Tuesdays With Brock: Fighting Words by Mike Straka

I bought this book at a going-out-of-business sale at my local Borders because it was cheap. I didn't have high expectations for it. It's by this guy, Mike Straka, who apparently had a talk show on HDNet where he interviewed MMA figures. I don't have HDNet, thus I didn't know if Straka was any good. I was kind of afraid the book might be boring. But I was wrong. Straka has edited his interviews into compelling chapters, one on each subject. There are a wide range of people profiled here, from huge names like Dana White and Randy Couture to lesser-known guys like Josh Thomson and Clay Guida. Let's go through it, taking each guy and telling you something interesting I learned about that guy from this book.

Dana White

Doing good. Although he's got a reputation as a bully, according to White he'd rather help people than hurt them. "I love taking people in and turning people into stars and changing people's lives . . . And I love doing fun exciting things that make people either happy at the moment or changes people's lives. You know, crushing isn't fun. But I will crush too, if you put me in that position." I did know about the crushing. I think everyone knows about Dana White and the crushing. But I didn't know that he enjoyed improving people's lives more. That's great and I'm happy to learn that.

And heck, since it's Dana White and he's arguably the most important person in MMA, let's give him a second anecdote. Here's something else I learned from him. It hasn't been nothing but untrammeled success for the UFC since White and the Fertitta brothers took over in 2001. In the beginning, they lost money. In the first 5 years, the Fertittas, the majority partners, lost $30 million on the UFC. "Lorenzo called and said, 'I can't keep pumping money into this thing, get out on the street and see what you can get for it.' That day I was making calls all day finding out how much we could sell it for. And by the end of the night it was anywhere between $4-6 million, and I called him and gave him the number. And he said, 'All right, I'll call you in the morning.' And he called me back the next day and said, 'Fuck it, let's keep going."

And the UFC is, according to Straka, worth over $2 billion today.

Frankie Edgar

Plumbing. His step-dad is a plumber. Frankie could have gone into the family plumbing business, but "Busting up toilets in grade schools is not how I want to spend my days." So, instead he became the UFC lightweight world champion. There's just no accounting for taste . . .

Frank Shamrock

The transformative power of love. Talking about his adoptive father, Bob Shamrock, Frank said, "I just wanted to tell him thank you. I never really got to say thank you. He didn't have to help me. He didn't have to do anything for me. He didn't have to adopt me. He didn't have to do it for any of the thousands of people he did it for. But you know, for me, he was the first man to ever say, 'I love you and you're okay.' I didn't have a dad, so that meant a lot to me." Does Frank go on to have a successful career if Bob doesn't take him in as a child? Doubtful. Extremely doubtful.

Jon Jones

Persistence. The most successful phenom in modern MMA was regarded as a failure not too long ago. "In that summer of getting ready to go to Iowa State my girlfriend said, 'Hey Jon, I'm pregnant.' And you know a lot of people looked at me like a failure at the time, and it was a really rough time for me to go from stud athlete, full scholarship to Iowa State to "Hey, you know Jon is out of school. He got his girlfriend pregnant.' So I just kept the faith and realized that God had a plan for me and it worked out. I just kept on chugging and now today life is great."

Big John McCarthy

Complexity. Opened my eyes to how many judges don't understand the complexities of MMA like they should. "But there are people involved in officiating in MMA who have no idea what the fighters are truly doing. They don't understand that if you're judging a fight, you should understand what kind of takedown a fighter is using. Is he using a double leg? Is he using a lateral drop? Is than an ippon seinagi? Is that a duck under? What did he do? Who actually initiated what went on? You have to know what they did to give credit to the right person. That's the problem. When you have judges that can't sit there and go, 'I know what that is," and understand the setups, and what is happening on the ground, you're never gonna get good judging."

Josh Thomson

Smarts. At his gym, American Kickboxing Academy, the pros train with the plebs. "We can always learn a little something from them, too. You have the guys that come in and they're afraid of us and they run, so it's learning how to cut the ring off. You gotta be patient. You gotta pick'em apart. And you know, there are guys that have good jiu-jitsu, so you're stopping their takedowns. These are the students. We have a lot of good students. Dave Camarillo has built up a great jiu-jitsu program here. There are 60-70 good jiu-jitsu kids that are in here and they come and do our training and they help us out on the ground." That's cool, that the professional fighters are humble enough and smart enough to learn what the amateurs have to teach them.

