The following is an excerpt from chapter 6 of my book, Title shot. I went to Miami in late 2007 to attend the IFL finals and was lucky enough to tag along with a group of fighters and trainers when they filmed a Muscle Milk commercial just after the weigh-ins. Here's what happened: 

“Check out my new keychain,” Bartimus said hanging a Silverbacks logo bigger than aserving platter off his belt like a Polish Flava Flav. “Pretty cool, huh?” Uponentering the room he snagged the cardboard sign and claimed ownership like akid fawning over a stray dog. “Can I keep it?” he asked IFL commissioner Kurt Otto.

“Sure,” Otto responded without really looking. “I guess so.”

“Cool. I’m taking that home,” Bart said as he placed the Styrofoam sign against a wall for safekeeping.

Around Otto’s waist was a championship belt that looked as if he’d either just killed an alligator purse on Rodeo Drive or mugged the lead singer from Skid Row. It was pewter and gold with some sort of animal skin background and a massive front that seemed to stretch from his navel to his knees. The IFL logo adorned the centerpiece and the words “155 pound Grand Prix Champion” stretched around the side, which was a strange choice since Kurt clearly didn’t meet the standard for that weight class.

Like fighters, camera crews are rarely punctual and these guys needed some extra time to set their equipment. When fighters and coaches have idle time to themselves, their thoughts frequently turn to reading, comparing investment portfolios, or mischievous banter. 

“Yeah, thanks for keeping us at the weigh-in as long as you did. That was great,”Bartimus said, still reeling from Smith’s repeated questions while he starved.Since exposing himself in front of the ring girls he’d digested only an energydrink and an energy bar, so he was wired like a tasered mongoose.

“Hey, it’s my job to look out for my fighter,” Maurice replied.

“But meanwhile all the REAL fighters are starving and you’re sitting there asking questions like you don’t already know the answers.” Bart then mocked him. “Uh,yeah, I got a question…when am I going to shut the fuck up?” Bart’s quick tongue and Polish accent made it sound like one word; shuthefukup.

“Hey, when you’re a coach looking out for your fighter, you’d do the same, young lad,” Maurice said.

Upon his maturity being questioned, Bart dispensed with his niceties. “When were you born? The nineteen seventies I bet. Go back to disco, dude.”

“I was born in the sixties…” Maurice started before Bart cut him off.

“Even worse! You’re really old!”

“I was winning championships before you could pee standing up.”

“Okay, but this is now and when you get one of these,” Bart showed him his IFL championship ring, “you can talk shit. Until then shuthefukup.”

Like a father whose kid has stepped too far over the line, Pat Miletich raised hishead from his Blackberry. “Bart,” he said as the room suddenly grew quiet.“Stop.”

            “He started it!” Bart said like a kid blaming the chocolate ring around his mouth on his brother.

            Finally Kurt got in front of the camera and the room’s attention shifted.

            “And…go,” the cameraman said.

            “Hi, I’m Kurt Otto, commissioner of the IFL. If our fighters want to wear one of these (he points to his championship ring) or earn this (he points to the belt), they have to drink this (he holds up a tub of powdered Muscle Milk).” It wasn’t bad and certainly went better than any first take at Team Quest since it consisted mostly of pointing at inanimate objects and expressing the “I’m incharge here attitude.” Whoever wrote it apparently knew his actors well.

            For whatever reason Otto and the crew weren’t satisfied and decided to do another take. But the combined attention span of the hungry fighters and tired coaches waiting in the wings for their take was lower than George W. Bush’s approval ratings.

            “If our fighters want to earn this or this…I forgot to say my name.”

            “Yes you did,” someone jeered at Otto.

            “Don’t fuck it up boss,” another said.

            “Keep going,” the crew implored, knowing the moment was slipping away.

            “I’m Kurt Otto and if our fighters want to wear one of these or…dammit I forgot to say commissioner of the IFL.”

            Kurt suddenly turned into Bugs Bunny and everyone else was Elmer Fudd hunting wabbits.

            “Here we go.”

            “Oscar quality.”

            “No, you don’t suck.”

            “Great job boss.

            “Brad Pitt’s locking up Angelina right now to keep you away, smoothie.”

            Even Pat Miletich felt the need to dispense some love. “Don’t hit your ball in the water, Kurt.”

            Otto looked to the sky. “Oh God, I need more cowbell.” For the next several minute she was roasted worse than Michael Vick at a PETA convention before finally placing his hands over his eyes and imploring the crowd to get out. Jeff Montgomery, marketing director for MuscleMilk’s owner, CytoSports, expressed disbelief. “I had no idea he’d get this kind of ribbing.”

