Uncaged (26 page)

I trained what I could train. By the time of the weigh-in, I could walk with two knee braces on and not look like I was in pain. No one outside my camp knew what had happened. Usually I'm very vocal about my injuries and my problems. Most fighters hide that stuff. Not me. I tell everyone who will listen what is wrong with me: the fighters, the media, everyone. I don't know why I started doing it, no one else does. But once I started talking about my injuries I noticed that some fighters believed it and other didn't, so I kept telling everyone to confuse them. It worked because the fighters thought I was trying to mislead them with false information about injuries, because no one talked about getting hurt. Normally, I just laid it out there. But this was different. I started putting out rumors about my
other
knee.

My wife and my son, who flew out for most of my fights in the United States, and my trainers knew what was going on. I said, “This is really bad. You guys should know.” So they knew. It was clear that since I hadn't been able to do my training, and since my leg was hurt, I wasn't going to be able to do my basic thing, which was wrestling. I was going to have to stand up and strike. I had a lot of confidence in my striking, but I didn't have much experience. I had no idea whether I could beat Baroni that way.

I was scared. The Phil Baroni I was about to face was a scary guy. A lot of that was an act. I know that because, way back when, Phil came to me when I was teaching and approached me in a very humble, very normal way. He was outside his persona, and he said, “Would you teach me some of that stuff?” He was very personable.

But this was a different guy. He was angry, and he was taking steroids. He wanted to kill me. He was a guy who hit really hard and who was able to take a serious beating himself. I had never really been knocked out cold, like when your brain really turns off. I had been knocked unconscious, when I had my bell rung and went away for a second. But I had never been knocked out to the point where someone had to wake me up. That is very, very bad for your brain, and I really didn't want anyone to do that to me.

Phil Baroni looked like the guy who could do that. And the guy who really
wanted
to do that.

I spent two weeks sitting on that mattress in Temecula, meditating, pumping my soul up for the fight that was coming. I wasn't worried about performing. I had always performed, no matter what kind of injury I went in with. But I worried about concealing the knee injury, and about not having to back out.

The night of the fight came. We had fourteen thousand paid admissions. It was a huge fight. I was ready. I was still in very bad shape, but I had a plan. The fighters are supposed to be in their dressing rooms an hour before the match. I was planning on getting a big shot of lidocaine in my knee right before I went out. The
shot lasts about an hour. I made them wait with the shot, and just sat there in pain, until the very last minute. When they came and knocked on my door, I said, “Doc, give me the shot.”

I went out. I was scared. I had limited gas, and I knew it was limited. I knew I was at 65 percent or less. It wasn't good.

Phil Baroni was scared, too. He had to have been. He was stepping into a fight that was way bigger than anything he'd ever done, on a stage that was way bigger. He had come to California despite the drug test threat. He probably knew he wasn't going to pass. If he won the fight and got the championship, they'd probably take it away from him. But I had challenged his manhood. I had called him out. He was physically ready to kill me.

For him, it was a career maker. For me, it was going to be really good or really bad. When it was over, either my career was going to be finished or I was going to be a superstar. I couldn't have said one way or the other which way it was going to go.

We came out. I wore white shorts. He was in red. I had on two red knee braces, one on each leg. I looked OK if you didn't know why I was wearing them. Some sort of prefight online poll showed that most of the fans thought Baroni was going to win. For a while, at the beginning of the fight, it looked like they were right.

He got me pinned against the cage, just like he said he was going to, and he bounced my head off it a few times. He was hitting fast and hard. This wasn't necessarily a bad thing. He wasn't doing any real damage, and he was using up a lot of energy. This is something that happens to guys on steroids. Enson Inoue fought me like that. He came out on steroids and was brutal for a few minutes, and then he ran out of gas. I thought maybe Baroni would do that.

We went down. We got up. We danced around. His initial burst of energy didn't come back. I got the center of the ring. I hit him really hard on the chin. Nothing happened, but it felt really good. I moved him around the ring a little. I started to think maybe this was going to be OK.

So I taunted him a little. I took my fists away from my face and sort of waved him in—
come on and get me!
Then I took my hands and did a little “nighty-night” move, like I was going to sleep, and then pointed at him—like I was going to put
him
to sleep.

