The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment (3 page)

I might sound a tad harsh, but in the fight game, having a properly fitted mouthpiece is a big deal. When this small bit of protective gear was forgotten before, I watched my guys in mute horror as they marshaled their feeble mental faculties and bumbled around desperately, searching for a dodgy sporting-goods store. The end result? A five dollar boil-and-bite mouthpiece, like the one I had in Pop Warner Football, made out of cheap, hard plastic. A week-old orange rind would have fit in my mouth better, and it made me look like an amateur in his first Toughman fight. If there is a repeat of the missing-mouthpiece debacle this weekend, and I have to use another boil-and-bite, it will most likely fall out in the first round, and Joe Rogan, who misses nothing, will clown me about it to the vast PPV audience, which hangs on his every word. In addition, I will walk away from Saturday night with roasted gums.

There is one thing I am absolutely certain they have not forgotten: focus mitts. If I can’t knock out a ninety-year-old narcoleptic with my Sunday-best sucker-punch, why am I going to warm up by punching mitts? Instead, I should warm up by practicing ducking underneath punches. Unlike me, my opponent can punch, and pretty damn well. I should focus on fine-tuning my specialty, which is grabbing guys, dumping them on their head, and then smothering them. So what’s up with all the focus mitts? I have really begun to suspect that my guys (in fact, every fighter’s “guys”) bring focus mitts because they like walking around backstage wearing them. It gives them a sense of worth, a feeling of belonging. But if they are wearing them, they will undoubtedly be yelling at me to hit them. They’ll shout out arcane numerical instructions, which are supposed to represent cryptic punching combinations known only by our little secret society of pugilistic initiates. My guys delusionally believe that these numbers will deceive my opponent, his entourage, or any intrigued backstage observer into believing:

1. I know any genuine punching combinations.

2. I am prepared to deliver them on command.

3. I have faith in my ability to punch.

I’d like to just level with these lummoxes and tell them that we’re not fooling anybody. But my guys and their little bemitted hands need to feel like they have a purpose, a sense of mission. We’ve got about twenty pairs of focus mitts at our gym, in various sizes and various colors, and they’ve brought them
all
. They are stuffed in a bag bigger than the guy carrying it. I can imagine the fighters we’ve left behind, bereft in the absence of focus mitts, pathetically holding up rolls of toilet paper for each other to punch like a cargo cult with a rattan airplane—stubborn, delusional optimists awaiting our inevitable, triumphant return. While I am warming up Saturday night, if any of the talismanic status-confirming mitts should go missing/lost/stolen, there are myriad replacements on hand. There will be no desperate dash to a sporting-goods store to purchase new ones. They’ve made sure that there are mitts aplenty to hold for a guy who can’t, and doesn’t want to, punch
anything
. Punching things hurt. Damn,
typing
this hurts.

We finally reach the terminal. Slightly winded.

Check bags, then quickly off to join the interminable, annoying, redundant security cattle drive—shoes in the bin, all metal objects, blah, blah, blah. I head through first because I know that at least one of my guys will forget he’s wearing a belt with a metal buckle, requiring its hasty, clumsy removal, followed by his ridiculous-looking attempt to hold up his baggy, rumpled pants, which will most assuredly fall down at one point to reveal his disgusting underwear.

I head through the ominous detector without sounding any alarms. A second later I hear a buzzer go off behind me and crane my neck. Just as expected, one of my guys is pushing his way backward through the now backed-up line of grumpy fellow travelers, removing his belt. He puts it in a bin by itself, where it rides alone through the X-ray machine like a kid on an otherwise empty special-needs school bus. I roll my eyes as he shuffles along, holding up his pants with one battered, gnarled hand. As he retrieves his belt and begins putting it on, I wait for his pants to fall down and display his retched underwear, but that never happens. I begin to think that maybe, just maybe, our luck on this little journey may be turning around. Then, just as I’m looking around for a vendor where I can grab a pop culture magazine for the flight, I hear the perfect Stepford-wife voice of the gate attendant over the airport’s P.A system, cheerfully announcing the last boarding call for our flight.

As we begin to run, I wonder if the beltless genius has managed to buckle up. I also wonder how many focus mitts he decided to include in his carry-on, just in case.

