At one point back in the ’70s, it seemed the so-called pointy-headed Eastern liberal media establishment stopped trying to park a bicycle straight for a few minutes and went all crazy for the fistic arts. Joyce Carol Oates was writing about it, Norman Mailer was stepping into the ring to fight about it, and George Plimpton, with his whole Paper Lion deal, was doing it (along with every other sport/activity he could get his hands on). Valiant efforts all, but the Plimpton bug stuck, because, well, because it didn’t take much to get into the ring with another writer. But it took a whole lot of stoneage to get into the ring with a pro.
How much?
Stones so big you’d break your neck if you fell off of them. THAT big.
And so it was that I got the idea: if George could do it, so could I. Of course, George is now dead, a point barely considered by me at the time I was having this think-tank-level of ideation.
“Well, it’s your call, of course … but I don’t know. …” The speaker was Todd Hester. The 6′4″, 250-pound editor of, at the time, a premier mixed martial arts rag. “I don’t know if I’d risk it.”
Well, George did.
“I don’t know … they might be good-natured to begin with. But at some point you’re going to catch them with a punch that surprises them or stings or something, and if people are watching, they might just go ahead and break your arm or something just out of spite. Even if no one is watching, the last thing they want is to be shown up by a journalist who would then write about it and make them look silly. … I mean, their whole self-image and livelihood is tied up in their fighting, so messing with their egos might be a little explosive. … Just something to think about …”
I’m sorry, Todd. Did you say something? I didn’t think so.
But I’m getting a little ahead of myself here. However, just let me say now in my present defense: the sun was in my eyes, I hadn’t had breakfast, I was sporting a sore shoulder, the room was cold, the mat was uneven, and, finally, last but not least, I could have won.
I mean, if I really, really wanted to.
Especially if the good elves of the East sprinkled some more of that magical mystery dust on the doob I’d been smoking, I have absolutely not a single doubt in my mind that I’d be transported to a place where a mediocre fighter beats a pro. A place where speed means nothing. A place where Darrell Gholar, three-time U.S. Greco-Roman national champ, UFC scrapper, and International Cage Fighting king loses pitiably to Eugene Robinson.
Well, wherever that place is, it wasn’t at the Beverly Hills Jiu Jitsu Club, where I, in the midst of this Bataan Death March of constant and continual beatings attempt to bring YOU, the reader, the best in front-row journalism. It was, however, where I met Gholar for this first in a series of ritual humiliations.
Gholar, as nice a guy as you’d want to meet, presuming you were meeting him someplace other than a mat, showed up on time and announced that he wanted to work out on the heavy bag before we started.
Big-balled move, I thought. But that’s okay. Those with big balls all eventually lose, crashing down under the crushing might of the mighty. This was my pep talk to myself. A way to keep my mind off the fact that Gholar had beaten some of the best wrestlers in the world, earned Pan Am and World Championship honors, and even been an Olympic alternate, fer chrissakes. My pep talk ended with my memory of the last place I had seen Gholar in action: losing on Columbia TriStar Television’s Mad Max-inspired Battle Dome. It was a performance I was hoping he’d repeat today.
At 5′8″, 185 pounds, Gholar stood across the mat from me, who was stretching the tape at 6′1″ and weighing in at 208 (down from an all-time high of 265).
“I’m going to try to win,” I said, smiling through my mouth guard.
“Haha. Well, yeah. You should.” Gholar laughed before we hit crunch time. We started slow, and, glancing up at the clock, I was priding myself on the fact that 35 seconds had gone by and I, get this, was still in the game. (Screw it, I’m willing to take my victories where I can get them.)
We locked up, over and under, and because of the whole Greco thing, I was on the lookout for upper-body controls to throws and was keeping my weight low. Gholar snapped loose and shot in for the single leg. Not to actually get the single leg but just to show me something I had heretofore been unaware of: his lightning quickness.
How fast was he? Fast enough that when I sprawled away from his double leg shot, he moved his body up and over me into a move that I hadn’t been caught in in years. The guillotine choke. I escaped and we went to the floor and jockeyed for position. Gholar the whole time pressed his attack and easily defended against my guard, and almost everything else. I, not wanting to dog it, moved into a crouching Gholar at the same time that I felt the guillotine again. This time joined by a chin control hold. There was no escaping this, even with the arm over the shoulder, and, thinking that I might be able to outlast him (he had lifted me off the ground), I held on until … well, until the birds started to sing that song they sing whenever the end is near. Tweet tweet, good night motherfucker.
And that was it. Loser and still champion, indeed. The lesson learned? “Keep your head up,” said Gholar.
“You fought Gholar? I like his look. How was he?” The speaker was Rico Chiapparelli.
