Fighter's Mind, A (11 page)

“Why do I beat a lot of people? Because I love it so much, that’s why. Everything about jiu-jitsu, I love it—the school, the mat, the ring. I always believe that. Maybe I am not better than my opponent, but I know for sure I love my training more.” He smiled at me. It was all so simple. The birds chirping, the sun shining down around us in suburban Florida, Marcelo beaming at me.

Thanks a lot
,
Marcelo,
I thought. That’s a big help in trying to understand your thought process. It was funny how hard it was to get these guys to talk about how they
think
. While many will admit that the great jiu-jitsu players do think about jiu-jitsu differently, they get resistant when you try to quantify that.

I’d asked Scotty Nelson about it; Scotty had been a white belt with BJ Penn back at Ralph Gracie’s gym. “Do some guys think about jiu-jitsu differently than you and me?”

“Absolutely,” he’d replied. “All the top guys think about it differently. I was hanging out with Nino Schembri. He was the guy, back in the day, submitting everybody. I asked Nino, ‘How did you get good at submissions from all these different positions?’ He said he looked at all the bad positions, all the spots where he wasn’t strong, and tried to figure out a submission from there. He doesn’t fight to get into the right position—he learns and practices submissions from positions he’s uncomfortable in. Nino said, ‘I’ll never be the best wrestler, I don’t want to be, but I figured out all the takedowns and have a way to flow into a submission. Off a double leg, I look for the triangle. Off the single leg, omoplata. If he goes for a high crotch, I dive over for a crucifix. I take what they give me and make a strong position out of a weak one.’”

Maybe more revealing is the level of dedication that Nino showed, the clinical, thoughtful way of thinking about jiu-jitsu, the depth of his study. It’s that level of commitment that is distinct.

I found that pattern repeated. Many good jiu-jitsu players will just train and because they know enough to beat most people they stop studying and learning. The great ones, though, are fanatical students, analyzing positions and all the tiny adjustments that make a position or a sweep work. The difference between a regular student of jiu-jitsu and the great players is the dedication to studying the game. Sean Williams, who got his black belt in four years from Renzo despite being sidelined for months with injuries, would fill notebooks after every training session, writing down everything he could think of. BJ Penn, the so called prodigy, who some think of as a mysterious genius, is the same way. The stories about him from his early days at Ralph Gracie’s Academy are all about his fanatical drilling of small positional changes. BJ would laugh about those days and talk about how jiu-jitsu invaded his dreams and daydreams, in the shower, biking home, lying in bed. All the great players talk about it, how it becomes an obsession.

 

I pressed on with Marcelo. We started talking about where he came from, Minas Gerais, a big inland state in Brazil. Marcelo was from a remote town and, like many in Brazil, he started young in judo. Then he saw his first videotapes of the UFC. “I thought, I wanna do this,” he said. Marcelo found his first school and it was an hour and a half by bus away from his home. He was fourteen and could make it only two or three times a week. “You can always train jiu-jitsu if you want to bad enough,” he said. Where he lived there was only a small university and a few options—his father was a retired banker, his mother worked at home. He didn’t have the money to go elsewhere to study. But Marcelo realized he could make jiu-jitsu his profession. “I just enjoy it so much. I hope I can make enough to live off it someday. But I decide to make it my life.”

In his off days, he would just wait and think about the next time he’d get to go train. “I loved the energy, of matching with each other. I loved the way I felt after training, that I’d done my job today. And after a few weeks I realized I could do this forever. I started with four friends, and I was the biggest one—I grew up early—but I was the worst one. The worst one of my friends. I wasn’t a natural, but even then I enjoyed it so much, and I kept making the long journey. After two months one friend dropped out, and I just kept improving. There was one guy who was a man, and he used to beat me up, but then he stopped for five months, and when he came back I could control him. I had proof that I was getting better. I wasn’t a good student, and even now I never say I am better than anybody, but I know I love jiu-jitsu more than anybody. I love the energy and that it gets deeper the more you study.”

Inwardly, I sigh. No silver bullet. “Is it just that you know more?” I asked him. “Sweeps, holds, counters . . . ?”

