Let’s Get It On! (6 page)

When I started lifting with the pros, it was a rush to feel myself getting stronger. I dedicated so much of my time to it that they decided I should try a competition. At my first show, down in Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corp Recruit Depot in San Diego, I took third place.

After I got a taste, I didn’t want to stop. My lift numbers kept going up, and I started entering competitions every couple of months. But my body could go only so far on its own. It was time to take the next step, my teachers told me, and if I was serious about lifting and keeping up, there was something else I had to do.

This is when I started taking steroids, which at the time weren’t illegal or frowned on. In these circles, it was just a part of the program. The pros gave me the name of a doctor who gave me a prescription. Always careful to follow his cycle instructions, I took them for about two years.

I won’t lie. Back then, I didn’t think there was anything wrong with it. And you could certainly feel and see a difference. In steady increments, my squat increased from 535 to 802 pounds, my bench press from 320 to 455, and my dead lift from 505 to 802. You couldn’t argue with those types of gains.

I guess if steroids had been illegal back then, I would have thought twice about taking them, but they wouldn’t become a political hot potato for another five years, when Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson ran against Carl Lewis at the 1988 Olympics and won, then tested positive for Stanozolol. I was off them long before then.

As an MMA referee years later, I could usually tell which fighters were on steroids. You’d be surprised to know how many fighters were taking steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs. It’s illegal, and I don’t think it’s ever right to break the rules, but I understand why fighters do it. Yes, it’s cheating, but sometimes it’s cheating for a paycheck to feed their families. Sometimes it’s to work through or prevent injuries. I’m not saying all this to condone steroid use. I don’t. The bottom line is that it’s illegal and shouldn’t be done, but I’m smart enough to know guys still do it, cycle off, and never get caught.

I won’t say steroids are addicting physically, but I think they can be psychologically. People start to see results and want more. Human beings are that way. We think if two will do, then four is better, eight is even better, and so on. People can start to abuse, and I think that’s where problems arise.

The one issue I had with steroids was ‘roid rage. I didn’t get mad easier, but if I was going to get mad, I’d get
mad.
And once I did, I couldn’t let things go. I wanted to hurt whoever had done me wrong.

Dead-lifting 730 pounds at a competition in Pomona, California

If the image of an albino Incredible Hulk comes into your head, you’re on the right track. I was 300 pounds strong. I was winning a lot of local tournaments and was getting ready to go to the Junior Nationals.

But there was one small problem. Powerlifting would never pay the bills no matter how much I lifted, and someone was about to enter my life who’d cause me to reassess my priorities.

My first picture ever with my squeeze, Elaine

To get the full value of joy you must have someone to divide it with.

—Mark Twain

Some men promise their women riches and a life of luxury. Others—mostly the poor ones—promise the sun, moon, and stars. I bribed my wife to marry me with a five-gallon tub of peppermint ice cream.

Romantic, I know, but it’s a true story. I swear. In my defense, have you seen a five-gallon tub of ice cream?

But I’m getting a little ahead of myself. I should probably tell you first how I met Elaine, the woman I’ve been married to for twenty-seven years now, because she plays an intricate role in my story.

Die-hard UFC fans might have noticed the beautiful blonde sitting cageside at virtually every event I’ve ever refereed. Elaine has been with me from the start, before I became a police officer or a world-traveling referee or anything else of any substance. She is the one person who truly knows me. She’s seen the good and bad in me and has stuck with me through all of life’s ups and downs, even when we didn’t have the money to buy food. She’s stood with me through it all, and she will forever be the love of my life.

I met Elaine by chance. While I was working at Samson’s Gym, a coworker named Mark helped me clean and organize at night to get the gym ready for the next day. One evening, he confided in me that he really liked this girl who worked across the street at Del Taco, but he was having trouble getting up the courage to speak to her.

“Dude, you can sit here and look stupid, or grow a pair and go talk to her,” I told him. “She’s no better than you.”

Each night at the gym, I took my best stab at being Mark’s relationship coach. At one time I’d been just like him, shy and afraid to talk to girls I liked. It had finally dawned on me that if I was waiting for the girls to come flocking to me for my looks, I’d be waiting a long time, so I’d quickly learned that holding a conversation and scoring some laughs went a long way with the girls.

After I’d done my best to get Mark feeling confident enough to go ask this girl out, he finally found his balls and made his way across the street to sweep his damsel’s feet right off that fast-food joint’s floor.

A few minutes later, he walked back.

“How’d it go?” I asked.

