Uncaged (29 page)

I saw the name on top. I saw that it was Frank Juarez. At first I thought
Oh no, someone has stolen my identity!
In the last ten years, I have had a bunch of attempts at accessing my identity under my old name, Frank Alicio Juarez. I always assumed it might have been my dad, trying to use my credit or get some of my money. So I thought this was another one of those attempts. So I followed up and contacted the district attorney's office. I discovered that they wanted to find someone to vouch for him so he could get out of prison.

I was shocked. I was a little scared. But I didn't feel responsible. I wasn't tempted to do what the state was asking me to do. That was very clear to me. So I said, “I don't want anything to do with the guy.” I had a young daughter at home. I didn't want a violent sex offender living with me. I didn't even want him to know where my
house was. I was sorry about him being locked up, and sorry that he had no one to vouch for him, but I did not feel responsible for him. I hadn't seen him or heard from him in over twenty years. He had never been a father to me. I didn't even remember him from my childhood. I didn't want to have him in my life—at least, not this way.

The guy from the prison board told me that I could say no, and that probably what would happen is that my father would remain in custody. Then, every two years or so, I'd be contacted again when he came up for reevaluation. I'd get the call. I'd be asked again if I wanted to vouch for him.

I asked the guy to take me off the list. I told him, “I'm a public figure. I'm easy to find. This isn't something I want to be involved in—ever. I don't want to be contacted anymore.” The guy said he'd take me off the list. I didn't hear anything else about it. I felt really weird for about two weeks. My dad had been so removed from my life for so long. I never heard from him, or heard anything about him, so I hardly ever thought about him. Now he was on my mind, and it disturbed me. Then time passed, and I went back to not thinking about him.

But then Robynn gave me this new information. I was shocked, like I said. But I wasn't totally surprised. It made sense. It even made sense that my mom knew about it, and maybe even accepted it for a while. She had told me once that her own mother had engaged in some sort of deviant sexual stuff. She kind of hinted that was why her mother had left her father and gone off to live with an alcoholic guy in a trailer park. It had something to do with sexual behavior, and my mom was exposed to that, somehow, when she was a little girl. So for her, maybe, it was almost normal to be around that kind of thing. Maybe she was also molested; maybe I was, too.

I didn't know and hadn't even considered it until now. Was that one of the reasons that I could not control my actions when I was
a little boy? Did something happen to me that I was too small to process and purposely forgot? I began searching my memories and past for clues or feelings. I was really freaked out with all this new information about the past. Thankfully there was so much good in my life at that moment that I decided to put the spirit of healing out into the universe. Whatever “it” was, I was going to face it. The universe answered, via Facebook.

Shortly after I started writing this book, and months before Robynn came to visit, I posted a childhood photo on my Facebook fan page. I was around six years old in the picture. It looks like an elementary school photo, and I have on a yellow shirt, a huge frown, a bowl cut, and a chubby belly. Within days of posting it I received a lengthy Facebook message from a woman calling herself my aunt Jewell. She said she was married to my mom's brother, Mike. She had helped raise me when I was a little boy. She had lost track of me some thirty years ago when their family moved away to Colorado. I was her favorite baby boy, Frankie, and she wanted to talk.

She was so proud that I was successful and had worried herself sick about me all these years. She said I was shy and overweight, everyone teased me, and my mom was always locking me in the closet. This felt like a kick in the gut. I was hurt, angry, sad. I remember Joe putting me in the closet and I hated him for it, but I don't remember Mom authorizing it or putting me in there herself. Robynn kind of remembered Aunt Jewell, mostly from stories that Mom told us, but nothing solid or concrete, nothing that I could use to bolster my courage to contact her back. But I finally did, and we set up a phone call, or tried to. I was really busy, and sometimes I would just lose courage. I was also writing this book at the time and the emotional toll was exhausting—I didn't know if I could handle any more. Aunt Jewell wouldn't let it go, though. She kept rescheduling every time that I got “busy”; it was obvious that she needed
to talk. Jewell had just survived a bout with breast cancer. She was tough like that, but I began to realize that she had things that were weighing on her spirit that needed to be released. I called her. She started bawling and talking at the same time, gushing out her story.

