The Laws of the Ring (24 page)

The 33rd Law of Power

Fight to the Bitter End: The Power of Giving Your All

S
even months later, on June 7, 2009, I got my rematch with Mike Brown. This was my chance for redemption, and I'd thought of little else from the time the first fight was stopped. I was fighting before my hometown fans in Sacramento's ARCO Arena. I entered the cage determined not to put myself in the kind of compromising position that had cost me the first fight.

Midway through the first round, a heavy punch whizzed by my head as I ducked out of the way and answered with an unorthodox up-kick that landed on Brown's head. Frustrated by my speed and elusiveness, he displayed a growing sense of aggravation that led me to believe I could take him right out of the fight. He almost ran toward me, and I responded with a two-punch combination and immediately backpedaled out of reach.

A small cut opened over his right eye, the first physical manifestation of my attack. He rushed in and scored a short-lived takedown. I quickly got back on my feet and forced separation. As he came forward, I unloaded a vicious right hand. He ducked and let loose with a punch of his own. My right hand connected with his forehead, and immediately I could feel the crackle of bones in my two small knuckles.

Four minutes into the first of five rounds, in a fight I was dominating, I had broken my right hand in two places. The pain was searing; my fist vanished and my hand dropped limp to my side. I threw a desperate dropkick that missed and sent me to the canvas, with Brown following. I lay there, my hand throbbing, my mind reeling.

This was the second-worst pain I've ever experienced in a fight. I fought José Aldo for a title at 145 pounds, and José just annihilated my right leg all night long. It was like being hit with a baseball bat for twenty minutes straight. He caught me with a couple of good ones in the second round, and almost immediately two softball-size lumps grew on my thigh. I lost my mobility from there, which allowed one of the best kickers on the planet to unload on me round after round. By the end of the night, my right leg was swollen to about three times the left, and it changed colors three times over the course of the next two weeks. My leg looked like it belonged on a dead body. But I digress . . .

Here I am against Brown, my big fight for redemption having just begun, realizing that I was going to have to beat him with one hand.

There was an understanding, and a calculation, but I doubt you would have seen a change in my heart rate from the moments before I broke my hand to the moments after. It's difficult to describe where my mind goes during a fight. It's a far-off place, where the only thoughts are centered on one thing: keep fighting. It's not like I'm playing a game and I hope it turns out in my favor. It's deeper than that, like a fight for survival. My trainer, Master Thong, knew I could keep going. He doesn't speak much English, but after the first round I let him and Dustin—and
only
him and Dustin—know that I'd broken my hand.

Master Thong gave me a furious look and said, “Shut up—champion!” and punched me right in the heart. I was down with that.

Adversity is always an internal struggle. Surrendering never entered my mind. Creativity and persistence, right? I had to think of a way to make this work. The old battle plan—the one that counted on two healthy hands—was gone, replaced by a plan that depended on my ability to defeat a world champion fighter with one hand.

I made it through the second round in good shape. I relied on elbows and knees, unable to use one of my best weapons. I was hiding my handicap pretty well, until the announcers figured it out late in the second round. First they noticed I wasn't throwing any punches with my right hand. I was all elbows and knees—that's all I had. I couldn't even defend takedowns because of the hand, but I could get back up to my feet.

Then, in between the second and third rounds, one of my corner guys asked, “Why aren't you throwing your right hand?” This was a stupid thing to say. I'd figured Dustin and Thong had let him in on the secret, but I guess not. Just to shut him up, and purely out of frustration, I said, “I can't. It's broken.” Everyone else in the corner knew, and here he was, telling me to throw my right hand. Unbelievable.

Early in the third round, things got worse. I dislocated my left thumb. Now
both
hands were useless. The announcers noticed that I was now slapping with both hands. One of them said, “Oh my gosh, I think he might have broken both hands.” I was doing my best to hide the fact from Mike Brown that my hands were essentially useless. As it turned out, the emphasis on my hands, and the commentators' disbelief that I could continue, was a good thing for me. I compete in the ultimate masculine sport, and I gained a ton of new fans who were won over by my willingness to keep fighting and my relative success in doing so.

