Uncaged (25 page)

I knew that wasn't true. It hadn't been true at the beginning of the fight. I
knew
he was going to break. His spirit wasn't ready to fight my spirit. He was game, and he was in shape, but he wasn't ready to go to war. As we exchanged energies, I could feel I was stronger than he was and that he was going to crumble. I could feel his fear, all the way through the first round. I knew he couldn't sprint and keep up with me for more than a few minutes. At the end of the first round he was tired. Halfway through the second, he was done.

ProElite was done, too. They wanted me to fight someone else right away, but I felt like I'd been screwed on the Renzo fight. I asked them to appeal, or support me, but they said they wouldn't do that.

I should have known the rules. That makes it my fault. It was demoralizing. I was very upset with the Elite people who told me I could do whatever I want, but mostly I was mad at myself. I should
have attended the rules meeting. I should have known the rules. I knew the Elite people didn't know what they were doing. I had
told
them they didn't know what they were doing. I shouldn't have trusted them.

I realized that I had gotten so disconnected from the fighting. I was spending my time being a businessman and a producer and a promoter. I wasn't a fighter any more. I wasn't thinking like a fighter. What kind of fighter doesn't even know the rules?

But on the other hand the “illegal” knee was a very common strike before that. I had used it in many previous fights. I remember
teaching
that move. I remember Maurice Smith beating Mark Coleman with exactly that move. I had taught him how to do it! You hold the head down, and when they lift up—knee them in the back of the head. It's a very effective strike. And now, apparently, illegal.

I do understand it. The back of the neck is fragile. The spine is not well protected. There's stuff back there that's not designed to get hit. In the front we have this thick plate called the glabella bone and many layers of tissue. In the back, there's just the spine and the brain. That's why it's natural to want to clutch and wrestle instead of standing up and fighting. It's organic to get inside and grapple, where you don't have all those big bones swinging at your melon.

But honestly I didn't know it was illegal. Now I know.

ProElite went bankrupt after about eighteen months. They lost $55 million in a combination of overpaying for talent, bad purchases, lawsuits, and executive compensation. This had been their big debut show, and it ended with a technicality. They had a decision to make, right away. I think they made the wrong decision. It made them look bad and it turned me against them. I put my reputation and ten years of being undefeated on the line and they wouldn't stand up to the commission on my behalf.

It made me look bad, too. It wasn't a big financial hit. I had a guarantee, so I got my money. But the public opinion was pretty
bad. The view seemed to be that I was a cheater. That damaged my brand.

The fans were very vocal. They knew me. I was a leader in their industry. I was a hero. I was supposed to be this martial arts do-gooder guy—one of the guys whose moral principles are supposed to be the foundation of the whole sport. I had never had a rule violation in my entire career. But now I was a rule-breaking dick.

A lot of the younger fans had been brought up as fighters in the Gracie camp. They had trained in the Gracie gyms. They had been taught that the Shamrocks were the bad guys. Ken was dealing with accusations about steroid use. Now, this fit right in with the image of me that the Gracies were trying to promote.

In those days I was already a big participant on the Internet. I was on the message boards all the time. I knew we had a million fans out there, actively consuming our product. At least 20 percent of them seem to be saying something negative about me. Martial arts, Shamrock style, was supposed to be about honor and respect. Now I was going all street fighter. So when I was asked to fight Phil Baroni, it was essential that I say yes. And it was essential that I fight hard and win. I had to bring honor back to my brand.

The Phil Baroni fight was set for June 2007, just five months after the Renzo Gracie fight. It was set for my hometown, San Jose. I had never fought Phil before, but I knew him and his situation pretty well. He was a former wrestler with a lot of stand-up boxing ability. We were about the same size at the time, although naturally I was ten pounds heavier. He was originally from New York, but we both lived in San Jose. He was a longtime UFC guy and had fought for PRIDE, which was the premier Japanese MMA organization for a long time.

But UFC had just bought PRIDE a couple of months before, and they had cut Baroni from their roster. He had lost his last fight, on New Year's Eve. He needed a big fight, and he needed a win.