Bas Rutten

Outspoken. He's not afraid to criticize the McDojo industry. "These kids walking around with their parents, like, 'Oh he's got the 5th degree'--he doesn't know how to kick, lady! He doesn't know how to plant his feet right! You bought him a black belt, that's what happened! It's a money-making machine here. It's $75, you're waiting in line, 30 kids on a Sunday and everybody goes through their thing and they do it like morons and then they get their belt." Rutten is right. When I trained in karate, I saw plenty of students get belts, even black belts, that they didn't really deserve because the instructor wanted to make the "testing fee" off of them. I never saw anyone fail a belt test. There were some skilled martial artists at my school, but there were a lot of frauds too, and everyone who paid the fee moved up, real deals and frauds alike.

Cain Velasquez

Possibility. Velasquez's parents are migrant farm workers, and he wants to be a role model for Mexican-Americans. "[G]rowing up I didn't really have anybody that I could look up to in the media. I never thought that I could be in the limelight or play professional sports. So the reason I got the 'Brown Pride' (tattoo) was to, you know, show people like me that hey, 'I'm Mexican, too. It can be done.'" Velasquez is, by all accounts, a freakishly good athlete whose cardiovascular fitness, in particular, is other-worldly. But still he never thought he could be in the limelight. It's sad how we let societal expectations limit us. I'm glad Velasquez broke through that ceiling and became someone even he didn't think he could be.

Matt Hughes

Family. Hughes has struggled with work-life balance just like anyone who has reached a point in life where it's about more than just himself. "Early in my career it was easy because I lived by myself. I woke up and I trained. I'd come home and think about training, and then go back to train, throw some food somewhere in there, and that was it. Now I've got four kids, a wife, and it's just not as easy to get those good meals in, the rest you need with a newborn kid is hard to come by, and getting away to go train because I want to spend time with my family is more difficult, so it's a lot more complicated than it used to be." MMA legends -- they're just like us.

Scott Coker

Realism. "And let's grow this thing. Because you know what, it's not like football. It's not like baseball. It's not like basketball. No matter what they say, it's not at that level yet. I believe it's a niche sport that's growing and has some momentum, but to take it to the real masses? Look at hockey. I go to the stadium downtown and three times a week they're packing 18,000 seats. Three times a week. That's not happening in MMA. It's just not happening."

Randy Couture

Supplements. You know, I always assumed that Couture, who is one of my all-time favorite fighters, was able to fight at a world-class level into his late 40s because he was probably using steroids. I have no evidence of this. Just what I know about Barry Bonds, who improved at an age when, historically speaking, athletes have always declined, and was of course later determined to have been using steroids and HGH. But Couture, not surprisingly, points to supplementation as the secret. "It's amazing, all-natural stuff that has really made a huge difference for me. I feel younger. They can test the tail on the gene that tells your true age, not how many years you've been on the planet, but genetically how old you really are, and [according to those tests] I was about 32, 33." Xtreme Couture Athletic Performance Supplement Program. This, of course, raises the question: why is it legal and within the rules to take "supplements" but illegal and against the rules to take "steroids"? Is it because steroids are more dangerous to health? Or is it because steroids are a "drug" and our society is engaged in a War on Drugs?

Ken Shamrock

Misunderstood? He comes across here as, above all, humble. I remember him as a coach on The Ultimate Fighter, and I remember not being the biggest fan of his. But here he comes across as humble and respectful of others. "Dude, I don't want to be, I don't want to be in life and hate. I don't want that. I would rather go through life being friends with everybody." Word.

Clay Guida

The importance of avoiding injuries. "I'm not too proud to avoid a broken arm, you know? I tap at practice. In a fight you let it go a little bit longer, and while I'm not the smartest guy, I'm not dumb enough to let an arm break or let a foot break or a knee or something like that. When that happens you're out six to eight months to a year, you know?" Yes. I know. I saw what happened to Big Nog in the recent Frank Mir fight.

Renzo Gracie

Dealing well with pressure. "On the pressure of being a Gracie, Renzo is blunt. 'There is pressure in being alive. Life is pressure, you know, and I'm glad to be under pressure, constantly. And if adding the Gracie name adds some extra pressure, I'm proud and happy to carry that pressure with me.'" That's the right attitude.

Chuck Liddell

Money. "Just how much money Liddell has made is not something I would ever ask; however, Canadian talk show host Michael Landsberg did ask Chuck what the most he's ever made for one fight was on a program called Off The Record. 'A couple million,' said Chuck." And that's obviously a lot. Of course, it pales next to the money made by the Fetittas, who have turned an investment of a few million into tens of billions. Mommas, don't let your babies grow up to be employees.

To sum up, this is a good book, full of interesting information about big names in the MMA world, and thus well worth your time.