“Really?” I thought. “Is this your first time around fighters?”

“No seriously, get out,” Kurt pleaded again. The diplomatic Pat Miletich came up with a compromise. “We’ll just turn around,” he said and turned his back to Otto. Bowing to his superior standing the hyenas in the room did just as Pat said. Turning toward the wall like a congregation kneeling to pray, everyone showed Otto their backs so he could get one more good take, the whole time snickering like schoolchildren forced to stand in the corner for farting in class. Though funnier than any verbal punishment he’d gotten, the tactic worked. Otto nailed his next take, bringing the torture to an end.

But the Kukla, Fran, and Ollie show wasn’t over. It was the fighters turn to film and their part was simplified down to the Beavis and Butthead level. All they had to do was run in and decimate a table full of Muscle Milk products like they were unable to restrain their insatiable desire to choke down dumpling-sized chunks of powdered protein shake. It was the kind of commercial a fighter dreams of-no lines and gratuitous violence. Plastic drinking bottles and tubs of protein-saturated powdered supplement flew everywhere. They nailed it.

As if there was no violent contest of skill between them in twenty hours or so, Bartimus and his opponent, Lithuanian Davidius Taurosevicius, leapt onto thetable and scarffed up all they could hold while Rory Markham and Fabio Leopoldo joined in. It would hardly have been a surprise to see them slap each other onthe back and say, “Boy am I going to kick your ass tomorrow. Ha ha ha!” But at this point it didn’t matter. They were just a couple of guys hamming it up for the camera.

Afterward the same guys who made the mess apparently felt guilty for it. They all chipped in and helped clean the place up by loading boxes of Muscle Milk products into their arms and running away quickly so the janitorial staff wouldn’t have to work so late. Say what you want about fighters, but these guys were true givers. Unlike the Fairtex photo shoot, a certain writer made out with a few free goodies-mostly a handful of Muscle Milk bars. I have more respect for these guys after digesting half of one; as nutritious as they are, they’re like eating chalk in the Saharra.

Bartimus never did get his Silverbacks sign. “Please don’t take those. They’re expensive!” A female voice said, stopping him in his tracks just feet from the door. Had it been a man, the still-edgy lightweight would probably have argued. But since it was one of the hard-working female IFL crew, he proved chivalry still lived and placed the sign on the floor, backing into the hallway slowly with his box of freebies.

Behind his cool green eyes, Bartimus was a fearsome striker with one-punch knockout power. He was respected and feared in the league and idolized by some out ofcuriosity over his ever-changing hair. I suspect while he slept his wife went crazy with a pair of sheers and dye. The range of possibilities were vast, from red and long, to blonde and spiked, to tonight’s choice-black and mohawked.

“I fight because it’s a job,” he said shrugging his shoulders as if it required no thought. “Some people want to be graphic designers, some want to be cops, or some…”

“Want to be soldiers?” I interjected.

“Right. It’s just something I enjoy doing.”

“You enjoy the rush or you enjoy hurting people?”

“No, I’m not like that. Some people get a rush from it for competition and I do too,but I think…honestly, it’s like my own stage out there. When I’m in front of a few thousand screaming fans and they clap or yell or scream when I do something, it’s cool. I think part of it is the attention, you know? I think this is what I was meant to do.”

If that were true then Bartimus’ upbringing did nothing to prepare him for it. His path to the ring was never clear, like Rashad Evans or Nick Diaz, both of whom came from environments ripe for fighting. On the contrary, Bart shunned trouble and had never even been in a street fight, which he considered a drawback. His lack of experience with the juvenile penal system was out of fear of what his dad might do if he became a member of it.

“Pops is a good guy, a good example. I think I stayed straight because I was afraid of how pissed he would be if I did something wrong. Plus I never wanted to disappoint them [my parents], you know?”

“What did your dad do?” I asked.

“He was a businessman. He tried to start an import-export company between here and Poland, but it didn’t work out. He ended up getting into construction and brought us all over here when I was thirteen.”

“Which do you consider yourself, Polish or American?”

 “I’m proud to be Polish, but I consider myself an American now. I’m so grateful for the opportunities this country hasgiven to me. I won’t take it for granted, you know? I mean America was built onthe backs of immigrants and that’s what I am. I’m here to embrace this country and help build it more. I took my citizenship test and passed it so I’m a full-blooded American.”