Yeah. Who?
Well, let’s see if I can explain this to you by way of lineage: the greatest American wrestler EVER in the history of American wrestling (though there are whispers about those premodern-era guys like FRANK GOTCH, and some of the early professional wrestlers before the professional part of wrestling came to mean bullshit) was Dan Gable. Gable’s record right before he won the gold medal for wrestling in the 1972 Munich Olympics was 299 wins, 6 losses, and 3 draws. His record as a coach, after retiring from competition himself, was 355 wins, 21 loses, and 6 draws, with 15 NCAA titles in 21 years.
Which means he’s been around. Coached lots of wrestlers. Wrestled lots of wrestlers. Befriended even probably a greater number. He didn’t have, purportedly, pictures of very many, or any, in his office at the University of Iowa, where he had coached, and now (after retiring, he’s back as an assistant to one of his wrestlers who is now rocking the head coach job).
Chiapparelli’s picture was on his wall.
Which is why I should fight him. For that reason, and that reason alone.
Yes, in a moment of madness, perhaps, I thought that the R1 Team Captain (nee Real American Wrestling, or RAW) Rico Chiapparelli, semi-retired and at a 40-odd pound weight disadvantage to me, might hand me my rock and roll fantasy win.
I’ll pause here until you stop laughing.
Anyway, that’s what I was doing walking up to RAW’s El Segundo headquarters. Chiapparelli’s vita was beautiful: three time All-American, NCAA collegiate wrestling, U.S. Open freestyle, and World Cup champ. Nickname? The “Baltimore Butcher.”
Immaterial.
To me at least. I’d once heard someone say, “Even a blind mouse can find cheese SOMEtime.” And watching the almost svelte Chiapparelli sitting on the apron of the ring, leaning into his girlfriend, I felt the first full flush of confidence and heard the whispers of the little voice that got me here in the first place. You know the voice that says: Maybe. As in, “Maybe you can kick his ass.” Or, “Maybe today will be your day.”
I’ll pause here until I stop laughing. Bitterly. At my own insanity.
In any case, in chatting with Chiapparelli I was taken with not only his poise but his generally easygoing vibe. A genuinely nice guy. Shame that today must be the day that he loses to me, I thought. A thought I nurtured until we hit the mat and all thoughts of anything other than my crush-kill-destroy game plan were gone.
(At this point let it be noted for the record that this was the last thing that I DO remember. The rest of the story’s been carefully reconstructed from photographs, eyewitness accounts, and, um, X-rays.)
Because my prefight plan had me thinking that guys with great technique don’t do much else because they let the technique do the talking, I had decided to just wear Chiapparelli down. Muscle him, stymie him, whatever … to get him into fatigue mode.
As if.
We met in the middle and hit the mat. I have no idea how. Chiapparelli’s flow would have made a raging river cry, and he slipped, at will, from my guard, on me, around me, almost through me. My most favored weapon— muscle strength—was a total non-issue since Chiapparelli never forced ANY of his attempts. If it didn’t work (less the case) or he wasn’t interested enough in a move to pursue it (more likely the case) he just kept going. Like a magician with a magic hat of plenty, Chiapparelli mixed the tricks and kept them coming.
In frustration, I made to stand us up again and escaped with almost everything. I say “almost” because he pulled me down and started spinning around in a motion that suggested an ankle lock, which was impossible, mostly because he didn’t have my ankle.
Except he did.
Like everybody else who trains, there are just things that I don’t get caught with anymore, and I don’t think I had been caught in an ankle lock for YEARS. So imagine my surprise as Chiapparelli, smiling at me from the other end of my leg, just waited for the moment everybody but me had known to be inevitable.
Yeah yeah yeah, okay. I tapped.
And sitting on the mat in the stunned aftermath of what felt like a very SHORT fight (“It WAS.”—Editor), I asked in this actual moment of doubt and pain the question I’m sure you’re wondering about as well: Give it to me straight, Rico … do I suck?
This ain’t an easy question to ask. It’s like asking your girlfriend if you’re the best she’s ever had. If she answers too quick, she’s lying. If she answers too slow, she’s trying to not hurt your feelings.
On cue, and at the exact right time, Coach Extraordinaire Chiapparelli laughed and said, “I expected you to be really bad. But really you’re not.” Faint praise maybe but if I was man enough to ask it, I was man enough to have it answered, and anyway that’s all I needed to get me back in the saddle.
Daniel Gracie
“Autumn in New York is often mingled with pain.”—Vernon Duke
Well, it was autumn, and, as will happen when seasons change, a young man’s heart turns to fancies of vicious beatings delivered by the hands of brawny Brazilians, but that has us a little too far ahead of the story. Let’s start at the beginning.
