for her.” Me? Too much? Unbelievable. (That was sarcasm.) It was traumatic. And you know how I am with my emotions. Not good. I hated myself. I obsessed over our breakup, thinking endlessly about what I did wrong and what I should have done instead. And, of course, I went on a bender. When the dust cleared I found myself over the edge—into the depths of another relationship with Lisa.

So, as I mentioned, yes, Kaleena later saved me; but first, she ripped my heart out!

Well, fast-forward two years to 2009. I had just settled up with Lisa and kicked her to the curb. The horizon wasn’t looking too bright. I was at the gym and my phone started ringing. Holy shit it was Kaleena. Of course, I had saved her phone number this whole time, just in case. Lisa had even noticed Kaleena’s number in my phone once or twice (Lisa would dig through my address book as she saw fit) and I had to make up some bullshit about how Kaleena was a cleaning lady for the gym.

As the phone continued to ring, I froze up like a pussy. It had been a long time since we last talked, but the pain lingered. I was also afraid that maybe Kaleena had sat on her phone and wasn’t calling me on purpose. I’d answer the phone like an idiot and she’d say “whoops! I didn’t mean to call you.” My brain ran through all of the possible negative outcomes that could result from me accepting the phone call. I let it go to voicemail.

I immediately started cursing myself for being so sackless. Then I started to have fantasies about us reconnecting and falling in love again. Had I just missed out on the opportunity of a lifetime? She was the girl of my dreams after all. Should I call her back? If so, what should I say? I felt like a nervous schoolboy. Then my phone started ringing again. This time it was my friend Brad Ito, the brother of lawyer Brandon Ito. I answered.

“Dude!” he said. “Why didn’t you answer your phone?!”

“What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“I’m sitting here with Kaleena and she wants to talk to you! I’m putting her on!”

Before I could protest, he handed the phone over to Kaleena.

“Hello, Chriiiiis,” she said, dragging out the pronunciation of my name mischievously.

I could never forget that voice—a Hawaiian accent that was part sassy and part sweet like a pineapple with Jack Daniel’s poured on top. Kaleena went on to tell me how sorry she was for ending things the way she had ended them two years ago. Although I still find it hard to believe, she said it wasn’t so much the fact that I was over the top in professing my love for her, but rather that she had been intimidated by my fame, and that, as a mellow Hawaiian girl, it was a challenge for her to be with someone who was the center of so much attention. I accepted her apology and she accepted my apology for being an overall dipshit, thank God.

Kaleena invited me to meet up with her and Brad later, which, of course, I agreed to do. They were at some local bar. She looked as beautiful as ever, and I knew I’d have to work hard to keep her if I was able to successfully woo her again. We spent the whole night next to each other, catching up on each other’s lives. She mentioned she was looking for a job.

“That’s funny,” I said. “We happen to be hiring a desk girl this week. Come in tomorrow and you can interview for the position.”

Of course the job was Kaleena’s as soon as she mentioned she was looking. But I figured it would be more professional—and more entertaining—if I made her jump through a couple of hoops to get it. The next morning, when I arrived at the gym I fired the front desk girl. Don’t feel bad for her. She was a friend of Lisa’s who Lisa had hired to do the administrative and receptionist job that Lisa had agreed to do in the first place! Then Kaleena came in, looking like a cute little tree sprite, and my friend Bastian and I grilled her for about forty-five minutes, asking her all kinds of stupid shit like, “Do you know how to use Microsoft Word?” and “Can you answer the phone and type at the same time?” Half of the questions offended her, I’m sure. Nonetheless, when we finished the ridiculous interview we offered Kaleena the position and she accepted.

Life suddenly got good again. Kaleena and I were not hooking up immediately, but it was awesome to see her at the front desk every day. Typically she wore an outfit that consisted of a bikini top, tight camouflage shorts, and a bandana. Occasionally, if she was severely hung over, she would take a nap under the front desk. I didn’t care, of course. She could have told prospective members to eat shit and die and I wouldn’t have even considered firing her. I played it cool and bided my time for about two weeks until her first payday. When I gave her the paycheck, I invited her to go out for drinks with my little half-sister and me. She agreed.

To make a long story short, Kaleena stayed over at my place that night and she never left. For the next four years, until we relocated to San Diego, we were virtually inseparable. We slept together, woke up together, worked together, and partied together. And, somehow, we never got sick of each other. The icing on the cake was that after that first paycheck I never had to pay her again!