So did I. The fans had to see me fight a tough fight and win clean. They had to see me show up and defend my title. If I didn't show up and fight well, I was finished. They would think I had cheated, that I was old, that it had all been smoke and mirrors the whole time. My brand would be toast.

There was another reason I had to show up and win. Baroni had called me out—literally, called me out—in public. It turned into one of the ugliest feuds in MMA history. In fact, Phil Baroni didn't start it. Josh Thomson did.

Josh Thomson had been one of my young boys when I started training fighters for the Shamrock team at the American Kickboxing Academy. But he was a spoiled white kid who couldn't take it. He was a quitter. He always quit when things got tough. He was a loudmouth and full of big talk, but he was a quitter when it came time to back it up in the gym. So I rode him pretty hard. I used to beat on him and try to make him stronger. But he was a punk, and I didn't like him. Ultimately, I threw him off the team.

But then I stopped training the team. They were still my guys, but I wasn't personally around as much. I was in Los Angeles. I was going around the world, doing trainings and seminars. While I was away, Josh came back and started training with the team again. I still didn't like him, and he was still a punk, but he was training with my guys.

While we were trying hard to get the Gracie fight set up, the MMA scene was starting to take off on the Internet. There was a lot of new media. People were using YouTube and message boards in really aggressive ways. Josh saw an opportunity to go after me. He started commenting online, and saying nasty things about me, as a way to build his own brand. He was smart to do it. My brand was high, my name recognition was strong, and he was a nobody. So it was a clever way for him to get some attention.

But then it started to get even more public. I was commentating at one of his fights, and he wore a T-shirt that said,
FRANK GLAMROCK IS MY BITCH
. Now, this was an old gimmick. Tito Ortiz had done it forever.

Then it got a little more intense, because Josh Thomson's roommate and training partner was Phil Baroni. Baroni's not the sharpest
tool in the shed, and he got all caught up in this feud, and he started posting things, too. He saw an opportunity to advance his name and maybe get a fight with me. And that created an opportunity for me. I knew I could never fight Josh. He was too little—a lightweight, about 155 pounds. But I could definitely fight Phil. So when he started posting things, I didn't brush him off like I had Josh. I saw a chance to get something going. I started antagonizing him back.

His early online comments were mean. I always spoke professionally as a martial artist in those days. I'd say things like “Here is the lesson” and “This is what I believe about fighting …” His comments were all along the lines of “He's a total pussy” and “He's a douchebag” and “I'm going to bounce his head off the cage.”

These were draw-the-line statements. I took the bait. I started putting out my own little videos. They were great. I called him Phil Baloney, and Phil Steroni. I taunted him. I wanted him to get mad enough to fight me. It worked. We came to an agreement for a fight. I took it to Scott Coker as part of my Strikeforce arrangement with him. Everybody was in.

We put together a December 2005 date for the Baroni fight. I started building it up on the Internet. I shot more videos. But then a problem came up: Baroni was trying to get to 185 pounds to fight me, and he took steroids to do it. He's a natural 170, but suddenly he was huge. That was going to be a problem. This was a championship fight. The California fight commission told Baroni he'd have to pass a drug test. He'd failed one once before. They told him he'd have to take another test thirty or sixty days before the fight.

He couldn't do it. He advised Scott Coker that he wasn't going to make it. Suddenly the fight was postponed. His drug test became a contractual roadblock. I took advantage of that. As soon as there were scheduling problems, I started making fun of him. I went public. I saw a way to capitalize. I made another movie. In it, I'm sitting in my backyard, wearing a T-shirt and a cap, smoking a fat cigar.

”I got breaking news,” I said. “I'm smoking a cigar, which means I'm not training 100 percent. Phil Baroni has backed out of a December eighth pay-per-view event. Apparently Phil Baroni had some ‘personal' issues that will not allow me to knock him out for American pay-per-view. Don't know why. Don't know why the guy called me out. But if those issues are going to prevent him from being a man, then they must be very, very personal. My personal opinion is he's a steroided miniature idiot who should have never challenged me. Look, here's the deal: If you guys want to challenge me, you want to be a player, if your name is Gracie, give me a call. I can put the fight together. I'll be more than happy to knock you out on pay-per-view. If you're an idiot named Phil Steroni, don't call me back. You're wasting my time.”