New York was calling from beyond the horizon, and so New York, proud sponsor of the World Freestyle Wrestling Championship, was where and what it would be. Standard city fare, veritable homecoming for a native like me: in other words, the whole nine yards of whirlwind travel and grappling galore. Including as an extra special added bonus attraction a visit to Renzo Gracie’s place to fight him for your sordid amusements.
Well, at least that was the plan. And as the best laid plans of mice and men often fall asunder so it is that my calls to Renzo go unanswered; however, in a burst of inspired thinking I decide to just GO to him. Mohammed makes it over to the Mountain. Whatever. After a weekend of fighting I needed to fight and I knew someone there would fight me.
So for my sins I got to fight. And after it was over, to rip off several lines from Apocalypse Now, I’d not want another. Well, I mean, probably not.
Renzo’s place sits in Midtown. Nondescript building and a guaranteed bracing by the doorman. It’s then that you notice for the first time that there’s no mention of the place where you’re going on the building registry and the doorman then mutely thumbs you toward the basement. And moving over the concrete spread of stairs, stairs, and more stairs and through some steel-shanked doors, you finally step into that place that always feels like home to you if you fight: The Gym.
Renzo?
Not here yet. So I cop a seat on the floor and when he shows I start in on the explanation: “Eugene. … I called … and …” He starts apologizing for not returning my calls but I say I’m there to fight and talk to him and he says, smiling, all grace and ambassador-cool, “Well, get changed.”
Later, while watching him train with cousins Ryan, Rodrigo, and Daniel, I start to have … not misgivings exactly … but maybe, well, yes, fine: misgivings. They were all as sharp as, uh, very, very sharp tacks and from drill to drill, the Gracies and other associated fighters, eyes all turned toward an upcoming PRIDE (a UFC-esque event), were ON.
Which was good for me. Renzo’s fatigue spells Eugene’s possible success. Especially if by success you mean only getting my head kicked in once versus again and again.
But as the clock turns and I eagerly await Renzo, he turns to me and says, “Warm up with Daniel first. I mean, fight him.”
“Daniel?” Six-two, 243—that Daniel? Okay. Fine. I’m walking around 205 these days, so, fine. Daniel shrugs amiably and approaches me, smiling. “You ready?”
I think I mumbled “yes.” In any case, whatever I said started it and there we were, tumbling down what felt like a very long hill.
And I was tapping my surrender all the way.
I tapped to a speedily applied arm bar.
I tapped to a heel hook.
I tapped to a smother.
And pretty soon I was just tapping to BE tapping. Not indiscriminately. I mean, not because I didn’t HAVE to, because I DID have to if I wanted to leave there whole, but because after a while there was just no resisting the Big Three: superior strength, technique, and size. I was watching the world’s smallest horror movie AND I was starring in it. If Daniel Gracie was supposed to be my freaking warm-up, I think it could safely be said that today’s ritual humiliation had just begun.
Because even though his pro record was only 2–0 in PRIDE events, thirty-one-year-old Daniel, schooled by the man he describes as the greatest Gracie teacher ever—Renzo Gracie—Daniel moves like he is to the manner born and with surprising agility for a man that large. And maybe it’s just that he’s the heaviest fast fighter that I’ve ever fought, but I start to feel like crucial measures are going to be needed if I’m going to be able to write this thing with even a scintilla of balance, and so in an explosion of concerted effort I actually succeed in getting him in some modified and spasmodic side controlled head chancery.
Genius.
And like with all forms of occasional genius, this was met with highly predictable results: me tap, tap, tapping on heaven’s door.
Damn. It’s then that I notice that he’s chuckling. Choking me and chuckling. Out-maneuvering me and chuckling. So much chuckling that it’s contagious and I start too. Pretty soon I’m laughing my ass off. Tapping AND laughing. Until this, a new wrinkle: I tap and he slowly shakes his head.
“What?”
“No, man. You can’t tap to that.”
“Well, I was just getting into the habit.”
“Don’t.”
“So you want to start again?” I ask, almost begging for time.
“No. You did not tap. No tap. Just keep going.”
And I did. Eyeing Ryan, who seemed to be waiting for his shot and searching for Renzo, who was now nowhere in sight.
As I lay there NOT tapping but getting twisted into a ball of extended pain I watched with curiosity as Renzo emerged from the locker room, dressed and refreshed. Going where?
“To lunch. Come on.”
Yeah, yeah, I was supposed to fight him next. Yeah yeah yeah. Thank heaven for small freaking favors. Renzo, Daniel, Ryan, and a host of other fighters all hit the local steakhouse and replenished their depleted calories while Renzo talked about his upcoming fights, not the least of which was going to be my return match. Which I accused him of being afraid of.