Sitting down. Time to relax and focus on the big day ahead of me? Not exactly. The bro sitting next to me has his darling little music-supplying device hanging around his neck, the headphones clamped to his ears, listening to tunes to “get into the zone.” “What zone is that?” I wonder. And why he has to get into it, only he knows. It’s not like
he’s
fighting anyone. But there he is, maxing out the decibels so that everyone within the ten-seat blast-zone radius is assaulted by his cheezy metal music. He is cranking the tunes so loud that his head, which is huge and utterly empty, functions like a boombox speaker, amplifying and projecting one awful, interchangeable anthem of sonic misery after another into my already frazzled consciousness. I feel as if my collarbones are vibrating and my molars are about to crack.

I lean as far away from the source of torture as possible. Not only does this do wonders to stiffen my neck, but it also forces my head precariously into the aisle, so that it becomes an easy target for every oversized, stretched-out-pant-wearing mega-ass who thunders past. I chose the aisle seat in case I need to get up to stretch, or pace around, or go to the bathroom. But with the mini-monster-truck beverage cart, full of booze and snacks that I can’t eat or drink, rumbling back and forth, and people getting up and down every two seconds to burp babies or reach above me to get only God knows what out of the overhead compartment, it’s hard to find an opportunity to dive out into traffic. And even if I could, the line for the bathroom is longer than the two-dollar-bet line at the dog track. I see the bathroom in my mind’s eye, and it is not pretty. Even though we just got on the plane, the blue-slimed, air-sucking commode will most likely have already been completely fouled by the tourists, crackpots, and frequent flyers who made it out of their seats, into the aisle, and into the bathroom before me. In my current state, I doubt I would make it through the door. Suffering from my weight-cut, my roiling, cramping guts would simply rebel at the stench, and I can’t risk losing any more fluids. I already feel like a piece of beef jerky in the Sahara Desert.

So I sit. Heavy Metal Boy rocks on next to me, oblivious to all and everything except the flight attendants and the lukewarm beers they hand him one after another. He’s guzzling bottom-shelf brews like he has a bushfire in his stomach. And the right cross to my chin is that I’m paying for that awful-smelling swill he’s chugging. Yeah, Jim Morrison over here is one of my cornermen, and it’s industry standard for fighters to pay for cornermen. I have a pretty good hunch which members of the industry conjured up
that
standard. The same guys who’s Patton-esque mid-fight game plan is to “win this round because I’m not sure we won the last one.”

Starving. Can’t eat. Have to make weight. Nothing to look at except a little bag of peanuts on my fold-down tray. Right now it looks like a twenty-four-ounce, free-range rib eye. I take a sip from the little bottle of water the flight attendant gave me. It tastes like it came out of someone’s pool. I have a headache.

An eternity of misery, and then the plane lands.

Time to get going. My guys have jammed their carry-on bags so tightly into the overhead compartments that we may need the Jaws of Life to remove them. I don’t know for certain what is in those bags, but I see the very distinct shape of a focus mitt protruding from the side of one. Passengers behind us wait semi-patiently as my merry little entourage of cauliflower-eared miscreants take longer to dislodge their luggage than they would to dislocate an opponent’s hip.

Finally, we’re off the plane and headed toward baggage claim. I barely resist the urge to jump onto the moving luggage carousel, lie down, close my eyes, and allow myself to be loaded into the cargo hold of a plane going anywhere. But, no. I’ve got
work
to do. As we fight for standing room near the conveyer belt with the same people who beat me to the bathroom and made my life miserable during the flight, the bags full of stuff we really didn’t need to bring chug past us. We chase them down and eventually snatch them up.

Outside, the UFC driver is already there, waiting. UFC drivers always are. They’re like the Green Berets. I’ve never waited for a single one of them—and bless them, they’ve waited for me plenty … and found lost luggage … and been incredible problem-solvers and good friends over the years.

This time we have a fifteen-passenger van. There is a mad scramble for the front seat, which someone else gets, as usual. Other fighters, cornermen, and officials pack in. Collectively, the van is hauling more luggage than the Saudi royal family would bring on a monthlong assault of Everest. I get stuck in the last row, middle seat. The bags behind me are piled so high that they block the driver’s rearview vision—and protrude into the back of my skull, forcing my head into my chest. I spend the ride, which I’m hoping will be short, staring at my knees. My stiff neck is getting stiffer, and I’m pondering the imponderable.