But things didn’t always come up roses for us. I was kind of out of control in those first months after we reconnected. I travelled back to Portland to train with Team Quest and coach Robert Follis for the last month before the Rosholt fight. Having been dumped by Matt Hume and beaten down by the Lisa debacle, I was in bad shape physically and emotionally. My training camp sucked, and I was drinking like a fish. I was literally blacking out drunk every night. To make matters worse, things with Kaleena were rocky. She was at the end of her rope with my wild lifestyle and erratic behavior. Finally, three weeks before the fight, she called me and told me that she couldn’t take it anymore. She wanted to break up.

This, of course, threw me into a death spiral. I spent the next three days lying in the corner of the back room of my mom’s house covered in a pile of blankets, drinking whiskey and scarfing down OxyContin to numb my brain. One weird side note: one of the blankets I had buried myself under was a blanket I remember having when I was about five years old. It was light blue and covered in ducks. When I was a scared or sad little boy, I would cover myself in it and pull it up tightly to my chin. More than twenty years later, this ratty old blanket was still taking up space in my mom’s house. And, quite appropriately, it was what I turned to for comfort when my life was falling apart.

I was extremely depressed and was even cutting myself, slicing my arms and legs. This is something I had started doing back in Hawaii, but the habit got much worse during this stint in Oregon. I don’t know how or why it began, but I think I did it to punish myself—to mark myself in a way that would remind me of all the times I had screwed things up. My memory is a bit hazy, but I would say that I was probably suicidal at this point. Even my mom, who wasn’t fazed by much, started to get scared. She called Nate Quarry and asked him to come help. Other than Eddie Herman, Nate’s the one other fighter who was there by my side during the first five or six years of my career.

I was in a stupor when Nate showed up. He dragged me out of the back room and shoved me into the rear seat of his car. He drove me to his house and helped me into the bed in his spare room. He called a doctor over, who checked me out and made sure I hadn’t done too much damage. And, within the next day or two Nate got me back to the gym.

Nate also insisted that I immediately join an AA program. I agreed, and in addition to my twice-daily practices, I started going to meetings twice a day. Unbelievably, within two weeks Nate helped me recover and get into fair enough shape to make an appearance in the Octagon. Mind you, I wasn’t close to peak condition. However, it was a miracle compared to the disgusting puddle of a man that I had been just fourteen days earlier.

I’ve said it many times, and I’ll say it now for the world to hear: not only did Nate Quarry save my fight career, he saved my life. I very well may have died there in the back of my mom’s shitty house under that grimy children’s blanket had someone not intervened. Thank you, Nate.

Fight night arrived. UFC 102. August 29, 2009, at the Rose Garden in Portland. Jake Rosholt and I were the third fight on a main card that featured a heavyweight championship between Antonio “Big Nog” Nogueira and Randy Couture. The good news was that this was Portland: my hometown, my backyard, my stomping grounds. All of my friends were going to be there. The crowd was sure to favor me in a big way. But the bad news weighed heavier. Though mostly recovered from my depressive episode, the weight cut had been a nightmare. It felt like all of the chemicals in my body were off balance, and I thought my whole system was going to shut down in the final hours leading up to show time. On top of that, as I warmed up for my bout, Kaleena was missing in action. We had reconciled after Nate Quarry’s intervention, and I flew her to Portland to be with me for a few days leading up to the fight. That night she was supposed to arrive with Brad. But shortly before game time I headed to my hotel room to see Kaleena, and only Nate was there. He told me that Brad and she went shopping for some strange reason. I called both of them, but neither answered their phones.

I was upset. Kaleena knew that all of my fights were important to me. But this one—on my home turf after one of the worst months of my life—was an especially critical moment in my journey. This was strange and not like Kaleena. Despite our ups and downs, she was the last person who would bail on me in a pinch. I was concerned that something was seriously wrong, but Nate insisted I not worry. So I did my best to focus my chi and get ready to step into the cage.

As you would expect, the Rosholt fight was not my best performance. I felt like a disgusting mess and I looked even worse. The first round was decent, but I was definitely hesitant and not feeling myself. We traded a lot of leg kicks, and, to be honest, Rosholt hit me with some heavy ones. He also bloodied up my nose. Then, in the middle of the round, he attacked with a knee strike, which I caught and turned into a takedown. We were against the cage, and I was on top, but I wasn’t able to do much damage. Rosholt got back to his feet and, by that time, I was already winded and checking the clock. I wanted to put this guy to sleep, so I started chasing him and winging heavy left hooks. No luck. The round ended.