Two seconds later I hit him with a left jab and huge right, and he went down. I was on top of him fast, and hit him a bunch more times. He turned his head and I hit him in the back of the neck without thinking, just like during the Renzo fight. I couldn't believe what I was doing. I am totally kicking his ass and for whatever reason I start fouling him. I got a warning and a point against me. Then I got him in a front choke. The announcers actually called it. One of them said, “He's going for the choke!” and then, “It's over!”

But it wasn't over. It was only two minutes into the first round. And I was fighting Phil Baroni. Some guys might have tapped. But Baroni didn't tap. He broke free. We were on our feet again. Then we were on the ground again. He was on top. He was hanging on, but he was absorbing a lot of blows doing it. I hit him again and again in the head.

We were up again. I pushed him around to the edge of the mat, and got him hard with a knee to the face. He went over, and I got another choke hold on him. He slipped out of that, but he was on the ground and I hit him again and again to the head.

He escaped. He was up. I hit him again, with a really hard right, and then followed up with a knee. He looked a little stunned, but he didn't fall over. So I did that some more. I was having fun. I was smiling. I taunted him some more
—come on!
I got inside and hit him with another really hard right and knee combination.

The round was nearly over. I hit him again several times. His face looked terrible. He was staggering around. I got him to the edge of the cage, then we were on the floor. He was holding me down. It was all he could do. I saw Tom Casino, the Showtime photographer, shooting cageside and instinctively flashed him a peace sign. Baroni
was too hurt and didn't have the energy to do anything else. He managed to hang on until the end of the round.

In the next round, he came back strong. He was boxing again. He hit me a couple of times, pretty hard, and I was tired. I couldn't see the punches coming. He was bouncing around like he was fresh and ready to go. But it didn't last. I hit him hard a couple of times, and then he was just swinging. He threw his arm around trying to land something. A couple of them landed. But I hit him again and again. I hit him
hard.
I had almost never hit anyone as hard as I hit Phil Baroni, and I hit him again and again. He was taking the most amazing amount of punishment.

At two minutes left in the second round, I caught him by the edge of the cage with a combination of rights and lefts. He took me down as he fell. He tried for an arm bar. I tried for a guillotine. We grappled around. I got a rear naked choke on him. But he wasn't going to go quietly. He was struggling. He was trying to hit me. He was getting weaker. But he wasn't tapping. For the longest time, he wasn't tapping.

I put everything I had into that choke. I was losing steam, too. Every second we fought, every second I held onto him, I was losing steam. I could feel him slipping away, but I was thinking, “If he gets out of this, he is going to kill me.” But he didn't tap. With forty-two seconds left in the second round, the ref called it. He waved the fight over.

Baroni was out. He was actually unconscious. I couldn't get out from under him. I pushed him with my arm, and then sort of kicked him off me with my foot. I had defended my title. I had won. I had defeated a terrible opponent, but it came at a cost. My hands had never hurt so much after a fight. I thought they were both broken. They hurt for days from beating on Baroni's head so much. And my face was mush—I spent days falling in and out of naps on the couch with ice packs on my face. But it was also incredibly liberating.
I had fought an almost entirely stand-up match. It ended with a choke, but the whole fight had been standing up, against a guy who specialized in that kind of fighting. I felt unbeatable.

Baroni later said he wasn't ready to tap, wasn't ready for the fight to end. But he ended up failing the drug test anyway. He tested positive for stanozolol and boldenone. He was fined $2,500 and given a one-year suspension from fighting. He got that reduced, but it was still his second bust for steroids.

I learned so much from the Baroni fight. I learned a lot about being tough, and what kind of tough, and what to do with it. Baroni was the kind of fighter who could take an amazing amount of abuse. He has this amazing chin. You can hit him forever and he still keeps coming. But when we were fighting, when I got close to him, I could feel the strength oozing out of him. I could feel he was losing power faster than I was. He was angry, and he was tense. Fighting is all about relaxing. You can't be angry and tense and keep going for very long. It tires you out.