She and Mike had married when she was a virgin. When she met Lydia, my mom, Lydia already had four kids, her own house, and her own car. Jewell really looked up to her. The two families grew up together. Mike didn't work but insisted that Jewell have a job. He would stay home and do whatever—smoke pot, screw around. He was a total loser, and she picked up the slack. That's around the time that Mom met her soon-to-be-next husband. He immediately moved in. He was a loser, too, with the same work ethic Mike had. They hung out all day while Jewell went to work. One day when she came over to Mom's door to see if White Hippie Guy was there, she heard a child's muffled screaming coming from the living-room coat closet. Jewell quickly opened the door to find me hanging upside down by my knees over the hanger rod, screaming. I was two or three. She sobbed out that she had wanted to save me, run away with me, that she knew what was going on was so wrong. But she was just a young girl. She said she was so sorry that she could not save me.

Listening to her words and hearing the emotion melted my heart. I told her it was OK, I was OK. Everything worked out. I was happy, healthy, successful, famous. It was OK now. I asked questions. She told me that Lydia and Mike were not affectionate people at all. The kids learned to work very young, cooking and cleaning. Aunt Jewell confirmed that White Hippie Guy was a real creep and deviant, and she was terrified to be alone with him. After a few years in Redding, she and Mike had more financial troubles and one day picked a place on the map and moved. Mike told her to never speak to my mom or her family again and never to contact us. I am
glad she defied him. We talk often now, and our families are back together. It's time for the secrets of the past to die and for everyone to start living, right now.

By early 2009 I was healed enough from the Cung fight to think about fighting again. I still had the plate in my arm, and breaking it again would be a bad thing, but the doctors said I was strong enough. So we started looking around.

I had a deal with Scott Coker, and we were basically partners. I had signed a deal for six fights with ProElite earlier, but then ProElite had fallen apart. Scott and Strikeforce had bought their assets and renegotiated their deal with Showtime. Scott said to me, “We need a barn burner. We need you to fight someone incredibly relevant and tough.” We started talking about who the other fighter would be. We talked about a rematch with Cung Le, but he was making a movie and he wanted too much money. We talked about a rematch with Renzo Gracie, but he was with the UFC and he wanted too much money, too. We talked about Tito Ortiz, but he was with UFC, too. That was sort of the problem. Strikeforce had a roster of about seventy fighters, but only four or five of them were big names. Everyone else was with the UFC. We needed a big name to move everything forward.

Nick Diaz seemed like a logical choice. He was another tough Mexican kid, like me. He came from Stockton, California, which is a pretty tough place, and went to high school for one year in Lodi. He got into MMA, he said, because he was bullied by bigger kids when he was a teenager. He became a swimmer first, then began studying martial arts. He found his way to the Gracie organization and, along with his little brother Nate, became part of the Gracie camp. That made us natural enemies, and it gave the fight a hook. It was Shamrock versus Gracie again.

He was already one of the top contenders in his weight class. He was the up-and-coming guy. I was the old guy. It was clear that Strikeforce and Showtime were looking for me to step up and fight the young guy. It was going to be a good story, and it would make a statement about the brand. Either I'd beat him and we'd have this bad-ass competition that could play out for a few years, or he'd beat me and the story would be more about the changing of the guard.

I wasn't too worried going into the fight. Nick seemed like a loudmouth punk. He was always saying rude things about his opponents. He was a big trash-talker. He didn't look like he was in good shape. He also seemed like a big stoner. He made no secret of his fondness for weed. He joked about it. I thought he might have a hard time passing a drug test. But I knew he was a serious opponent. He had a good record, 18-7. He was taller than me at six foot one. He wasn't heavy or burly, but he had really long arms and legs and was a good striker. He was also eleven years younger than me. But I was eleven years wiser and more experienced than him. It seemed like a good match, but balanced in my favor.

It was an evening of strong fighters. Brandon Michaels went up against Raul Castillo. Scott Smith fought Benji Radach. Brett Rogers fought Abongo Humphrey. A Japanese woman fighter named Akira Hitomi got beat by Cristiane Santos. Gilbert Melendez, another Gracie guy, beat up Rodrigo Damm. (Rodrigo had been brought in at the last minute. Melendez was supposed to fight Josh Thomson, but Thomson broke his leg sparring and couldn't compete.)