“Is that why you have “We the People” tattooed across your back?”

“Yep. I saw it on the ten dollar bill and thought it was a really cool. I read the Preamble [to the Constitution] and thought it sounded like something I believed in. It’s better than my name. I don’t like names on your back or belly and mine’s really long.”

    The following is an excerpt from chapter 5 of my book, Title Shot. I lived and trained with Mark DellaGrotte's Sityodtong Academy in Boston. Here's what happened one night after practice while Kenny Florian and I were sitting around.

Kenny Florian was just who BJJ was meant for-a man underdeveloped in strength, but calm and even brilliant in the world of grappling where many men panic. Of his seven wins, six were by submission. He was a non-threatening lightweight with remarkable grappling skills and an easy persona who was uncomfortable dwelling in the shadows of more popular fighters despite only being in the big leagues for three years.

In 2004 he was a BJJ hobbyist working in a financial translation company, which meant he could tell corporate businessmen they were broke in five different languages. That’s when “Dana the Almighty” noticed him. Kenny fought MMA veteran Drew Fickett to a decision while White was in the audience and won his attention.

After his grappling class we lounged on the mats while the younger guys set about scrubbing, mopping, and disinfecting the cleanest basement gym in the world.

“I think he saw the one thing I have that you can’t teach and that’s heart,” Kenny said looking back on that day. “I loved the competition of MMA and still do. It was so much more than anything else I’d ever done. Fickett had like twenty MMA fights at the time and I fought him to a decision because I just wanted to win so badly, you know? So when it was over [Dana] told me about The Ultimate Fighter and said I should send in an application.” He laughed remembering the moment. “But I didn’t have anything to send so I mailed one of my instructional DVDs, which probably wasn’t smart looking back on it. But it got me on the show.”

Kenny’s philosophy on martial arts ran deep. “You have to have an advantage. You have to retain the initiative. If Mark and I turned out all the lights in this gym and raced from the front door to the bathroom he would win, because he knows the way there. He works here, he trains here, he’s even lived here. He knows where all the walls are, the supports, the bags, it wouldn’t even be a contest. MMA is the same way. You have to bring someone into your dark room and know the room better than they do.”

I tried to keep up.

"So I’m bringing him into my dark room every time if I can. So that’s the idea is bringing him into where you’re most familiar. Now, granted he may know that room real well also [so] I have to have a backup plan to constantly be able to not only move quicker through that room, but also change room to room and keep bringing him into my room as quickly as possible. That’s the game. Now the question is through this big house of techniques of Jiu Jitsu and Muay Thai and boxing and wrestling that we have…it’s who’s going to bring him into what realm and who’s going to move through those rooms quicker. It’s constant and it’s in flux and it’s whoever’s going to be more familiar with that room and who can think quicker wins. There are guys who know those rooms inside and out. You get them on the mat and they practice and they move like poetry in motion. But all of a sudden the lights come in and the ref comes in and the cameras come in and they’re like, ‘oh no!’ They freeze up.”

“Was it everything you thought it would be?” I asked.

“It’s weird. I never thought the show would even be seen by anyone, let alone be so popular. I mean it was crazy looking back on it how much it took off. It’s especially weird when I’m picked to headline a trip to Afghanistan to train troops. We went there for two weeks and trained the troops and signed autographs at the bases. The whole time they wanted to meet me, but I was in awe of them and the things they do.”

Kenny was one of MMA’s poster boys; a hype-machine darling. He was a dream fighter who could easily interact with people and bring new fans into the sport. He’d headlined three UFC events against Sean Sherk, Din Thomas, and Sam Stout and was well known, but he had a major obstacle to overcome in a sport based on violence. He looked like a band camp geek who was only a horn-rimmed pair of glasses away from Louis Skolnik, president of Lambda Lambda Lambda in “Revenge of the Nerds.” He wasn’t threatening and had a boisterous sense of humor, all of which could be handicaps in the sport. On top of that his nickname sounded like an air filter, so getting respect for KenFlo was a challenge.

But luckily he had 155 pounds of fighting talent and a natural ability to be the center of attention. He grew up in the city and ventured out only on occasion to hunt with his father and brothers. He preferred The Clash over the Sex Pistols, Star Wars to Star Trek, enjoyed National Geographic survival shows, had a collection of t-shirts, and credited Bruce Lee as his hero. He was a Republican in a deep blue state, but squandered his American privilege to vote and couldn’t tell you the last time he did.