The second round was better for me, despite the fact that I was fading fast. He caught me early on with a hard right-left combo (that, I later learned, broke my eye socket), but I retaliated with an overhand left that sent him tumbling to the center of the mat. I jumped on top and unloaded as much ground-and-pound as I could. Again, I didn’t do much damage, so referee Yves Lavigne stood us up. Then came my best strike of the night. I threw a left kick to the head, which Rosholt partially blocked, and then I delivered a booming straight left to his chin. His head bounced against the cage, and I would have expected him to crumple. But, props to Rosholt, he stayed upright. I ended the round throwing haymakers with both hands. Alas, I couldn’t finish the guy.

I rewatched the fight later, and had to laugh at some of the commentary from Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg between the second and third rounds. You can go back and check this out yourself if you have access to the video. During the break, the camera zoomed in on my left shin to reveal a series of scabbed-over incisions. These were from two weeks before when I was a zombie in my mom’s back room, cutting myself with a kitchen knife. By fight time the wounds had pretty much healed, but the scabs were obvious evidence of self-inflicted harm.

Noticing the camera focused on my shin, Joe Rogan says, “Look at that. That’s nasty.”

To which Mike Goldberg replies, “That’s what’s called ‘checking a kick.’”

I have a feeling that Rogan might have known what was up, but poor Goldie seemed to believe that series of wounds was actually Muay Thai related. In fact, that might be the first time in pay-per-view history that a spotlight was placed on self-injury related to mental illness. In retrospect, that moment was pretty fucked up.

By the third round, I had nothing left. Rosholt took me to the ground with ease and maneuvered an arm-triangle choke. As Yves Lavigne watched on closely, I—as always—refused to even consider submitting by tap out. I lost consciousness. Yves stepped in to end the fight, and as Rosholt stood up to celebrate, I went into convulsions.

Less than a minute later I woke up. It took a bit for me to realize where I was and what happened. I left the cage dejected, a loser in front of my hometown crowd. And, as mentioned, I had a broken orbital bone. I made the dumb mistake of trying to blow the snot and blood out of my nose, causing the area around my right eye to swell up like a goddamn balloon. In fact, it made my eyeball bulge out so much that I felt the need to keep pressure on it with my left hand because I thought it was going to pop loose.

Kaleena and Brad were backstage to greet me, thank God. They had made it back in time to watch my fight. Had they not been there when I finished, I probably would have gone back to the hotel, gurgled some OxyContin and chased it with a fifth of vodka.

Kaleena did not look well. She hugged me and comforted me a bit before telling me what was really going on. And it wasn’t good. Kaleena and Brad had been drinking heavily earlier in the day. Don’t ask me why. Unfortunately, Kaleena was on some pretty heavy cold medicine and antibiotics at the same time. Apparently, she had a severe reaction to the combination of chemicals and passed out. Her breathing got shallow, and Nate and Brad couldn’t wake her up so they called an ambulance. Thus the real reason that Kaleena wasn’t in attendance before my fight started was that she was in the emergency room getting her stomach pumped. What a fucking debacle. I’m glad Nate didn’t tell me the truth before my fight. I know I would have ditched the Rose Garden to go be at Kaleena’s side. If that had happened, I think the UFC would have had no choice but to terminate my contract.

Normally, after a UFC fight, I would hit the bars with my friends, get shitfaced, and either celebrate my win or drink away the sting of my defeat. But after the Rosholt fight I was in no mood for that. I was clinging to the hope that I would get my life back on track, and to the hope that Kaleena and I would work things out for the long run. Hell, we had both almost died in the past two weeks! It was time for some serious soul searching. Kaleena and I decided to head straight to an AA meeting.

My AA sponsor Bastian was with us as well. He had some experience with groups in the Portland area. He made a couple of phone calls before learning that there was a meeting in progress a couple of miles away, and if we hurried we could make it. Kaleena, Bastian, and I left the Rose Garden and began looking for a taxi. But, post-fight, it was madness. Everywhere, I bumped into people I knew and fans who recognized me. I guess it was hard to keep a low profile with my swollen face and crazy red-purple hair. It seemed like every person I passed wanted to stop me for a hug or a pose. It was one of the only times in my life that I had to tell fans that I didn’t have time for autographs and photo ops.