I was pretty amped up for the fight. I felt bad about the way things had gone with Cung. I had shown up ready to fight and had given the fans a tremendous battle. If my arm hadn't gotten broken, I think I would have won the fight and retained my middleweight title. Now I was fighting a catchweight fight against this kid. I was confident that I'd beat him. I was already thinking about a rematch with Cung. I was looking ahead. But I wasn't in top shape. I had
torn some muscles in my abdomen in training. Every time I turned my torso, I felt a horrible burning pain. I was a little worried about that.

The event was held in my hometown, in my home arena, the HP Pavilion “Shark Tank” in downtown San Jose. We were broadcasting on Showtime. We were almost sold out, with something like fourteen thousand tickets sold. I don't know how many people were there to see me, or to see Nick Diaz, or to see another Shamrock-Gracie fight. This was where the first fight happened, when I kicked Cesar's ass in front of eighteen thousand fans. Some of them might have come back to see the next installment.

The night opened with a moment of silence for an old friend, Charles Lewis, known as Mask. He was a founder of the TapouT clothing company and a big personality in the MMA world. He had been killed in a drunk-driving, drag-racing accident in Newport Beach less than a month earlier. People were really fond of him, and they were feeling the loss.

The crowd was into it. The fight celebrities were there. Mickey Rourke, with whom I had started to become friends, was in the house. So were Cung Le and Gina Carano. Then the fighting started. Brett Rogers came out and gave Abongo Humphrey a terrible beating—knees to the face and some brutal shots before Abongo went down hard. Then Cristiane Santos, known as Cyborg, came out and gave the Japanese fighter an ass-whipping. Scott Smith came out and for a couple of rounds looked like toast. Then he turned it around and knocked Benji Radach out.

Gilbert Melendez took the cage and gave the Brazilian Damm a bad beating. Melendez knocked him out, and it took the trainers a full two minutes to bring him back to consciousness.

It was time for me to work. The announcer called the fight “a grudge match of the generations.” The fans got to their feet as we came down to the cage. Half of them seemed to be cheering for me.
Half of them seemed to be booing Nick Diaz. We had already had a couple of press conferences. Nick had made his feelings known; he never missed an opportunity to give me the finger, to give the fans the finger, to show his bad-ass attitude. We exchanged some words at the weigh-in. We traded some more smack in prefight interviews. He said, “I'm gonna put him down in the first round.” I said, “I don't think he's prepared for me. I don't have any doubt in my mind that I'll smash him. I think he's making a huge mistake.”

We had some nice dialogue at a press conference in Los Angeles. We came out to meet the reporters. I stuck my hand out to shake. He gave me the finger. I was smiling and laughing. He had an evil frown on his face. He took the microphone and said, “I feel confident. Frank's too small for this weight class. He's got a little-guy complex.”

I gave some back. “My son's five years younger than Nick,” I said. “If he acted like this, I'd send him to his room and take away his allowance.”

“Where's he at right now?” Diaz asked. “I'll fight him, too.”

“He's in college,” I answered. “You wouldn't know.”

Later, I said, “I just hope Nick has his friends there, so they can catch his head when I knock it into the second row.” I don't think he answered that one except to flip me off again.

I was asked whether we had any difficulty getting the fight set up. I said the only problem was Nick having to take the drug test. I asked him how that had gone. He said, “I think they're gonna let me fight no matter what.”

I said, “Well, there's your answer to that one.”

What he didn't know, because nobody knew, was that I was not feeling 100 percent. Certain things had not gone well leading up to the fight. I had popped a few ribs during practice; I was wrestling, doing some grappling training. I had been having some rib issues. I didn't think they were serious. What even I didn't know was that
my C7 disc had compressed. This was a bad combination. So I went to do this giant bridge while training, and I tore my abdominal muscles several levels deep. The pain was extreme. I screamed. I actually screamed. I hadn't felt pain like that since Cung Le broke my arm. It was horrible.