The thumb injury was incredibly frustrating. It wasn't totally useless; it was
intermittently
useless. If I hit with it, it would lose its strength, but then gradually improve until I used it again. The same cycle repeated itself.

Nobody in my corner ever suggested I throw in the towel, probably because they knew the reaction they'd get from me. (If you're curious, go back and read about Dustin and Dave's intervention after my first fight.) I knew I looked silly throwing punches that looked more like schoolgirl slaps, but I'm proud that I made it a fight. I probably even won a couple of rounds with a broken hand, and I almost had him in the fifth round with a standing choke, which I lost when he flopped to the ground and my broken hand was the one dangling.

Afterward I discovered that people thought I was crazy. They wanted to know why in the world I continued fighting for twenty-one grueling minutes with two snapped metacarpals in my right hand and a dislocated thumb on my left. The answer is that from the moment I started training to be a professional, I made sure I was proficient at all the disciplines to allow myself the best opportunity to cope with the worst-case scenarios—maybe not specifically a broken hand and a dislocated thumb, but worst-case positions or situations.

When you approach your passion as a fight for survival, your world changes. I wasn't going to stop just because I injured my hands. What was I going to do, lie on the canvas and bemoan my fate? No, I'm going to try to figure out a way to win with the cards I've been dealt. The worst-case scenario arrived. How am I going to react? How good am I? That's the mentality. Of course, you know by now that my thinking is the same as the thinking of other guys who are truly meant for this profession—I'll fight until I'm unconscious—but I was prepared to adapt on the fly and, in training, created a scenario where I could compete despite the restrictions and the pain.

Don't let anyone convince you that a loss is a loss is a loss. All losses
are not
created equal, and most of the time it's how you handle them—the way you hold yourself accountable afterward, and the way you apply the lessons you've learned—that determines their worth. Approach your own goals, dreams, and aspirations with an undying persistence and don't stop until the final bell. Having passions in life is what keeps us going, even when adversity tries to knock us out.

The 34th Law of Power

Find the Good in Bad Situations (The Hidden Benefit of Two Useless Hands)

I
've never felt a level of helplessness in the cage that compares with my feeling during the second Mike Brown fight. As if breaking two bones in my right hand wasn't enough, I had to go and dislocate my left thumb in the third round. That's a whole lot of rotten luck for one fight, but I made a point of not using those injuries as an excuse for losing the fight. This wasn't just a public front either. There were several times during the fight, after I'd suffered the injuries, when I sincerely believed I could have won the fight. I just didn't.

As I've said, writing this book has forced me to revisit a lot of memorable moments in my life. Some positive, some not so much. Since I am always searching for ways to put a positive spin on a negative topic—making excuses, for instance—I did a little soul-searching to find a way to put a positive spin on this one. I knew there was something I took away from the experience, but I kept coming up empty.

Then my buddy Dave Shapiro reminded me of the Monday after the fight. We went out to lunch in Sacramento, and he now tells me he was all prepared to give me his best keep-your-chin-up speech. He figured I was going to be down in the dumps after losing the fight, so he was ready to spend the afternoon trying to cheer me up.

Instead, he got blown away.

“I couldn't believe all the positive stuff you were saying,” Dave later told me. “I'll never forget it: You were even saying that having two busted hands was a blessing in disguise.”

It
was
a blessing in disguise. Remember, wins and losses are not the ultimate proof of your effort or ability. The scoreboard is not God, and nobody should worship it. By fighting hard and well against Brown with my hands essentially useless, I learned a lot about myself. I tested myself under the most trying circumstances, and I came away stronger for it.

But it wasn't just about winning a couple rounds with severely compromised hands (which proved to me that my stubbornness wasn't in vain). After the fight, the injuries to my hands forced me to take a break from training and seriously reassess my life and career. For the longest time, I had promised myself I was going to sit back and spend some time addressing some of my business issues. Training for one fight after another, I never gave myself the opportunity to address them. Now, with my hands needing to rest and heal, I could sit down without guilt and put my businesses in order.

The downtime allowed me to organize the gym and hire the kinds of trainers and teachers I felt could provide the most benefit to our members and fighters. I was able to spend some time with Mike Roberts and Jeff Meyer discussing ways to grow MMA Incorporated (our management company) and what my part was in the process. I devoted more time to getting this book under way, and mapped out some great strategies to strengthen Team Alpha Male, which was growing fast. I would schedule meetings with my neighbor Jim and think of cool activities and exercises we could do to strengthen the team's mental game.

