My Fight / Your Fight (28 page)

“Congratulations,” I told him.

“Thank you,” he said.

The next morning, Darin picked me up at dawn and we headed to the airport. We were in line waiting when I looked at the time.

“We're super early.” I was used to cutting it close when it came to flights.

“Well, we're only going to Canada, but it's still an international flight,” Darin said.

The line started to move, but every single muscle in my body froze.

“Do you need your passport to go to Canada?” I asked quietly.

Darin turned to me.

“What?”

“Do you need your passport to go to Canada?”

“Yes. Why? Did you forget it at your house?”

I frantically tried to picture where in my house my passport was.

When was the last time I needed my passport?
I asked myself.

I felt the blood drain from my face.

“My passport is at the Brazilian consulate,” I admitted. I had left it there to get a visa ahead of the judo tournament I never attended in Brazil. I racked my brain; had it been a year ago?

We stepped out of line. Darin looked at his watch. The Brazilian consulate wasn't even open yet. He got on his phone. I just stood there, not knowing what else I could do.

“Someone is going to meet us at the Brazilian consulate and open it up for us,” Darin said. He had talked to the promoter as well. They said I could weigh in at the hotel whenever we arrived. Then he got us on a later flight, and we jumped in the car and rushed to the consulate. When we arrived forty-five minutes later, a staffer was waiting for us. He handed me my passport.

“You have great timing,” he said. “We only hold passports for a year. We were about to send it out to you this week and it would have been in the mail.”

I couldn't help but think that the timing could have been a little better.

Passport in hand, Darin and I rushed back to the airport. We were going to be cutting it close if we wanted to make our flight.

Standing in the security line, I heard a familiar voice say, “Heeeeey you guys.”

It was Edmond, still wobbly from a night out celebrating his son's birth and surprised to see us.

Thirty minutes later, the three of us were packed into a row in coach, me in the middle. Edmond passed out right away. I could smell the alcohol oozing out of his pores.

The next day, we arrived at the casino where the fight was being held. They had a craps table in the back. The warm-up mats were so dirty that Edmond had to find towels to rub down the noticeable layer of grime. Even so, when we got up after grappling, we had dirt all over our skin.

“Make this fight fast,” Edmond said. “This place is disgusting. I want to get out of here.”

I beat her by an armbar in forty-nine seconds to improve to 2–0. Afterward, as she was walking back to her corner, I got in her face and shouted, “You should have let me go to Strikeforce, you stupid fucking bitch!”

It wasn't my fastest finish, but it was my biggest payout so far. I earned $1,000.

After the fight, we headed back to the hotel so I could take a much-needed shower. I had just finished getting dressed when Edmond knocked on my door. I opened the door and Edmond came inside the small entry hall leading into my room.

“I have something to tell you,” Edmond said.

“What?” I asked.

“Strikeforce called: You're in Strikeforce.”

“Oh my God!” I shouted. I started jumping up and down. I did a happy dance.

“I told you it was going to happen,” he said.

Edmond looked me over. I was wearing jeans and a hooded sweatshirt. He was wearing his immaculately ironed shirt, his nice shoes, expensive jeans, and a Gucci belt.

“Now listen, you're going to be out in front of the camera a lot and people are going to see you,” he said. “There are things we have to do a bit different.”

He pointed to my outfit.

“No more baggy clothes like that,” he said. “I know you're a fighter and you don't care, but let's forget about the fighting for just one minute. Let's get a little bit image going on. Forget about looking fancy when you can't fight for shit, but you can fight.

“Things are going to change and you need to start thinking about that. I'm guiding you like I would to my sister. I'm not telling you these things about your appearance so you feel bad about it. I just want the best for you. You deserve it.”

I was excited and flattered, but more than anything, I was hungry.

“OK, Edmond,” I said. “I will do that. I will fight perfect and I will dress perfect and I will do whatever else you ask, but can we start after dinner?”

My life was going to radically change. I was going to be able to quit all of my other jobs and support myself as a fighter. I was going to prove all of the people who said I shouldn't be a fighter wrong. I was going to have enough money to fix my car windows and maybe even the air-conditioning. I might even be able to afford to move to a nicer place.

I could have done without the stitches, the false alarm, the forgotten passport, and the dirty casino. But those bumps, like all obstacles in life, forced me to adjust. I learned I could fight through anything. I learned how badly I wanted this dream and how much it hurt to have it so close and then ripped away. The experiences made me want to succeed even more and made me even more driven. The lead-up to my first professional fights might not have gone perfectly according to my plan, but, in the end, everything worked out perfectly. That's all you can ask for.

People are always looking for the secret to success. There isn't a secret. Success is the result of hard work, busting your ass every day for years on end without cutting corners or taking shortcuts. It was Michelangelo who said, “If people knew how hard I worked to get my mastery, it wouldn't seem so wonderful at all.”

It is not hard to figure out what goes into being successful, but it's also not easy to do.

DPCG and I broke up several times. The day he stole my car was the lowest point, but he was still struggling with his addiction. We would break up, but it always felt like the universe kept pulling us back together.

Twice, we broke up, and a few days later, I would be stopped at a light and see him in my rearview mirror. He shrugged his shoulders or shook his head, as if to say, “What are the odds of seeing you here?” We pulled over and laughed about it, and realizing how much we missed each other, we would kiss and cry and make up.