The barbs went back and forth. Baroni said, “Frank Shamrock is a punk. He's going to stand with me and knock me out? I'm a fucking knockout
artist.
I'm gonna break this dude's jaw. I'm gonna hit him and forget him. He can't hurt me. He wants to go punch for punch? He can't hurt me.
I'm
gonna hurt
him.”
I got on camera and said, with a sort of amused smile, “I don't know if Phil is aware of how stupid he is. He's a complete meathead. Phil? You're a complete idiot.” He came back, very angry, with “You ready? You better be ready. ‘Cause I'm coming for you, bro. I'm coming to get you.”

The feud was both good and bad for me. It was good because it built up expectation for the fight. But Showtime really wanted to move forward. When we couldn't make the Baroni fight happen, suddenly the Renzo Gracie fight was on. The buildup for the Baroni fight brought a lot of extra heat to the Renzo fight. But I lost that, I looked like an asshole, and my brand took a huge hit. It became essential that I get the Baroni fight going and that I win.

The fight was finally scheduled, and it looked like it was really going to happen. I may have been smoking that cigar in the video,
but I took this one very seriously. I left home for a training camp, which I'd never really done before. I moved down to Temecula, California, to train with Dan Henderson at his place down there. I moved in with my friend Bryan Foster. He had a sort of farm out there, with sheep and horses and pigs. It was a good place to concentrate on training. They had a little empty room, and I put my air mattress and books in it. That was my training camp. It reminded me of prison.

It was a good plan, but it didn't work out. On the very first day of training, I was working out with a judo champion who was going to show me some stuff. We were boxing and sparring. I knew that I was going to have beat Phil Baroni standing up. There was no other way to do it, and it was what the fans were going to demand. I was going to have to knock him out or get killed trying. There were huge expectations going into that fight. Nothing else would be acceptable.

So I was training with the judo guy. He threw a jab, then he just exploded with a huge judo leg chop, and my knee collapsed. My leg was planted and it just stayed there. The knee took the whole blow. Then the rest of me went down. It blew out my ACL completely.

I was screaming with pain. I screamed like a little baby. It was the worst pain I'd ever experienced in my life, except maybe for the day I did the initiation with Ken at the Lion's Den. It was horrible. Somehow I managed to get to Whole Foods. I bought a bag of vegetables to make soup and a bag of ice to put on my knee. I didn't see a doctor right away, and I didn't tell anybody what had happened. I was hoping it wasn't as bad as I thought it was.

It was only three weeks until the fight. There was no way I could back out. I
had
to show up. If I told the truth about what happened and said I wanted to reschedule it, the fans wouldn't believe it. Baroni would make me look like a fool. I had to find some way to show up.

For a while, all I did was meditate and read. I couldn't run. I couldn't even walk. I tried to do some training that didn't include anything on the ground. I got into a swimming pool with my legs tied together with a bungee cord, to see how that would work. It didn't work that well.

I finally went to see a doctor. He said, “You have literally got
no
ACL.” He told me the only treatment for it was surgery. I told him I had to fight a championship fight in two weeks. He told me there was no way I could be ready for that.

It was not good. We had settled everything. ProElite was in. Strikeforce was in. We were making our deal with Showtime. And then we got word that CBS was coming to town. Everybody at CBS was going to be at the Shamrock-Baroni fight to see if it was time for CBS to take a chance on MMA. This fight was going to be the test case, the one that could qualify us.

So there was no way I could back out. Instead, the fight was going to be a really heavy mental test. I was going to have to bypass this really huge physical liability. I was going to have to go in with a new attitude: if you get knocked out, and you get killed, so what? Who gives a shit? That outcome was going to have to be OK.