Suckerpunch: (2011) (4 page)

“Settle down. You can’t walk away from this without Woody on board, so let’s figure out a better deal.”

Eddie stood. Nate and Benjamin did the same.

“Okay, Jesus,” Gil said. His pride was like a horse pill with barbs on it, but he was smart enough to know when to swallow it. “We’ll sign it. But I want
your
word we’ll talk long-term right after the fight.”

“Win or lose,” Eddie said. They all sat down. I appreciated them looking only a little smug.

Eddie said, “Woody, I want to ask you something I ask all my fighters: Why do you fight?” He had his hand up, forefinger and thumb pressed together like he wanted me to touch on the exact point he was trying to make.

I didn’t want to get it wrong. There were plenty of reasons why I’d been
in
fights—survival being the most common—but that didn’t explain why I stepped into the cage. Practically ran to it. “It’s what I was made to do.”

“Yes.” Eddie made a fist and pounded the table. “It’s what you were made to do. So don’t get caught up in stupid shit you weren’t made to do, yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“Good. Now let’s sign that bitch and talk about how we’re going to make Woodshed Wallace famous within forty-eight hours.”

The only thing worse than training is losing.

It isn’t a close race, but Gil does his best to make it seem that way.

Friday morning I was doing renegade man-makers with forty-five-pound dumbbells, dropping to the floor with them in my fists, exploding through a push-up, then rowing the dumbbells up one at a time like I was starting a lawn mower, all while keeping my feet together and my hips square to the padded floor. Then I got my feet under me and stood, throwing the bells into a push press over my head. When I was horizontal I could see my reflection in the puddle of sweat beneath my face. I looked very unhappy. The circuit was one minute each of seventy-pound kettle-bell swings, burpees, pull-ups, frog jumps, and now these bastards back to back. This was the sixth and final circuit.

“It’ll be a light day,” Gil had said. “Just to keep you loose.”

I heard him sip coffee from a mug that was as big as his head, and I prayed for him to die. He’d sent me to bed as soon as we got back from the restaurant, then stayed up all night watching tapes of Burbank’s fights. The coffee mug was standard every morning, but today he actually needed it.

It had started out as a great day. Word of the Warrior deal spread quickly, and everyone at the gym was stoked over it. When they heard I was fighting Burbank the enthusiasm dipped a bit; then it was all grins again when Gil told them a camera crew was going to be stopping by. Roth, from Perth, Australia, and rumored to speak English but sometimes had everyone guessing, asked if he had time to get his hair cut.

Gil told him to get everything from the shoulders up taken off. Then he pulled out his stopwatch and my day went to shit.

We were in the open area toward the back of the gym. To my right and past Gil was the half-scale cage with its black fencing and raised canvas. Farther along that wall and about halfway to the plate-glass windows at the front was the boxing/kickboxing ring, the canvas a little higher than the cage’s. When I had the audacity to lift my head during the circuit, I could see Roth and Terence Overton in there going at it with boxing gloves, shin pads, and headgear. I envied them.

Rows of hooks and pegs lined the wall behind the cage and ring. Walk along the row and you could smell the various levels of human suffering from the headgear, focus mitts, kicking shields, Thai pads, and boxing and MMA gloves. The first day Roth trained with us about four months ago, he thought it was acceptable to hang his jockstrap there to dry. Gil set it on fire.

The front of the gym space had a reception desk to the right of the glass double doors and behind that a display of the trophies the fighters had won. The belts and prizes I’d taken in various small promotions were dwarfed and hopelessly surrounded by Gil’s jiu jitsu haul. Coming back toward me along the left wall were the heavy bags, Thai bags, double-end balls, and a wrecking ball that had an ongoing blood feud with me.

The wrecking ball is a sixty-pound black leather bastard shaped like an acorn, about as wide as me in the shoulders. It’s hung from a set of chains, the top of it level with my chin and the bottom almost down to my waist. It’s for working body shots, uppercuts, knees, and whatever else you want to throw, as long as you understand it will seek vengeance on the backswing.

Gil knows I hate that thing and loves to watch me argue with it. When he saw how much I enjoyed hitting the regular heavy bags in comparison, he did his best to ruin that too by introducing me to his “Keep the Change” drill.

You seize the bag’s chains and jump up and lock your legs around the bag like you’re pulling guard. Then let go with your hands and hang upside down so you can see the floor, where Gil dropped a handful of pocket change. Grab one coin at a time—one, because he’s watching—and curl your way back up to put the coin on top of the heavy bag. You’re done when all the change is off the floor, including whatever fell off the bag from you jerking it all over the place.

All I have left is the Muay Thai bag, and I know Gil is cooking something up about that one.

Under the bags and loose against the wall were the grappling dummies, about fifty pounds each and contoured to simulate an opponent’s torso and trunk. They were good for tossing around and drilling ground and pound, but when it came to actual grappling, nothing less than pain on pain would cut it. We used the rack spaces in between the bags for pull-ups; during the circuits just follow the trail of your sweat back and forth and you won’t get lost.

In the back where we were the building widened out to my left—from above the whole space looked like a backward L—and along the front wall of the short leg was the iron. Kettlebells, dumbbells, medicine balls, barbells with enough plates to keep a champion powerlifter busy for a few weeks, and an assortment of torture devices Gil had cobbled together out of heavy scraps, brackets, and duct tape.

