A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting (18 page)

The formative event of his young life happened when he was eleven. He was behind a truck on the farm when it suddenly backed over him. It ruptured internal organs and shattered ribs, and should have killed him. His brother tried to pull him out but couldn’t; trapped beneath the truck, Rodrigo was sure he was going to die. Yet somehow he didn’t; instead, he spent eleven months in a hospital bed and couldn’t walk for about a year and a half. He had a lot of complications in the hospital—staph infections, lung infections. It’s hard to know how the darkness affected him, the stillness, the endless hours of self-contemplation for a boy who wasn’t self-contemplative. “I prayed a lot,” he said simply. He came to know his body extremely well, and essentially he showed he was too tough to die. He wasn’t a talker, especially about himself; he was a jock and a larger-than-life athlete, but I think that ordeal strengthened him, mentally—as I said, in jiu-jitsu a setback can be turned to an advantage.

His recovery was complete, however, and the wild boy didn’t slow down much. The best Rodrigo story I heard happened when he was about sixteen. At a Halloween party, he and his brother stole a university skeleton that had been placed on the lawn as a joke. During the course of the night, the skeleton got lost, and neither brother could remember where. When an irate professor called the next day, demanding the return of his skeleton and threatening police involvement, Rodrigo begged for a little time, as he and his brother had had enough problems with the police already. At boarding school, Rodrigo had a maid whose boyfriend worked in a cemetery, and she said she could get him a skeleton.

Well, from one of the caves for the anonymous dead she got him a partially decomposed body, maggots and all, and Rodrigo took the body back home
on the bus.
The smell was so horrible the bus had all the windows down, even though it was winter. Somehow Rodrigo got the body home without being detected. From a doctor friend the brothers learned that they should leave the bones out, covered with chlorine, to bleach the skeleton; and so thinking they were finally in the clear, they placed the body on the roof of their family’s house to bleach for a week while they returned to boarding school. Unfortunately, across the street was a police station. Curious about the decomposing body on the roof, the police stormed his father’s house. Rodrigo got a call from his furious father and had to explain everything. Like I said, Marquez and Tarantino, and maybe a little Monty Python.

What made Rodrigo so dangerous in the ring was that he believed in jiu-jitsu; he trusted it. When a fighter goes for a submission and tries to win a fight, he often sacrifices superior position, because if the opponent is knowledgeable, then the submission fails and the fighter ends up on the bottom, or worse. Rodrigo attempted submissions all the time, and most of them failed; that’s the way it is in modern MMA, where every fighter is highly skilled and schooled in submission fighting. Most fighters play it safe and work the ground only for position and to punch, without risking themselves. Rodrigo was a notable exception. He took huge risks and gave up position without a second thought because he believed in himself—in his jiu-jitsu—and it is precisely that belief that made him so dangerous. He
did
catch people all the time; fighters who had been avoiding submissions for fifteen years got caught by him.

Jiu-jitsu looks sort of simple, and there are only a certain number of submissions—arm-bar, rear naked choke, triangle, for example—that one can do, but there are infinite variations, because it is all about how you get those things done: whether you can set them up right, whether you can get them done against tough opponents who are strong. I can put a triangle on somebody who doesn’t know what it is and get it to work, but it takes an extraordinary player, like Rodrigo, to sink one on a Mark Coleman, who has been pounding people at the top level for ten years. Submitting Mark Coleman is like acing Andre Agassi—it can be done, but it has to be so strong fundamentally and so well set up technically that it becomes unavoidable. Submitting someone like Fedor is even harder, as he is a sambo (a Russian derivative of judo, jiu-jitsu, and wrestling) specialist and an athlete at the apogee of the sport. It’s like dunking on Shaq: You have to be extraordinary
and
having the best day of your life.

One night, after his muay Thai workout, I found Zé after the sun had long set and the red evening was darkening to monochrome. He unwrapped his hands, moving slowly, explaining to me some of his philosophy, the importance of the team.