Marcelo’s eyes lit up at “counters.” He liked that one. “I think I have a lot of counters, unnerstan’? I try to make him go into the position I want. I study a lot. I try not to make any mistakes, I try to be perfect, and I have a little more knowledge than most. It’s something I think about, how to get him to put his hand there or his leg where I need it.

“Guys who face me, when they believe they can win, and when they are strong and come hard, that’s tougher. When they are tentative, or have too many strategies, when they try to beat me in my game . . .” Here he grins and his face lights up. “That’s not gonna work, guys. Of course I get caught sometimes, but most of the time I can handle it.

“I’m always thinking when I’m rolling, and sometimes the guy can’t follow my pace and lets me get too far. When it goes too fast, then it’s just reaction. You have to train hard for that, train all the time.”

When Marcelo was sixteen, his training wasn’t hard enough to satisfy him. He felt stifled by the future in his small town, the long commute limiting his training to three times a week. At a competition a teacher named Paulo Cezar invited him to move to a nearby city and train at his school. “I asked my mom, and she was shocked but she let me move if I finished school there. So two months later I moved and started studying there.”

Marcelo’s jiu-jitsu training began in earnest. He loved the gym and the teacher, even though the teacher was just a brown belt. There were a lot of people around to train with and Marcelo trained three or four times a day for three years straight. When he started with Cezar, he was living on the mats, sleeping in the gym at night—a common enough occurrence in Brazil for the young, poor, and dedicated. Eventually he was given a small room off the gym, which he shared with a roommate. Over the next few years Marcelo met his wife, got his brown belt, and moved to São Paulo, where he started training with Fabio Gurgel, an elite-level coach. He was constantly competing in Brazil. Then came the Abu Dhabi in ’03. Marcelo had been a black belt for only five months.

Marcelo actually lost the final of the qualifiers by one point. He’d pulled guard and lost a point and his opponent ran for twenty minutes. So he wasn’t expecting even to compete and was training in the
gi
for more
gi
tourneys. Fabio, the old hand, knew there would be last-minute cancellations, and visa problems, so he had Marcelo make weight and, sure enough, Marcelo got his chance. He had been waiting a long time for it.

“I was really prepared. I felt nobody could take this from me. I had a hard bracket, but I knew that people didn’t know me, didn’t expect much from me, and wouldn’t have a strategy for me. I could play my best game. Everyone else is a big name, he’s a Gracie, whatever. I didn’t want to respect anybody too much. I thought to myself, I can win this thing. And then I started to make it real. I started to win, and I got stronger after each match.” Marcelo not only won his bracket, he submitted Mike Van Arsdale in the Absolute division. Van Arsdale is a former NCAA champion and superstar wrestler who outweighed Marcelo by two weight classes. Marcelo swarmed him, slipped up on his back, and choked him out in a minute or two. In the footage of the match, you can see Van Arsdale’s utter surprise and disgust that anyone could do that to him.

Marcelo embodied what Carlson Gracie had told me and Scotty—all his
gi
training would work no-
gi,
too. He showed how the x-guard, a new type of guard that gets under an opponent and destabilizes him, could be adapted very well to no-
gi
. And Marcelo was always aware of what techniques would work on guys no matter the size. He had played a lot of triangle games (the triangle is a kind of choke from the bottom, catching your opponent’s head and arm between your legs) in his early days, until he realized he couldn’t triangle really big guys. But he could arm-drag and take the back and choke someone any size. As Eddie Bravo said, “Don’t be fooled. Marcelo is deceptively strong, his legs are powerful.” Mike C had agreed, saying,“Marcelo’s legs are as big as mine. And he’s got bowling balls for calves.” More to the point, Eddie talked about Marcelo’s squeeze: “Marcelo has an incredible squeeze. He developed a squeeze and took it to levels that no one knew existed.”

When Marcelo puts the choke on, he has developed his
squeeze
to a high level, where it instantly constricts and fighters are helpless against it. In ’03, when Marcelo rolled against Shaolin, an awesome, athletic jiu-jitsu fighter, Shaolin and Marcelo spun into a lightning-quick war and suddenly Shaolin was unconscious—he hadn’t even had time to tap. Marcelo can apply it from odd places, and fighters think they’re safe when they’re not.