Furthermore, before the second Mike Brown fight, I had told myself that I would make some time after the fight to work on my legs. I wanted to devote a serious amount of time to strengthening my legs and improving my kicks. With my hands out of commission, it was the perfect time for that.

According to Dave, our lunch talk was filled with me rolling out all these positive outcomes of my injuries. As it turned out, he didn't have to spend any time trying to cheer me up. I guess I was unknowingly practicing what I've been preaching since page one of this book. The need for an optimistic outlook.

Again, the battle against adversity is a completely personal one. It's fought in your mind and your heart. Unless you face adversity, how do you truly find out who you are? Taking on your passion, especially if it's something out of the mainstream, is bound to create adversity. Excuses won't overcome it, but you know what will? Inner resolve and the personal satisfaction that comes with prevailing in the face of overwhelming odds. Then getting creative so that the odds turn in your favor.

The 35th Law of Power

Know
Your Enemy

T
he roots of my rivalry with Dominick Cruz go back to the days before our first fight. He and I were doing some promotional work that included signing the official fight poster. This is a standard part of the lead-up to the fight—you sign a ton of posters, most of them are given to charity, and others are passed out to promote the fight. We get to keep a few for ourselves to pass out to friends and family.

Right away, Dominick was upset because his picture wasn't on the poster, only his name. I had nothing to do with this decision, but apparently the WEC felt that the four belt holders were the main attraction and they decided not to include Dominick's face. Dominick protested this in a way that I felt was childish and, for lack of a better term, pretty lame: He signed his name right across my face on each of the posters.

The MMA hype machine makes the most of my rivalry with Dominick, but in truth, watching him deface the poster bothered me on a number of levels. I felt it was unfair to the promoters, the other fighters, and the charities that were going to receive the poster. And I confess that a factor outside Dominick's control increased my displeasure. I had just gotten my gym up and running around that time, and a few days before this incident, it had been hit by taggers. When I saw what he was doing to the posters, I equated it with the tagging. In a way, it felt like vandalism to me, and I was sensitive to this at the time.

Fast forward to the lead-up to our second fight, the headline fight for
UFC 132
in July 2011. Dominick and I, once again, had to do a promotional tour together. One of the stops was at the U.S. Marine base at Camp Pendleton, along the coast north of San Diego.

There were four fighters there—me, Dominick, Phil Davis, and Rich Franklin. When we arrived at the base, we thought it was going to be a shake-some-hands-and-support-the-Marines kind of thing. Man, were we ever wrong.

We were introduced to three drill sergeants, just shy of having one for each of us. I was doing my usual thing, trying to be happy and outgoing and ingratiate myself in as easygoing a manner as possible.

“Hey, I'm Urijah, nice to meet you,” I said, sticking out my hand to a guy who looked like he could be an NFL running back.

He shook my hand but didn't smile. Glad I didn't try to high-five him.

Then Phil, always the wise guy, said, “Hey, you were just about to smile.”

The sergeant stopped and looked at him without a hint of amusement. “No. I wasn't.”

These guys didn't seem interested in happy horseshit, though we still didn't think their rudeness was deliberate given that we were being filmed for an advertising campaign featuring UFC fighters and the Marines. After we were dressed down by the drill sergeants like fresh recruits, they hustled us over to the obstacle course, where they lined us up again.

“You will shut your mouth and listen,” one screamed out like he was R. Lee Ermey from
Full Metal Jacket.

Phil Davis laughed a little, still not sure that these guys were for real—still thinking they were going to start laughing at any minute.

“Phil, is there something funny about the U.S. military?” another of the officers asked.

The third drill sergeant, Sergeant Fuentes, noticed that Phil was having a hard time repressing his smile. He barked in a hoarse shout, “Phil, when he says, ‘Stop smiling,' he means hide your teeth!”

At that, I started laughing hard. We were like fourth graders—one guy giggles, pretty soon the whole class is giggling.

The first drill sergeant turned his attention to me and asked, “Urijah, is there something funny about Americans dying in war?”