However, the relationship had changed. I was transforming and that was the one thing that really pulled us apart. Not the MMA itself, but that I got to the point where I wanted more. I was getting more and more motivated every day. I was on a mission to take over the world.

He didn't have the same drive. And though DPCG believed in me and supported my MMA dream when everyone else was rolling their eyes at the idea, he was also insecure about it.

One night, practice at Hayastan ran late.

“Hey, girl, where you been?” he asked casually as I walked in the door.

“Practice,” I said. I was exhausted, sore, and wanted nothing more than a shower before falling into bed. But first, I leaned in to give him a kiss. He pulled back.

“You smell like some dude's cologne,” he said. It wasn't an outright accusation.

“What are you saying?”

“Nothing.” He shook his head and smiled apologetically. “Nothing.”

“The Armenian guys I was training with douse themselves in cologne after practice and hug me as I walk out the door,” I said, defensively.

“They're hugging you,” he said. His eyebrows furrowed slightly.

“They're my friends. I've known them forever. They're Armenian. Armenians are very affectionate. I can't just tell everyone to fuck off and run out the door after practice.”

“Yeah, I guess so,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. “Now, I'm going to take a shower.”

As I started to undress, DPCG wrapped his arms around my waist from behind. I leaned back as he nuzzled his face into my neck. Suddenly, he pulled back.

“Is that a hickey?” he asked. His tone was accusatory.

“Wha—What the what?” I stumbled over the words. I looked in the mirror.

“That's a mark from where someone was trying to choke me,” I said, pointing to my neck. “And that one there, and that one there too.”

“It looks like a hickey,” he said.

“Well, it's not,” I told him. “I've spent most of my life covered in bruises and marks. I don't even notice them. It's nothing to get worked up about. It's just normal.”

But he wasn't a fighter, so he didn't see it that way. He wanted to support me, but the more driven I became, the more threatened he felt in our relationship. He didn't have a job he liked. He hadn't found something he was passionate about. He was resigned to accept his situation, whereas I was obsessed with elevating mine.

When we met, he was perfect for me. We were two people content not to aspire toward anything. But then I changed.

We broke up for the final time shortly after I had gone pro. We had been through so much after two years together. He really was one of my best friends. I knew it was different this time, because it wasn't dramatic. There was no animosity. I didn't cry hysterically. It wasn't like we were having an argument. It was more like we were really saying goodbye. And we just talked, tears trickling down our faces until we fell asleep.

He woke up before me, and slipped out without waking me. On my door, he left a message in dry-erase marker. It read:
I love you, girl. Don't ever forget, you are my heart.

I never wiped it off.

In judo, so many people care about rank and what degree black belt they are. I have never gotten caught up in that. Rank is based solely on a board of people getting together and saying, “Oh, you deserve to be such-and-such a rank.” Once you give them the power to tell you you're great, you've also given them the power to tell you you're unworthy. Once you start caring about people's opinions of you, you give up control.

It's the same reason I don't get caught up in being the crowd favorite when I fight. It's why I don't read things that are written about me. One of the greatest days of my life was when I came to understand that other people's approval and my happiness were not related.

My first Strikeforce fight was scheduled for August 12, 2011, and I would be facing Sarah D'Alelio after all.

Ahead of the D'Alelio bout, I had a camp for the first time—camp is tailoring your workout schedule so that you are at your absolute physical and mental peak when you step into the ring. The emphasis was still on building up my skills, but we started preparing specifically for D'Alelio.

I quit all my jobs and we did a four-week camp. Though we didn't have the money to bring in top-notch sparring partners, I'd never had such focused training leading up to competition.

On Monday of the week of the fight, I got a call from Darin.

“The folks at Showtime called,” he said. Strikeforce had a national broadcast deal with the cable network. “It's about your walkout song.”

“Same one, ‘Sex and Violence,' ” I said.

“That's the thing, they have an issue with the words,” Darin said.

“Wait, which word?
Sex
or
violence
? Because that's literally the entire song, just a guy going ‘sex and violence, sex and violence.' ”

“Actually, both,” Darin said.

I laughed. “But literally, isn't that what they're selling?” I asked. “Why do people watch women's fights? Sex appeal and physical violence.”

“I don't know,” Darin said, slightly exasperated. “You just need to choose another song.”

“Fine, just pick something from Rage Against the Machine,” I said.

Two days before the fight, we drove to Vegas. I rode with Darin. Edmond and a few other guys from GFC came. We met at the club and caravanned out through the desert. We could have flown to Vegas, but I liked making the drive.

From the moment we arrived and checked into the Palms—where the fight was being held—it was clear I had reached the next level. Everything just ran smoother. It was more professional. The organizers knew who you were and where you needed to be when. The venue was bigger. The fighters higher caliber.

We had a warm-up room, not a random area cordoned off, but a room to put our stuff in and to warm up with my trainers. There were people who kept me updated on when I was going to fight and showed me where to go. I felt right at home.

I walked out to Rage Against the Machine. The song didn't feel quite right.

I stepped inside the cage. The referee sent us to our corners, then told us, “Bring it on!” I jabbed to close the space for a clinch. D'Alelio threw a straight right and missed. I took a grip that only a judoka would know. It was a grip for one of my favorite judo throws,
sumi gaeshi
, where you pull your opponent to the ground on top of you and throw her over. I instinctively jumped into the throw, but because there was no gi to grab on to, I started to lose my grip. Midair I changed the technique to an armbar and started cranking on her arm while she was still falling.