The wall to my left was padded and clear of anything else so we could use it for shadowboxing, elevators, handstand push-ups, and whatever else Gil devised. Behind me was the half-windowed wall between the gym and the hallway that led to the back rooms. Some of them were air-conditioned. I couldn’t remember what that felt like, but I knew it was good.

“Ten more seconds,” Gil said.

I didn’t believe him. It was probably twenty seconds, but I cranked it up a notch to finish strong.

“You been holding out on me, Woody? Where’s this energy coming from? You got him down. He’s on the canvas. Finish it. Finish it. Finish it . . . Time!”

I dropped the left hand dumbbell to the floor and fell away from it onto my back. Sweat ran into my mouth and I didn’t care. I couldn’t get my stomach to expand far enough to get the air I needed. My heart offered to exit through my mouth to give the lungs some room.

“In through your nose,” Gil said and sipped more coffee.

I spit out my mouthguard and gulped air. “Call 911.”

“You keep saying that. Look at Jairo. He’s fine.”

I let my head fall to the right and opened my eyes. Jairo Arcoverde was next to me on the mats. He looked like he’d been hit by a planet. He’d done the whole circuit in his forest green jiu jitsu gi, and the thing was almost black with sweat. “Are you dead?” I asked him.

“Yes.”

I picked my head up and looked down the line. Jairo’s younger brother Javier was facedown and spread-eagle, and beyond him the youngest of the clan, Edson, twenty-two, was sitting against the wall sipping water. I vaguely remembered him dropping out and spending some time with his face in the trash can during the frog jumps.

The Arcoverde brothers were from Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Gil had earned his black belt in Brazilian jiu jitsu from their father, Antonio, and now the sons were getting ready to represent the family in MMA. It was a good deal all around; the boys helped me and the other guys at The Fight House work on our ground games, and they got to work on their stand-up with us. As a bonus, they also got to work on their conditioning.

Jairo stood up and peeled off his gi top and dropped it on the mat. It sounded like a sack of mulch. He was thirty and bigger than me, six four and about two forty-five—almost as big as Burbank—and had been doing his best to take me down and submit me for the past three weeks when I wasn’t drilling the strategy for Porter. More often than not, Jairo got his way. We’d done some stand-up to make me feel better about myself, but the brothers were picking that up faster than I was avoiding tapouts.

The brothers had olive complexions, dark eyes, and cauliflower ears. Jairo’s stood out more because of his shaved head, which he claimed helped him slide out of chokes, but I suspected his bust-worthy skull was the main factor. The thing gleamed like polished bronze when they all walked around in the Vegas heat and pretended to shiver and thought it was funny every time. Jairo had a heavy-lidded way of looking bored most of the time, even when he was working to sink an armbar or triangle choke. It was unnerving, like a brain surgeon yawning with his hands inside someone’s skull.

We were lucky to have Jairo around for the Burbank fight. He could come close to simulating the size and brute strength I’d be dealing with, but Burbank was much more aggressive. Maybe Gil could poke Jairo with a stick while we sparred. Porter had a similar fighting style, but relying on my prep for him before fighting Burbank would be like eating a crouton each day leading up to a pancake eating contest.

There wasn’t enough time to bring anyone else in before Saturday. Gil had a Rolodex of judo guys, Division 1-A champion wrestlers, and a former Olympic Greco-Roman wrestler from Montana who almost threw me into the ceiling the last time he came through, but they were all either overseas or getting ready for their own fights. Gil and I agreed none of those guys could really simulate what it would be like to fight Burbank, either. They were too little, too slow, too stiff, or too nice.

I’d just about returned to subpanic heart and respiratory rates when Gil said, “Get in the cage.”

Jairo and I dragged ourselves over and got our mouthguards back in and wrapped our hands in the training gloves, the same size and weight as the official version but with Velcro straps instead of laces. I pretended to have trouble getting the straps just right so I could take a few more deep breaths, but Gil caught on right away and threatened me with his coffee mug. I followed Jairo into the cage.

The canvas was still the original light gray color in a few spots. They looked like bleach stains on the mottled surface. No one wanted to bleed in training, but it happened. The scar tissue around my eyes had caused the most trouble, ending sparring sessions when a glancing elbow or inadvertent head butt opened a gash. It was important to let those heal completely before a fight; the athletic commission wouldn’t let you compete with a preexisting cut. Like not having sex because you’d worked too hard on the foreplay.

Gil got in front of me and Jairo and looked us over. “How you feeling?”

“Good,” I said.

“You look like shit.”

“Thanks.”

“Is that food from last night causing any trouble?”

“Nope.” Even if it made my legs fall off, I wouldn’t risk a ban of that menu.

“Are you focused?”

“Yes.”

“What are you thinking about right now?”

I didn’t know the answer to that.

Gil said, “Are you thinking about Junior Burbank or about how tired you are?”

I sucked on my mouthguard. “Both?”

“Wrong. If you’re thinking about how tired you are—
at all
—nothing else matters.”

“That’s true,” Jairo said.

I appreciated his input.

“Junior Burbank,” Gil said. “He’s the guy you’re fighting tomorrow. Remember him?”

I nodded.

Gil scoffed. “No one wants you to win this fight. Eddie sure as hell doesn’t. A one-fight contract? Please. He wants his golden boy to powerbomb and ground and pound his way all the way to the belt so he can sell Junior Burbank chewing tobacco and T-shirts that are way too tight. Eddie brought you in to be the guy getting fucked up in a highlight reel. The clip they show before the rest of Burbank’s fights. Look what he did to Woodshed Wallace, the only guy to beat him.”