After a half-hour of fighting our way through the crowd and searching, there was no taxi to be found.

“I have an idea,” Bastian announced.

Nearby, a female police officer was leaning against her car, watching the crowd. We approached her and Bastian did the talking.

“Excuse me,” he said. “I’m hoping you can help us out.”

“What do you need?” she replied.

“Well, my friend here needs to get to an AA meeting right away. He’s really struggling with some issues right now, and if he doesn’t make it to this meeting then he’ll be in serious risk of relapsing.”

Bastian paused as the cop looked at him curiously.

“We can’t find a taxi, and I’m hoping that you’ll give my friends a ride to the meeting. It’s not far away.”

The cop raised her eyebrows. I was sure she was going to tell us to take a hike. But then she looked at me and saw the fucked up condition I was in. Her face softened.

“Get in,” she said.

It was one of the very few positive interactions I’ve ever had with a police officer. Her name was Patty, and I’m sure that she had no idea who I was. It took her ten minutes to drive us to the meeting, and she was nice as could be. Maybe she had someone in her life who was struggling with the same kind of shit. There was sympathy in her voice.

By the time we got there, the meeting was over.

So we headed over to a nearby park, and, under the moonlight and the stars, the three of us had our own mini AA meeting. We talked about the challenges that we faced and the futures that we hoped for until, exhausted and at peace, we decided to go home and sleep.

After the Rosholt fight my life stabilized a bit. I was still drinking and occasionally doing drugs, but nothing heavy like the shit I did during my darkest days. By my standards (and probably only my standards), I was clean. It may not surprise you that I then entered the most successful stretch of my UFC career.

I held my camps for the next four fights at my own gym in Hawaii. And, during this time, I worked with a core stable of coaches and training partners: Robert Follis, Nate Quarry, Chris West, Greg Thompson, and Burton Richardson, among them. In January of 2010, I beat a Brazilian guy named Jay Silva 30–27 on all of the scorecards, it was a solid decision, but nothing to write home about. This Silva wasn’t a primetime fighter. Beating him didn’t prove much.

So for my next fight I asked for a tough up-and-comer named Aaron Simpson. He was undefeated in eight fights, ending six of them by KO or TKO, and was a highly regarded All-American wrestler out of Arizona State. Aaron had three wins in the UFC over the span of about eight months, including an injury TKO over my boy Eddie Herman. The fight was stopped when Eddie’s knee blew out. I figured that if I handled this kid, I would be right back on the path to the top and I would get some vengeance at the same time. UFC matchmaker Joe Silva obliged and scheduled our scrap for the main card of the TUF 11 Finale in June of 2010.

When the fight began I was surprised by how hard Simpson came at me. Not only was he looking to clinch and take me down, but he was willing—unlike most mortals (hehe)—to trade punches with me. And a couple of his straight right hands landed flush. But I ate them like cornflakes. After all, my head is harder than most fire hydrants. To Simpson’s credit, he scored two high-crotch takedowns that made me look silly. His wrestling was on point. I spent a good portion of that round getting flopped on my back, defending his ground-and-pound, and then climbing back to my feet.

But the second round was a whole different story. For some reason, Aaron got it in his head that he should stand back and exchange with me on the feet rather than work the clinch game that had paid off for him in the first round. And, early in this round, I realized that he was losing steam. I knew I could march forward. And that I did. I happily took one or two shots to the head in order to get inside his range and turn the fight into a brawl. With about one minute left I landed a very hard straight left hand that made him dance. I then stalked him across the cage and unloaded a combination that dropped him to his knees. I immediately started throwing bombs to the left side of his head. Miraculously, Simpson got back to his feet. I rewarded his effort by landing a punishing right-left combination right on the button. He stumbled and staggered all the way across the cage before flopping on his face. Then referee Josh Rosenthal mercifully ended the fight.

I had brutally TKO’d a very tough dude. Dana gave me the knockout-of-the-night bonus for that performance. Finally the momentum was shifting in my favor. And it felt great.

Kaleena and I flew back to Oahu early the next morning. On the way we talked about how we looked forward to a relaxing couple of months before I had to start another hardcore training camp. I had busted my ass in preparation for the Simpson fight and, to be honest, my body was paying for it.

That night we ordered a pizza and watched a stupid movie before calling it an early night. The next morning I woke up to the sound of my ringing telephone. Normally, I would have rejected the call and resumed my snooze, but I happened to glance at the caller ID. It was matchmaker Joe Silva. Generally, he doesn’t call unless he has a big fight to offer. And the fact that he was disturbing me at 8:00 AM probably meant that he had a whale of a proposal.