When I apply a squeeze in the rear-naked choke, it isn’t instantaneous—people fight it for a while. I haven’t developed my squeeze enough. In the rear-naked choke, you apply pressure to the carotid arteries, but finding the right angle and the right kind of pressure is the trick. Practice can make the choke nearly instantaneous as opposed to painful and slow. Another interesting thing about jiu-jitsu is that it’s a game of centimeters. It’s made up of tiny adjustments, little things that can mean the difference between success and failure in a move. If I’m sweeping someone I may be doing everything right, yet missing one small but essential step—my foot is an inch off or I forget to put a little push, just a pound of pressure, on the knee—and the position won’t work. It’s about getting all the little things right.

One thing Marcelo does do, when he rolls with blue belts or white belts, is try for perfection. “The reason I like to train with lower belts is to practice for myself, and look for the perfect positions, to get to places with more facility. To really try and make a perfect position.” Marcelo cherishes the notion of perfection. “I can really improve my holds, and practice new things. You can train exactly the position you want to train.”

 

There is an Abu Dhabi championship every two years, and in ’05 Marcelo still felt he had a lot to prove. No one thought he could repeat his success. He had to prove it wasn’t a fluke. And he did, winning his division again and placing third in the Absolute.

Then in ’07, Marcelo said he started to feel the pressure, that he had to win, and he was very focused on winning the Absolute. He won his weight division again, one of the toughest brackets in the tournament. He even won through the Absolute, where he lost the final to Robert Drysdale (99 kg), by submission. Even though Drysdale outweighed Marcelo by forty pounds, that win made him a superstar.

Marcelo was grinning when he talked about it, though. “I improved my game. In my other matches I submitted everyone, which I had never done before. So I had eight submissions, including mine, which was good,” and then we both started laughing. His amusement was deep and genuine.

After that, Marcelo decided to make the switch to MMA. He was having trouble staying motivated in his training, and he had something to prove. “It makes me mad. I feel bad, people think I can’t do it. I want to prove I can.”

Marcelo reminds me a little of Rulon Gardner, the Olympic heavyweight wrestler who fought one MMA fight in Pride. Rulon, a huge man, three hundred pounds of muscle and quickness, had wondered if he could defend himself, feeling a bit slighted by people who punch. I had an odd experience talking to wrestlers on Tom Brands’s University of Iowa team. They would say, “Oh MMA, that’s serious stuff.” I would think,
Everybody here would do fine in MMA
.

There is a fear of the unknown, and imagined disdain. I know the Brazilians, brimming with machismo, often will say after they lose a grappling match, “You wouldn’t beat me in MMA.” I’m sure Marcelo has heard that one a few times.

Marcelo is adamant. “I want to show I can fight, equally. I have proved it before, but they still say I can’t do it.” Incongruously, his favorite fighter is Wanderlei Silva, the “Ax Murderer.” Silva was a dominant champion in Japan, an intimidating monster, overwhelming in his ferocity—without showing much of a ground game (although he has a black belt). He was a little like Mike Tyson in his prime; he projected an aura of savage invincibility. He’s a polar opposite of Marcelo in terms of intimidation. Silva had a staredown that was psychotic and terrifying on the TV screen. He really looks like an ax murderer. Marcelo said, “I never bother getting angry. I don’t need it. I don’t confuse angry with intense. I think being angry makes you tired. I perform at a high level without it.”

 

Reflecting on what Liborio and Marcelo talked about, I’m struck again by how humble these guys are. How
nice
. How pleasant to be around. I used to think it was a product of being great—that the truly great fighters learned humility in the process of becoming great. But suddenly I am struck with a “chicken or the egg” question—which came first? Listening at length to Marcelo, Liborio, Eddie Bravo, and Sean Williams talk about jiu-jitsu, I start to think that maybe it’s the other way around, that you can’t be great without humility. The most humble guys, who are the most open and willing to learn, are the ones who become the best. Maybe you can’t be great at jiu-jitsu without it.

Don’t get me wrong—you need a certain type of arrogance to fight. You have to have the secret in your heart, that you will beat his ass. That you are too tough, too technical, too strong for this guy. You have to believe in yourself more than anything.