Okay, so this really
was
serious. I thought there was going to be a little indoctrination scene and then we'd move on, but after we finished the obstacle course, they tossed sixty-pound packs on us and marched us three miles. Later, we had to do a night obstacle course, during which we had to crawl under barbed wire and roll around.

There was no time for petty squabbles between Dominick and me. In this situation, we were forced to spend a good deal of time together and even work together to get through a lot of the exercises.

It was an unusual setup for two fighters leading up to the biggest fight in either of their careers, but I took it as an opportunity to figure out what Dominick was all about. I didn't ignore him or pretend to hate him—“pretend” because I don't hate him. I just wanted to understand him a little bit.

He and I spent a lot of time talking. We were both reluctant at first, and mostly made sarcastic jabs and comments to each other, but eventually we came around. It didn't take me long to realize that Dominick has a huge chip on his shoulder. He felt he'd been mismanaged, and that this had cost him money. He felt he wasn't appreciated enough by the public and the fight community given the amount of success he had.

I could see that Dominick was a little taken aback by how nice I was to him. Given our history, he didn't expect me to engage him the way I did. I might dislike the way some people behave, but I honestly don't hate anybody. Instead of using our awkward proximity as a chance to add fuel to the feud, I wanted to use it to gain a better understanding of who he was and why.

There are bound to be difficult people in your life. You're guaranteed to run across people who have personalities that don't mesh with yours. And these people might be the ones standing in the way of you and your passion. You're going to have to deal with them. But you gain power from knowledge, and confidence from understanding a person's background and motives.

I had felt that the basic difference in our personalities boiled down to the different factors that motivated us. Of course, I openly thrive on positivity and constructive feedback, and I had believed Dominick was motivated by negativity. But what I came away with from our time at Pendleton was this: Even though it seemed as if he drew strength from things that were seemingly negative—perceived criticisms and slights—he always managed to latch onto something positive.

Here's what I mean: In the cover story about him in
FIGHT!
magazine, Cruz made a point of bringing attention to an after-fight speech in which Matt Mitrione praised Cruz's fighting style and said he would like to pattern his own style after him.

“How many people in the world have other fighters coming out publicly and saying they wish they could fight like him?” Cruz was quoted as saying in the magazine. “Well, Matt Mitrione is a good example of that. He's a guy who recognizes what I've accomplished in this sport.”

That's when it hit me. Cruz's negativity is a facade, a motivational
ploy
. Like the rest of us, Dominick wants to be told he's doing something well. That's the power of positivity. We all want to be told we're doing something well. We all want positive feedback, even when we've convinced ourselves that the negative kind is the only kind we'll ever get.

So the whole time we were together, I took the approach that anyone should use with someone who wants to pummel his face in. I made a concerted effort to see the best in him. How did I do that? By showing
him
the best in
me
. It wasn't an act—I try to stay open-minded about everyone, even if—maybe even
especially
if—it's someone I'm fighting. If Dominick, as I perceived it, was motivated by negativity, I was going to show him nothing but positivity. I was going to be relentlessly upbeat. I wasn't going to provide him with any material that might create more animosity between us.

N
o matter how much you might feed off negativity, a positive message is always stronger. I'm habitually positive. I try not to use anger as motivation. Sure, there are always times when I think about pummeling my opponents in the cage, but it's not because I'm angry, it's because I want to win. What fuels my drive is my belief in myself. My competitive nature will not allow another person to strip that belief from me.
That's
how I get motivated for a fight. There's no anger, but there is a sharp competitive edge. Every fight is an opportunity for me to test that belief in myself.

I am happy with myself even in defeat, which is a difficult concept to grasp unless you see it as I do: When I have given all I can and still lose, I can't be anything but happy. I am willing to concede that another man can be better than me on a given day, and I harbor no resentment in the aftermath of defeat. I try my hardest to avoid jealousy and envy.

On the flip side, I do not see my success as indicative of another person's weakness. I do not use victory as a means of elevating myself above other people, or as license to belittle them.