I answered the phone with a gravely voice. “Joe, I hope you’re calling me with something exciting!”

“Don’t I always?” he replied. “Sorry to wake you up, but this one is kind of urgent.”

“Well, tell me what’s going on then.”

“How banged up are you from the Simpson fight?”

I thought about it for a second and realized that, number one, except for a bloody lip, I was in pretty good condition, and, number two, even if I was banged up, it was probably a good idea to tell Joe Silva I was ready to fight. You never know what kind of gold he’s selling.

“I’m pretty damn good, Joe. Almost good as new,” was my reply.

“Good enough to fight again in two weekends?”

“Two weekends?!”

“Yep. Wanderlei pulled out of the Akiyama fight due to injury and we need someone to step in. Considering your performance on Saturday night and considering how much the fans love you, we figured that a Crippler–Sexyama showdown would be just what the doctor ordered.”

I put Joe on hold. I turned to Kaleena and told her that he wanted me back in Vegas on July 3.

“That’s fucking nuts, Chris,” Kaleena said, shaking her head at the idea of me making a two-week turnaround. “But it’s your body and your career, so you do what you think makes sense.”

I told Joe that I needed to talk to my team and that I’d get back to him in a few hours. The proposed fight was with Yoshihiro Akiyama, a Japanese judoka and MMA great who, at this point, had become an A-list celebrity in Japan. He had appeared in both the Dream promotion and the Hero’s promotion in Asia, where he won the light heavyweight title via an armbar of the brutal Dutch striker Melvin Manhoef. They nicknamed Yoshihiro “Sexyama” due to his good looks and his extreme popularity with the ladies. This was bolstered by the fact that he had married a famous Japanese fashion model.

Akiyama had made his UFC debut about a year earlier, defeating Alan Belcher in the UFC 100 fight-of-the-night. The promotion knew they had an international star in the making, so they lined him up against Brazilian slugger and fan favorite (and one of my idols at the time) Wanderlei “The Axe Murderer” Silva. Wanderlei had first rose to fame as long-running middleweight champion in the Pride MMA promotion in Japan. By that time he had beat major names including Dan Henderson, Kazushi Sakuraba, Ricardo Arona, and Rampage Jackson. Now the UFC was asking me to fill in for him. As I contemplated the opportunity, I thought for a moment that taking Wanderlei’s spot against Akiyama was kind of like stepping in as a designated hitter for Babe Ruth.

After hanging up with Joe Silva I called my coach Burton Richardson. He agreed that I didn’t take too much damage in the Simpson fight and that, since I was in great condition, I probably had a very good chance of knocking off Akiyama. If that happened, I would steal the Japanese star’s thunder and make it my own. The decision was made. But, on the advice of Nate Quarry, I didn’t call Joe back immediately. Nate thought the UFC was in a desperate situation. Why else would they be asking a fighter to go twice in fourteen days? He said if I held out, I’d see more dollars.

Nate was right. I didn’t answer Joe Silva’s texts or phone calls for about three and a half hours. When I finally did pick up his call, I told him that I wasn’t feeling great about the compensation, given the short notice. He offered me a nice little bump in pay, and I told him I’d see him in Vegas for fight week. As it turns out, two UFC fights in the span of just fourteen days was a record, at least for the modern-day, post-tournament-style UFC. It stood for over four years until that dirty bastard Chas Skelly notched a thirteen-day turnaround in September of 2014. (Just kidding, Chas. You’re not a dirty bastard, as far as I know.)

Because it represented a huge comeback from major adversity, my win over Aaron Simpson was probably the UFC win of which I am most proud. However, the Akiyama win was not far behind because it was such an epic back-and-forth battle.

Against Akiyama, I started off by attacking with leg kicks, and several landed with heavy thuds on the Japanese star’s thighs. But then we began trading with our fists, catching each other with some hard punches. Akiyama missed with a spinning back fist, but, soon after, when I attacked, he employed some of his world-famous judo on me and dropped me onto my back. My coaches and I had planned for this. Our idea was to be as active as possible on the ground. I immediately pulled a very high guard—my legs wrapped up around his chest—and then I transitioned for an armbar submission. I almost locked it in! But in making that move, I left myself open to an armbar attempt by Akiyama! He switched into a mounted triangle and started prying my arm in a direction I didn’t want him to pry it. I defended and twisted in to a better position. It was probably the highest level ground fighting of my career. The crowd was really into it. Finally I escaped his submission attempt and returned to my feet where we engaged in more fisticuffs. As the seconds ticked down, Akiyama again caught me with a judo trip and threw me to the ground. That’s where the round ended.