Fighting is the most solitary form of competition; you are all alone out there. But what I hear again and again is how important the team is, and not just from the Brazilians, but from other MMA fighters as well. The team is what gets you there. Team members train and spar and cajole you, push you through the rigors and hellish boredom of training, and they support you and protect you from nerves in the days and hours leading up to a fight. Fighting is, strangely enough, a team sport. Zé said, “These guys, they are all studying jiu-jitsu ten years or more. They are strong, their bodies are very developed. Now we must develop their minds and spirits. The brotherhood protects you and makes you better; the most important thing is respect and honor and friendship. Union and respect and family sense are what are going to make you strong in the ring.”

I ask: What’s the most important aspect of the ground game? What’s the key to ground fighting? What should I focus on? The answer, when it comes from Zé or Murilo, is enlightening: humility. Always assume that your opponent is better than you, that he knows more—you have to work harder in training and learn more. You know only 5 percent of what there is to know. Fight your own pride and ego and be open-minded and always learning new techniques, new things from anyone.

It was very revealing to me that these Brazilians, the greatest ground fighters in the world, should say that the most important thing, the biggest technical secret they can disclose, is for a fighter to remain humble.

As I walked home in the deepening dusk, I was convinced of one thing: that the ground game, in the
gi
and out, is almost infinitely deep. There are layers within layers—the places where Tony DeSouza and Teta and Margarida and other young innovators go, the levels of complexity, are deep and, to me, nearly unfathomable. One needs years and years to comprehend. That, however, is the pure ground game, pure grappling. MMA is a far looser, faster game; being able to punch and kick alters things radically, and many great ground fighters have been stymied by good strikers who could avoid their game. I wondered if this time Nogueira would be able to catch Fedor in something. Would he be able to lure Fedor into his realm? It was going to be the biggest fight of Nogueira’s life, in Tokyo on New Year’s Eve. I wanted to go. I pitched it to
Rolling Stone
as
Lost in Translation
but with Brazilian fighters instead of Scarlett Johansson, and they bought it.

I was ready for Tokyo to be cold, imposing, impersonal, and maddeningly foreign, but it was more complex and alive than that. I found it strangely friendly, despite the walls of neon. It was clean, cozy, and small. The streets were narrow, with alleys winding and twisting from any angle, and there were little coffee shops and bars and noodle shops tucked away in every cranny and corner.

Everywhere had about 30 percent more people than New York; there was a constant, somewhat uncomfortable press, all around, nearly all the time. The language barrier, while formidable, was not so isolating that I felt confined to my hotel. There was a wall of non-meaning in everything, every sign and every muttered conversation overheard, but as I was coming from Brazil, it didn’t seem so strange. It was horrifically expensive, but that was avoidable: I used the subway, I ate in little noodle shops by choosing from pictures on the menu, and nobody seemed too put out by the tall
gaijin.

Pride Fighting Championship was begun in 1997, aping the Ultimate Fighting Championship in the United States and for ostensibly the same reasons: to provide an “anything goes” format to decide which fighter and style are the strongest. The early Prides were a mess of mismatches and boring fights, as wrestlers fought boxers and savagery triumphed over all. There were some good fights, some diamonds in the rough, but also a lot of bad ones (and perhaps “worked” ones; in Japan, the barrier between pro wrestling and MMA is porous). Since then, Pride has evolved to the point where there are often many great fights on a single card. This is mostly because of money; Pride is far and away where fighters can earn the most. As Zé said, “If there is something else, tell me about it, because I’d love to know.” Essentially, there isn’t anything else with Pride money out there, except for a competing Japanese production, K-1, which started as a kickboxing event and has branched out into MMA. The UFC in the United States doesn’t come close to matching Pride in terms of purse, at least not for the undercard. Fighters around the world, with the exception of the few top guys the UFC takes care of, go to Pride if they can.

After I arrived, I found Zé, Rodrigo, and Rogerio, along with the rest of the retinue (Amaury Bitetti; Rodrigo’s two coaches; Danillo, the training partner; and Marco, the Italian), as they were blearily nodding over their noodles, just off the plane. I followed them up to their rooms.