I can usually get close to a guy and see his spirit, see if it's strong. It doesn't have to be my fight. I was watching the Marquez-Lopez fight in Las Vegas. In the eighth round, Marquez went to his corner and I could see he wasn't coming back. I said, “I guarantee you he's going to sit on that stool and not get back up.” And he didn't. He is an amazing warrior, but I could see in his spirit that he wasn't going to make it.

Fighters fall into different categories of tough. There's really tough, so-so tough, and not so tough. Tito Ortiz is a middle guy. He's so-so tough. You can break him. At his core, he is not a real believer. You see that if you study his antics and his outward persona. The persona he puts out isn't who he really is. Inside, he's a regular nice guy. Outside, he's this killer dude. The difference between those two, the use of that persona, made me see there was a weakness in him. In his fighting style, just like in his public
persona, he's a big bully. But if you take that away—just like with all bullies—he turns passive and starts wheeling backward. So I knew, before I ever fought him, that I could break him. I knew it would take a little time, maybe fifteen minutes, but then he would get tired and I could break him.

Renzo Gracie was the same way. He put out a lot of bluster and bravado, but I knew his spirit was weak in our fight. I knew he was game, but as soon as we started fighting and exchanged energies, I knew he was going to fold. I know, with a guy like Renzo, that he's forty years old, that these are his last fights, that this is his body, and that this is his limit. I knew I could sprint, balls to the wall, for ten minutes and take him. As it was, he took that knee to the back of the head and saw a way out.

Cung Le, who I would fight later, was in the not-so-tough category. He was dangerous but not lethal. I love him and he's a fighter, but at the end of the day he doesn't actually
want
to get into a fight. He wants to get into a gentlemen's sparring contest, not a fistfight. Now, I don't really want to either, but it's my job. I know with guys who don't really want to fight, or don't really want to get hit, that if I can lure them into a fistfight they will crumble. I thought Cung was in that category. He was never going to kick my ass technically, or knock me out. He wasn't going to kill me. I knew that if I fought him hard, and fought him dirty, and made it more like a street fight, it would take him out of his comfort zone, which is the martial arts zone. And then I could take him into the getting-your-ass-kicked zone.

Ken Shamrock was the toughest guy I ever met, back when I met him. He was mentally tougher, and physically tougher, than anyone else. He got the nickname “the World's Most Dangerous Man” for a reason. But things change. Ken changed. His ego got involved. His weakness is his ego. That is what has made him vulnerable. In
2000, his career record was 24 wins to 5 losses and 2 draws. That's an incredible record. He had fought and beaten everyone in the world. The only guys who'd beaten him were the Pancrase masters Funaki and Suzuki, Royce Gracie, and Dan Severn. No one else could touch him.

Ten years later, his record was 27-14-2. He had won three more fights, but he lost nine. He'd had his ass handed to him by everybody. Tito Ortiz beat him three times—twice in one year! His ego made him fight all these stupid fights, and maybe made him lose. So Ken, I think, went from the super-tough to the not-so-tough category.

Phil Baroni is super-tough. When we fought, he didn't know he wasn't good enough to beat me. That made him dangerous. He didn't know he didn't have the skills. That and the steroids made him dangerous. He was overconfident. He was ready for the fistfight. He wasn't afraid to get hurt or get knocked out. He wasn't worried about getting an ass-kicking. He was very, very ready to go all the way. And he did. He never tapped out. I had to choke him into unconsciousness to win the fight. That's tough.

I would put myself into the super-tough category, too. That doesn't sound very good or very humble, but it's true. When I came to my fights, I came expecting to be hurt really bad, even killed. I accepted that. I understood it, and I accepted the possibility that I was going into the cage to face my death. I learned to do that even though I was afraid, and later I learned not to be afraid. That made me very hard to beat. A man who is not afraid to die is very hard to beat in a fight. After the tryout initiation routine with Ken, the first day at the Lion's Den, I never tapped out, except in Pancrase. That's how we ended a lot of the fights, so I tapped a few times. But I never once tapped out of a professional MMA or no-holds-barred fight—never. Not many fighters can say that. I never quit. I was never submitted. I was never knocked unconscious. I never asked to
have a fight stopped. I got beat fair and square a few times, and I got cheated out of winning a few times, and I complained about that. But I never tapped out.