The UFC pays for two hotel rooms—one for me, one for a cornerman. Fair enough. But I’ve got
three
cornermen. So as we’re standing in line to check in, I pull out my credit card, knowing that a part of my fighter’s purse for the weekend’s grueling activities is already pre-spent on a room and a whopping room-service bill for my guys. None of them has a problem navigating the casino floor when looking for chicks or mischief, but not one among them can seem to find the twelve-dollar buffet. When it’s time to eat, they simply pick up the phone in their room and order room service with the apocalyptic abandon of a sect of bulimic hermits. I don’t want to sound cheap or downplay the importance of their job. After all, it is not easy to do what they do. How many people on the planet are truly capable of handing me some water, holding a bucket for me to spit in, telling me that the other guy “looks tired, we’ve got him now if you don’t let him punch you in the face,” or possibly carrying me out of the cage while making sure my neck doesn’t suffer any more trauma? Ten? Fifteen? I don’t know the exact number, but it can’t be that many. I could always ask some fan sitting in the crowd to do what they do, but would he hold the spit bucket at the correct angle?

So I slap my credit card down on the counter, I order up the rooms, and off we go. Heavy Metal Boy, seventy-seven dollars’ worth of airplane beer sloshing around in his belly, has deafened himself on the flight, and now he has no sense of his own vocal volume.

“How ya feeling, champ?” he bellows at me like a roadie at a Guns n’ Roses concert. In the sound-refracting confines of the hotel elevator, his well-intentioned but concussively painful exhortations make my eardrums split like rice paper in a wind tunnel. I nod and smile, wishing I was wearing my idiot-canceling headphones. I give him a thumbs-up, but he keeps running off at the mouth.
Yeah, gonna go get ‘em. Rock ‘n’ roll. Yeah. Show time. Stick and move.

After enduring an eternity of my cornerman’s high-decibel, low-intelligence mantras, the door opens at my floor and I’m out.

Door locked and latched. Plastic “Do Not Disturb” sign decisively placed on the outer knob, although I know full well that it will not deter anyone—fighter, fan, or the inevitable voice chirping “Housekeeping!” at any hour of the day or night. Which is why I’ve requested that there be only one key to my room. More keys = more trouble for Uncle Chael. One key means controlled access, which is good. But it also means that when (not “if”) I lose the one and only key, I will have to go down to the desk and get another—an embarrassing, but all-too-familiar, ritual. It’s not the best setup, but if I want any peace and privacy, which I do, it is the best setup I have devised.

I lie down, thinking about material for the press conference and interviews. A few years ago I decided to just speak my mind—to be as entertaining and engaging as possible. Sometimes it is great and fun, and other times people don’t get it (or they get it and it pisses them off). However it is taken, it is too late to stop now. I’ve created a “climate of expectation,” and now I dwell on it. Gotta think up some stuff. For my next fight, maybe I should hire a decent writer and lose a bad cornerman instead. Until then, I’ve got to
think
. What’s funny or interesting or provides a unique viewpoint on this fight? I can’t just give the ol’ “I’m looking to test my skills in the Octagon” or “I’ve got a lot of respect for my opponent.” Those are plain-vanilla Chump Fighter answers to the softball questions the MMA “journalists” lob at fighters like me. But I know for a fact that silly questions will be slung my way from now until fight time, and I’ve got to come up with some good responses. My material is one of the things that keeps me around—it’s something the fans and media have come to expect and, I hope, enjoy a little. Being a one-man show, I have to force my dehydrated, sonically-pummeled, about-to-be-clobbered brain to deliver some witty quips and clever one-liners.

My cell phone is in a constant state of ringing, vibrating, and flashing. It does whatever it can do to pester me to death. “Friends” call to say “Hi!” and “Good luck!” (Translation: “Got any free tickets to the sold-out event?”). Sponsor’s representative calls. Gotta answer that one. Yes, we got the T-shirts, and the hats, and the banner. (Truth be told, I have no idea if we have the T-shirts or the hats or the banner. We brought a lot of bags, and I know we have
a ton of focus mitts
, but when it comes to my mouthpiece and the sponsor’s gear. …) I make a mental note to double-check all these things on fight night, fully realizing that my mind will be in other places and that the mental note will go unchecked. I’m so distracted and strung out by fight time that my corner could put a Viking helmet from summer-stock opera on my head, slide a Tom of Finland T-shirt over my shoulders, and hold up a banner behind me that says “CHAEL SONNEN IS PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE AGONY OF CHRIST,” and I wouldn’t notice. But, “Yeah,” I say to the sponsor, “we got ‘em, bro, no worries.” I make the extended-pinkie-and-thumb hang-loose sign to reassure this guy from a T-shirt company (who is on the phone and can’t see me doing it) that we’ve got everything, and we’re good to go. I’ll be repping his company’s stuff at the weigh-ins, press conference, and ring-walk. The whole thing.