I was a little nervous about the sleeping arrangements, but I managed to tag along and force my way into the gang, and Zé shuffled me off with the boxing coach, Luis Dórea, and the muay Thai coach, Luis Alvez. They had no idea who I was and seemed particularly nonplussed when I shouldered my way into their room with my bag and started camping out by the window, unrolling my sleeping bag and pulling a cushion off the chair for a pillow. I don’t think they ever quite bought the idea that I was really a writer, but they didn’t care too much—it was a Brazilian kind of scene; there’s always somebody tagging along.

On their second day in Japan, we all woke early, jet-lagged and groggy, and went down to the gym to run and lift a little. Then I sat with Zé in the sauna, and we sweated and soaked and then showered off on the little stools in front of the mirrors, feeling a little like giants in playland.

We met up for the fabled breakfast at the Tokyo Hilton. It was the only good thing about this trip for most of the guys, who had already been to Japan eight or nine times that year. It was an elaborate, silver-service buffet affair with great food and attentive waiters, and it cost upward of thirty-five dollars per person. We had some complimentary passes and ate in relaxed splendor. The trick was to show the dining ticket but not get it taken away, so that you could use it again. Amaury, a friend and former fighter on Carlson’s team who’d trained with Pat Miletich, was a jiu-jitsu instructor in Florida—and spoke no English. He ate like a hero, endless cups of good coffee, fresh-squeezed juice. Breakfast was the high point of the day, the only time besides training when we were all together, and we would sit there for hours, dawdling and chatting and snacking.

I would sit in the middle of the babble of Portuguese and, if I concentrated, understand the gist of what was being said; but often I would just relax, and it would fade into a comfortable mumble. They talked about fighting, of course. The boxing coach, Luis Dórea, had several good fighters in Los Angeles, as well as a half dozen Brazilian prospects, and both he and Luis Alvez had been to Japan many times that year for various fighters. Zé Mario had been there ten times, once staying for four days, flying back to Brazil for five days, and then turning around and flying back to Japan, a thirty-hour flight.

There was an evil hostess, the Dragon Lady, who became aware that we were trying to rip off the hotel, and she watched us like a hawk, confiscating all our tickets at every meal. It became obvious that we were going to play a game; we were engaged in a duel. I was going to try to wring everything from the hotel for free, and she would try to catch me. Everything fights, even the hostesses.

We would work out in the hotel in the mornings and train at night, slogging through the cold to a special room a few blocks from the hotel in a residential part of Shinjuku, wandering between skyscrapers like kayakers drifting amid icebergs. Zé would bravely lead the way, the stalwart soldier, and like ducklings, the Brazilians would fall in behind him, using him as a windbreak, wilting in the icy blast. Rodrigo and Rogerio always took a cab. The building we trained in, situated on a tiny one-lane street with quiet people bicycling past, seemed almost abandoned. Rodrigo would work out for maybe an hour: grapple, then spar, then work pads with Dórea and Alvez.

One night, the liaison woman from Pride came in with some urgent news: Sakuraba had gotten hurt. Sakuraba was a storied Japanese fighter who had crossed over from pro wrestling and become famous as the “Gracie Killer” when he beat Royce, Royler, Renzo, and Ryan Gracie, and he had fought some of the legendary fights of Pride. Wanderlei Silva, a Brazilian fighter who was undefeated in four years of Pride, had beaten the living shit out of Sakuraba three times, and they were going to fight a fourth time, but Sakuraba had busted a rib (I felt his pain) and was dropping out of the fight. The woman translator asked Zé half jokingly (but half seriously) if he or Rogerio would be able to step in and fight. Wanderlei was nicknamed the “Ax Murderer,” with good reason. Zé shook his head strongly that neither was ready, and he was absolutely right. They weren’t ready for Wanderlei; he ate fighters like them for breakfast (Wanderlei was at the height of his powers and seemed invincible). I think Zé could’ve fought Wanderlei and beaten him if he had been super prepared, in the best shape of his life. He would’ve needed a strategy and a plan and months and months to mentally prepare, because the Ax Murderer handled jiu-jitsu guys like they were tissue paper. Wanderlei was the principal fighter for a team called Chute-Box, which traced its roots to the old battles of
box Thailandes
and
luta livre
with the Gracie students. He was a stand-up fighter, a devastating striker with boundless animal ferocity.