That first frame was a high-paced and dynamic contest. The MGM Grand Garden Arena was rocking with appreciation during the break. And, even though I had probably lost the first five minutes of the fight, I knew that Akiyama and I were putting on a hell of a show. I was ready for more.

The second round was when the shit went off the hook. We immediately started slugging, bouncing coconuts off of each other’s faces. I caught him with a straight left. He responded with a spinning back fist to my jaw. I followed up with a superman punch and a hard left hook. And then we went to the mattresses, as the Godfather would say. It became an all-out slug fest. I threw everything but the kitchen sink at him, and he responded in kind. We hurt and wobbled each other. In fact, he landed a left hook to my chin that put me into zombie mode. For a few seconds I was out on my feet. My eyes crossed and I could hardly feel my legs. I couldn’t even clearly make out my target. I just thought, keep moving forward . . . keep attacking . . . keep throwing punches and hopefully you’ll connect. And that’s what I did, clubbing away and hurting Akiyama almost as badly. The mayhem only slowed down momentarily, when Akiyama executed another judo toss. But I got right back to my feet and the fireworks continued. We spent the final minute of the round standing in front of each other and winging punches like a couple of invigorated old drunks. It was madness!

At the sound of the bell, the crowd went absolutely ape shit. I was eating it up. As I headed back to my corner I waved my arms up and down, calling for even more noise. Akiyama had almost knocked me out in that second round. By the time I got to my corner, I was fully recovered, but I wasn’t sure whether I had inflicted much damage on my opponent. I knew that I had turned it into a brawl and found his face with my fists at least a few times, but the last three minutes of it were a blur. Then, as the cut man began working on my cheek, one of my cornermen told me that Akiyama tumbled off his stool. Yep, I must have landed some good ones! I started laughing.

The third round began with Akiyama and I smiling broadly at each other. His left eye was as swollen as my right cheek. We both knew that this fight was an instant classic. We met in the center of the cage and tapped both hands to show respect. Then we reloaded and got to work.

We started off a little slower in the third round, and I could tell Akiyama was still a little wobbly. We boxed for a few seconds before I landed a very hard head kick—probably the hardest head kick I ever landed in my career. But he just absorbed it, that stubborn Japanese bastard! Then he caught my next kick and again tripped me to the ground. As Akiyama started to work from the top, I decided to try and do as much damage as I could from the bottom. I began throwing hammer fists and elbows against the sides of Akiyama’s skull as he rained down punches on my face. Once I even hit him with both fists on both sides of the head at the same time, something called a lobster punch! Flat on my back, I couldn’t get much juice on these strikes, but I could tell they were hurting him. If I kept going they might just cause enough damage that he would do something stupid or desperate and give me the opportunity to attack.

We continued to batter each other. Then, with about forty seconds left, Akiyama started to lose steam and focus. He allowed himself to get too low in my guard, his head resting just below my chest. This was the moment. I threw my right foot over and hooked it with my left knee, trapping Akiyama’s head and right arm in a triangle choke. He did everything he could to pull backward and release himself from the grip. But my legs were latched on tight. And while he struggled desperately, knowing that it only takes moments to lose consciousness in this position, I beat his reddening face with both hands. Finally, I pulled on the back of his head to put even more pressure on his neck and constrict blood flow to his brain. That is the key to finishing the triangle choke. It worked as advertised.

With twenty-four seconds left in one of the wildest fights in UFC history, Akiyama submitted by tapping on my arm. The referee dove in to break it up. I had won.

The MGM Grand nearly ripped at its seams as I stood up and left Akiyama lying there in a heap. I looked over and saw broadcasters Joe Rogan and Mike Goldberg shouting into their microphones and pointing at me. I took a position in the center of the cage and spread my arms wide. I gazed up toward the bright lights of the stadium. The roar of the audience, the applause, the cheers, the screams, the emotion—it all poured over me and through me like a raging, spiritual river. I felt, if just for a moment, as though I, Chris Leben, the worthless, junkie piece of shit from the piss side of nowhere, were a god.