To Union or not to Union 

On opposite sides of an ornate, oversized meeting table Dana White, Terry Trebilcock and Kurt Otto stare down Rich Franklin, Matt Lindland, and Paul Buentello like it was a championship fight. Neither side blinks, because in this business intimidation is a science. The fighter’s demands seem reasonable-a pension for retired fighters, an allowance to bring two extra people to corner a fight, and larger purses for entry-level fighters.  But the promoters aren’t listening. The extra two people per corner would mean forty more plane tickets to purchase per event, which equals somewhere around $20,000 in expenditures just to make the fighter more comfortable. Raising the usual 3 and 3 contract ($3000 to show and $3000 to win) for a first-time fighter to 5 and 5 would also add up to an unacceptable expenditure for King of the Cage, who can’t negotiate on even level with the revenue base of the UFC and IFL. Talks break down and displaying a unified front, the promoters walk out. Days later, fighters led by Tito Ortiz are on strike and picket around the MGM Grand refusing to fight until their demands are met. Scabs attempt to cross the picket line and get mauled by Quinton Jackson and Tim Sylvia. Every major MMA event for the next three months is cancelled. It’s chaos.

Couldn’t happen in MMA you say? Sure it could. The fighters of the UFC, King of the Cage, IFL, Strikeforce, and whoever else could easily bind together to form a “fighter’s union,” making a collective bargaining body that represents the best interests of the men in the arena. Unlike Federal employees, who are barred from unionizing by law, athletes have the right to unionize, walk out, strike, and use their collective powers to negotiate better terms from the promoters who employ them. According to the National Labor Relations Act all it takes is 30% of the employees of a company or a field to consent by signing union cards. From there the group secures funding and viola! Instant collective bargaining tool. But is it worth it? What are the benefits and downfalls of a sports labor union?“

Every sport is different,” says Gary R. Roberts, the Director of the Sports Law Program at Tulane University. “Different economics; different dynamics; different structural relationships; different leadership; etc.” Athletes across the sports spectrum have different demands, but the trigger to forming a player’s union is usually the same-dissatisfaction with the organizations that control it. For comparison sake, let’s look at how labor unions work in other sports. The NFL Players Association was formed in 1956 by Don Shula and Frank Gifford in order to advance the rights and salaries of the players. Twelve years and one Supreme Court decision later, it achieved collective bargaining agreement status, and has negotiated with the team owners over everything from free agency to salary caps to the official start day of the NFL season. Because of the association, players enjoy higher wages, health insurance, and signing bonuses.           

The relationship between the players association and the team owners has not always been rosy, though, and the players went on strike in 1982 and 1987. Major League baseball has suffered even worse relations between their player’s union and team owners, resulting in three strikes in 1972, 1981, and 1994. In 2003, boxing formed the Joint Association of Boxers (JAB) with support from the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, who also supported the NFL Players Association in the 1950’s and 1960’s. The JAB acts as the collective bargaining representative for the athletes and negotiates with promoters to gain financial support for boxers, both active and retired. In the case of MMA, the UFC is a juggernaut of capitalism, earning over $200 million on pay-per-view subscriptions alone last year. Yet the combined totals of purses paid to their fighters amounts to less than $10 million, not even five percent of their profits. It’s an issue that could easily spark a drive to unionize. “I would absolutely support a union,” says UFC veteran Ivan Salaverry. “We need a guild or an organization that can look out for the fighters and negotiate better salaries.”

If MMA athletes were to form a players association like the JAB, they would certainly gain greater leverage and a bargaining tool to potentially increase the money and benefits they receive from the promoters. They would also gain the ultimate weapon of a collective body-the strike, which has to be used only as a last resort. The most likely candidates to lead a union are veteran fighters who have been in the sport long enough to know where it could improve and have name recognition, like Randy Couture or Matt Hughes. They also have a bigger revenue base and can afford to stop fighting, unlike the younger fighters who are more at risk and have no choice but to join the picket line in the case of a walkout. But there are risks. Promoters can legally fire anyone who strikes although it’s unwise because of the huge loss of talent they would be tossing aside for other promotions to snatch up.

A fighters union could be even more crushing to the sport of MMA as a whole because promoters would have to take measures to protect themselves from the loss of revenue brought on by a potential strike. Higher prices for tickets and merchandise are just a couple of side effects of a union since promoters would have to build up insurance capital to weather the storm of a strike. The IFL in particular, as a publicly traded company, would be forced to take protectionist measures that would be felt in the wallets of their investors and fans.And the fans are the ultimate losers to be certain. Spats between players and associations have caused millions of lost fans that don’t see the logic behind strikes and lockouts. Baseball, in particular, has had a rough road to recovery since their last players strike and suffered half-full stadiums for several years in the 1990’s as a result. But that’s an acceptable risk to Salaverry. “They’re not the ones getting punched an kicked in the ring. I don’t want the fans or the sport to suffer, but I think we should get what we’re worth and right now we’re not.”