“Anytime,” he countered.
“Anytime I’m recovered from today’s beating,” I corrected.
Laughing, he added, “Anytime at all, man.”
A gentleman and all-around great guy.
Too bad I was going to have to kick his ass when I came back.
Cesar Gracie: Coming Not to Praise Him
Cesar Gracie’s joint up in Pleasant Hill, California, has pound for pound and square inch by square inch some of the world’s best fighters in Dave Terrell, Nick Diaz, Jake Shields, and Gil Melendez (see, “The Thrill of Undefeat, or, One Man’s Peek into the Yawning Maw of Total Personal Failure and Its Transcendence Measured Out One Fight at a Time. Ladies and Gentlemen: Gilbert Melendez,” in chapter 12). What is it that they say about those not doing, but teaching? Perhaps. I mean, could it be? Could it be that in a face-to-face challenge with my second Gracie, that I score in bigger and better fashion than before because, as the knock against Cesar goes, “Well, he’s never really competed”? (It should be noted for the sake of future reference and my eventual longterm health that this was not a critique leveled by ME, however. Even after his 21-second loss to the great Frank Shamrock at the Shark Tank in San Jose.)
Well, there’s a big goddamned difference between NOT competing and not being ABLE to. Cesar, in a lot of ways—chip on his shoulder, something to prove, just being plain ol’ sick and tired of the knocks—COULD be the most dangerous of the Gracies, because a man trying to make a point is always dangerous. And if he trained anything like he coached, I’d be in for a hard ride.
RECALL: Ringside at WEC, Gil Castillo is fighting, and over my shoulder Cesar and Chris Sanford (a.k.a “The Only Man to Ever Knock Me Out”) are screaming words of encouragement. Sort of.
“WHAT’S THE MATTER WITH YOU?!?!?”
“YOU GOTTA REALLY THINK ABOUT GETTING YOUR LIFE TOGETHER!”
“WHERE THE HELL ARE YOUR PRIORITIES?!?!”
And when a clearly dispirited Castillo returned to his corner after a completely underwhelming second round (you think?) he returned to a corner full of air. Nothing. No one. To paraphrase what my mom used to tell me, “When you win, the world wins with you, when you lose, you lose alone.” Cesar and Chris were gone, and THAT’S the hard school, a.k.a. The Fuck-You Fight School of Training.
Hard man. And like my kid once said to me when I was contemplating training with this boxer who had killed no fewer than TWO people OUTSIDE of the ring: “Are you sure you want to do this?”
I wasn’t, but there I was, up at this guy’s school and in the midst of an interview with him and listening to that devil in my head that was saying like he always says: “LOOK at him. He’s not so TOUGH. I fucking KNOW you could take him. You could KICK … HIS … ASS.”
And these completely unwholesome and horribly, horribly misleading thoughts continue right up until the time that we change into fight gear and put mouthpieces in and get into the ring and I check his game face.
Okay. Yeah, it’s business and nobody’s going to let some smarty-mouth journalist into the ring and walk out with a victory story, but you know what? A hard look never hurt anybody, or so I keep telling myself when we lock up mid-ring. And there I got my first surprise.
At about 5′10″ and 185 pounds, Cesar is clearly the smaller man, though that never stopped, say, a Frank Trigg from rushing me. But my first surprise is the master’s touch that Cesar brings to bear: he waits. His breathing is even, level, and he parries and side steps, switches grips, all with ease. So much ease that I get angry. Something, despite all of the talk about the art in martial arts, WILL happen, and I start manhandling him. Go for a guillotine despite knowing it won’t work on him and we go to the ground and he starts spinning and I start pulling everything in the house. Arms tight and he goes tighter, and while I’m thinking strength, strength, strength, and muscling him to go God knows where, he swivels around so fast and smooth that I almost don’t have a sense not only of where it’s coming from but where it’s going.
Me, with Rolles (left) and Cesar Gracie (right) after they both savagely beat me. Their mirth is, I imagine, quite genuine.
But pain is a wonderful tour guide and as he extends facedown on the mat and I feel my arm extend with him (the same arm that I should have kept tighter … and done so faster), I think: Goddamn it, of COURSE. And I tap and sit up and everyone previously watching looks away. Sadly. Soooo sadly.
Hahah. Fuck that. In the crucible of my failure is a greater soul forged!!!! And besides which, I can still beat Rollins, Danzig, Evan Seinfeld, and just about everyone ELSE in music, my real field of play, with the possible exception of RAY CAPPO, he formerly of YOUTH OF TODAY who has been training for the last ten years under one of the masterful Machados. But fuck it, I’ll take my loss to Cesar like a man and keep the whining, crying, and blaspheming to a bare minimum. Today.