“It was good. We talked,” Mark said, busying himself at the gym counter, “but she likes you.”

“She likes me? She doesn’t even know me.”

“Yeah, she says she saw you run across the street and thinks you run good.”

Run good? I tried to think of all the times I’d sprinted across the street to Del Taco. I’d gone over a few times to get their chicken taco salad, but of all the things to notice, my swagger wasn’t one of them.

Mark watched me contemplate the situation. “Do you want me to go tell her anything?” he finally asked, resigning to his new role in the matter.

“Yeah, tell her I like the way she walks,” I said. I was being a complete smart-ass, but I couldn’t help myself.

I think Mark got the picture pretty quickly. He never talked about Elaine again.

If you ask Elaine, she’ll tell you I started going over to see her, but she actually made her way to the gym more, even if she won’t admit it.

It was attraction at first sight. Elaine reminded me of Princess Diana, except she was far cuter with her short, blonde bob to complement her tall, thin body. She lied and told me she was eighteen years old. I was nineteen at the time, and it didn’t take me long to figure out she was really sixteen. For our first date, I took her to dinner and a walk in the sand in Newport Beach.

Elaine was nice and sweet, but I actually broke up with her after two months. One night, I was supposed to pick her up for a date and just didn’t show. I stopped calling. I know it was wrong and cowardly, but it just seemed like the easiest way.

Generally speaking, at times I wasn’t a good boyfriend for any girl. I’d treat them fine while we were going out, but there would come a time when I’d get bored and stop calling. I would basically disappear. Right after I turned twenty, I did it to Elaine.

Imagine my surprise when Elaine walked into Samson’s Gym about four months later. She’d thought I’d left the gym because I’d traded in my car, a 1966 Ford Econoline surfer van with a 302 V-8 engine and jacked-up Cragar rims, for a black Pontiac Trans Am. When she didn’t see the van parked outside the gym, she assumed I’d moved away.

When she ran into one of my gym buddies, though, he told her I was still around, so she decided to pay me a visit. Shockingly, she wasn’t all that mad. We talked a bit and ended up going on another date. Elaine was tenacious, I’ll give her that.

When did I know Elaine was the one? It was when she played the theme to the film
Ice Castles,
“Through the Eyes of Love.” I know it sounds crazy, but she played the piano so beautifully and looked so pretty in that moment that I told myself,
I’d better not screw this up again.

Elaine proved to be my match in every way. In the past, I’d always gotten tired of being around girls, but after that I never got tired of Elaine. Okay, I’ll admit I did get tired of talking to her on the phone—the girl could go on for hours—but our time together was fun.

Elaine became my best friend. She took a great interest in me and everything I was into, like my lifting, motorcycles, and suped-up cars. She never tried to change me but allowed me to be who I was, for better or worse.

I’ll admit that couldn’t have been an easy thing for her to do sometimes. Did I mention I have a temper and a stubborn streak? But Elaine was always brave enough to tell me when I was acting crazy or getting out of control. This is not a feat for the fainthearted.

Elaine’s and my unique relationship dynamic was clear the day we played Zimm-Zamm, an inane game involving paddles and a tennis-sized ball attached to a pole with a cord. It’s like tetherball, except one player is trying to get the cord wrapped around the top of the pole while the other is trying to hit it to the bottom.

After playing a couple games, Elaine sat down to take a break, while I kept hitting the ball.

Elaine got annoyed. “Stop hitting it so hard,” she said. “You’re going to hit me.”

Now, I was standing there with a ball on a cord attached to a stake pounded into the ground. There was no chance of that ball going anywhere outside of the arc the cord allowed it to travel.

“Elaine, it’s physically impossible for me to hit you with the ball,” I said with complete certainty. “You’re sitting ten feet away.”

But she insisted I was hitting it too hard.

One of us was wrong, and it wasn’t going to be me. I’d prove it. I tossed the ball up and swung the paddle like I was Pete Sampras at the US Open. Sure enough, I knocked the ball right off the cord and hit Elaine in the throat. A direct hit.

She staggered back, eyes big as saucers, and started gasping for air.

“I’m so sorry!” I told her. I couldn’t say it enough.

When she could finally speak, all she said was, “You did that on purpose.”

I’m not sure I’ve ever fully convinced her I didn’t.

To this day, when my stubbornness clouds my judgment and I think it’s no way but my way, my wife has to utter only two syllables: “Zimm-Zamm.”

Elaine and I became inseparable. We went to parties and the movies together, I took her to her junior and senior proms, and I got to know her family.