Forming a labor union in order to bargain for a better contract is an American’s right, whether you’re a hairdresser, plumber, or cricket player (don’t laugh, they’re out there). But while the benefits to the athletes may be a good reason to form a union, the drawbacks to the sport as a whole and the fans are potentially crippling. If the day ever comes when Dana White has to negotiate across a table with a union representative, it better be a big one that he can’t reach across.

   The following is an exceprt from chapter 4 of my book, Title Shot. I spent nine days in Albuquerque, New Mexico at Greg Jackson's MMA hanging out and training with him and his team. The following story depicts my disastrous first few moments in the gym.

    No journey through American MMA could be considered sufficient without a stop in the capital of New Mexico. It was a place I anticipated and dreaded at the same time, like taking out a hot prom date, but going through her dad first…and his name is Bruce Banner. Jackson’s MMA in Albuquerque was world-renowned for training some of the best fighters in the sport, like Keith Jardine, Rashad Evans, Diego Sanchez, Nate Marquardt, Duane Ludwig, and even Georges St. Pierre. Jackson’s boasted a veritable who’s-who roster of Billy Bad-Asses.I was nervous and with good reason. Mixed Martial Arts was still a relatively small community as sports go and these guys were La Cosa Nostra. If all went well, I would gain an unprecedented deeper knowledge into this misunderstood sport. If I botched it I would be persona non grata all over the MMA network faster than Tony Soprano’s car navigates the McDonald’s drive through.

     June in New Mexico should be hot enough to melt the wicked witch of the north. But as my trusty Land Rover Discovery rolled across the barren desert landscape from Phoenix that only hearty Indian tribes had the stamina to adapt to without air conditioning, the temperature remained strangely mild. The vice that slowly clamped down on my head failed to trigger the “altitude alert” that most rational people would have recognized. At fifty five hundred feet above sea level, Albuquerque is a full two hundred feet above the mile-high city, Denver. I’d heard stories of Jackson taking his fighters to run the majestic ten thousand foot Sandia Mountains that eclipsed the city to the east and wondered if this range was the secret to his success.

     Albuquerque is a city of adobe houses and tope roadways accented by turquoise hues and wild grass. The famous Rio Grande River starts here before winding its way south and east to form the largest Mexican swimming pool in the world. It’s a city that mostly flies under the radar; too small to have a global impact, but too big to be discounted as insignificant. San Mateo Boulevard transited the town with more tattoo parlors and bus stops full of eccentric locals (a nice way to say scary street walkers), but less pawn shops and strip bars than Gresham. To the east a concrete wall separated the street from the neighborhoods and up and down the road businesses brandished wrought iron bars on the windows. Neither was for their aesthetic value. Crossing the famous Route 66 and turning onto Acoma Drive would bring no refuge from the less than spectacular neighborhood.

     “Anderson Island?” a voice yelled with a tinge of urgency as I entered the gym. “It’s a sign!” Joey Villasenor stood next to Nate Marquardt gazing directly at me with the deer-in-the-headlights look. “Oh shit! We’re gonna lose, bro.”           

     I froze for a second trying to just get my bearings when I realized what had him spooked. I had once been to Anderson Island, Washington; a quaint, little dot of land in the southern Puget Sound that was a decent place to take a day trek with the family. On my way back to the ferry I bought a cheap souvenir-a combination hat and t-shirt at a local store that said, “Anderson Island, Washington, USA.” The navy blue t-shirt actually became one of my favorites because it fit comfortably, so I threw it on that morning not realizing the significance of it. I might as well have been wearing a Notre Dame football jersey in Miami. Joey Villasenor was two weeks away from his showdown with Murilo “Ninja” Rua for the EliteXC light heavyweight belt and a week after that Nate Marquardt was scheduled to fight Anderson Silva for the UFC middleweight title. They were in the final phases of their preparation when I walked in wearing a shirt with “ANDERSON ISLAND” splashed across it.           

      Dumb.           