In the quest to allow your passion to dictate your life, a positive approach is imperative. Train yourself to be positive. Make conscious decisions to be productive and uplifting. I said, regarding Cruz in the
Countdown
show leading up to our fight, “I think the main difference between us is simple: It seems like he's motivated by all these negative things, and I'm motivated by all these positive things.” Now, looking back, I know this isn't true. During our time together, I think we were able to bring some positivity to our competitive relationship, and we ended with an epic fight. I'd like to think there was a connection between those two events, and I look forward to fighting Dominick again.

M
y fiercest rival in college was Matt Sanchez, who wrestled for Cal State Bakersfield and was a two-time All-American. Matt is a year younger than me and we split four matches at 133 pounds while I was a senior at UC Davis. Our competitive, one-track personalities were such that we both assumed the other was a complete jerk
off
the mat because we were bitter enemies
on
the mat. The nature of competition wouldn't let either of us believe the other might actually be a good guy. It made no sense—we didn't even know each other. We competed, but we didn't have conversations or make any attempt to understand each other. That was the way it needed to be in order for each of us to maintain a competitive edge. I didn't want to know if he made regular visits to an orphanage or volunteered at an old-folks home. I wanted to keep our relationship on an adversarial level; it was the only way I could maintain my dispassionate and animalistic mentality.

The last of our four matches came at the Pac-10 championships in Boise during my senior year. The stage was set for an epic battle after a back-and-forth year that had me up by one. Matt won our first match in a close decision. I won the second in a close decision and I destroyed him in the third. I was pumped for my final match against him because I was ranked number nine in the country and a win over him would improve that and earn me a spot for a third year in the NCAA Division I wrestling championships. The year before I had missed All-American status by one point, putting me in the top twelve in the nation instead of in the prestigious top eight. I had been training the entire year for the NCAA tourney, and thought it would for sure be the last competition of my athletic career.

Midway through the first round, I had a 2–1 lead. It felt like I was in control of the match, but that didn't last long. We were standing and I lunged in for a sloppy inside trip that got me put on my back; two-point takedown, then a three-point near fall. I fought hard off my back but landed in another three-point near-fall position. In a matter of seconds he was leading 9–2 at the end of the first round. It was a crushing turnaround for me, and I responded by going on a wild spree in an attempt to win by pin, my only legitimate chance at victory. It didn't happen, and Matt won by a technical fall.

I was devastated. I walked away and slumped onto one of the back warm-up mats, crushed. The more I thought about it, the more upset I became. Before long, I was lying on the mat, crying. My athletic career was finished, and it had ended in horrible disappointment.

I couldn't stay on that mat and wallow in self-pity, though. I had to compose myself and return to the main mat for the postmatch handshake. This was tough. I pulled myself off the mat, swallowed hard, wiped my eyes, and tried to remove any last vestiges of my tear-fest. When I lined up with my teammates, the first thing I did was look across the mat to find Sanchez. And there he was, smug as could be, chewing gum and smacking it around in his mouth like a cow chewing its cud. For some reason, this bugged the crap out of me. By this point, everything about Sanchez bugged me—his body, his wrestling style, his smug attitude, his damned gum, and the way he went about chewing with his stupid mouth open and smacking it from side to side. I guess you could say I didn't like Sanchez at that moment.

After the season ended, and I graduated, I was hired as an assistant coach at UC Davis and, that summer, participated at a kids' summer wrestling camp at Lake Tahoe. There I ran into Matt Sanchez. We were in a small group of camp teachers, and when it was my turn to speak, I said, “Can you believe this dopey, scrawny little guy beat me?” The kids all laughed, of course. “Well, it was hard for me to accept that, too, but this man right here is the best technician I ever faced. You can learn a lot from him.”

Matt just smiled, and I walked away hoping I'd made my point: I still wasn't happy that I'd lost to him, but he had my respect. From there, it was natural that we'd start talking and getting to know each other in a manner that was different from on-mat rivals. Not surprisingly, we got along great. I even came to forgive him for being the only guy who made me cry in competition.

My professional fighting career took off during my second year of coaching at UC Davis. Once I got the sponsorship from the Dunmores and was being paid to train, it was harder to justify the hours I needed to spend coaching. I enjoyed the work, but the payoff didn't justify the output. However, I didn't want to leave my old coach in a bind by quitting, so I began to think about how I could find a solution that would work for everyone.