     “It’s a sign, bro!” Villasenor repeated to Marquardt. You’re gonna lose and so am I because I saw it,” he said in a panic.I smiled, hoping he was just kidding, but he continued as others looked my direction, wondering what the commotion was about. “Look, dude. It says ‘Anderson Island, USA.’ We’re both from the USA, but our opponents aren’t. We’re going down! It’s a sign!”            

     “Don’t worry about it,” Greg Jackson told him from behind an open door that read DO NOT ENTER in big red letters across it. “Come on in boss man,” he said shaking my hand as I entered the forbidden room.

     “Is he really that superstitious? Did I just curse them?” I asked.

     “Well,” Greg said as he plopped down on a lazy boy recliner with a broken footrest. “The closer he gets to a fight, the more he notices those little things. But don’t worry about it. It’s just him getting nervous.”

     I felt like the fat kid who complained in gym class and pissed the teacher off so much he made everyone run laps. So much for making a good first impression.

The following is an excerpt from chapter 3 of my book, Title Shot. I went to Portland, Oregon to watch Sportfight 19 and had a weird series of events happen during a fight between Blake Fredericks and James Birdsley.

   The notion that the athletes cannot hear fans during a fight is completely untrue. Every voice, and I mean every voice, was audible ringside. Someone way up in the upper decks yelled, “Kick his ass Jon!” during a fight just as I happened to look in his direction in the thirtieth or fortieth row. Fighters ignore these cheers, but not out of arrogance. They’re usually completely absorbed with a menial task like defeating another man who’s trying to kick his ass to pay ay attention.

   During an exciting undercard fight between Blake Fredericks and James Birdsley, three strange things occurred. First, Fredericks clamped a solid armbar on Birdsley that certainly looked like it was going to end the fight. Having been on the receiving end of at least three armbars, I knew how much pain Birdsley was in, yet he refused to tap out. Seeing his opponent was hanging tough, Fredericks’ corner shouted, “Break it, Blake,” several times.I was surprised by this and instantly looked toward the coach who said it, since I thought it was highly unprofessional to willfully hurt another opponent in that fashion.

   But I never got a glimpse of the instigator because in the way was something I didn’t expect-the most massive set of hooters I’d ever been that close too. That’s right…a pair of boobs blocked my view.

   In anticipation of the end of the round, the ring girl had pre-positioned herself off to my right to climb into the ring and strut her stuff with a “Round 3” card. She was just inches from me and, as I’ve already established, was stacked. I looked toward Fredericks’ corner only to witness an eclipse of silicone, a blackout of boobs, an obscuration of juggs.

   Embarrassed and not wanting to miss the end of the fight, I looked away back toward the ring where Birdsley continued to hold on while Fredericks tightened the armbar. “Break it Blake!” the shout came again from his corner. I had no choice but to look again. And still they were there. The double D’s from hell.

   The transfixing sight was suddenly broken by a shout from the ring. “He bit me!” Fredericks complained as he let go of the armbar on Birdlsey and scooted himself away. Sitting in the middle of the ring and pointing to his thigh, a stream of blood trickled down Blake Frederick’s leg.

   “Doc! Get in here!” the Referee yelled at a man who was clearly not paying attention. “Is this a bite wound?” he asked. The doctor nodded, the bite mark clear. Birdsley was disqualified for illegal tactics. When the MC announced the results to the crowd the boos were deafening.

   “He’ll never fight here again,” A fan yelled.

   “You suck!” another one added.

   Matt Lindland’s wife, Angie, shook her head in disgust. As Birdsley left the ring he was assaulted by fans who wanted a piece of him. A redneck in a tie-dyed shirt holding a huge beer yelled, “You piece of shit! You ain’t no fighter!”

   This was strange and funny at the same time. For all the grief MMA fans had endured, for all the terrible things Mike Freeman at CBS had said about them, here they were defending their sport in the best way possible…by upholding standards. Biting is dirty, underhanded, and illegal in MMA. It’s like fish-hooking a mouth in basketball, kicking to the groin in soccer, or gouging an eye in any other respectable sport. It’s a coward’s way to get out of a bad situation and completely unacceptable in a civilized fight. Birdsley was trapped, plain and simple. He had no way out of Fredericks’ armbar and chose to hurt him maliciously instead of do the honorable thing and tap out. And for that his name will forever be marred. He’ll have a scarlet letter around his neck in every MMA promotion and quite possibly will never fight again.

   It’s a shame the fight ended this way with just seven seconds left in the second round. Up to this point, the two middleweights had staged an impressive contest. At one point Birdsley mounted Fredericks’ back and for twenty seconds Fredericks walked around the ring trying to get him off. It was an exciting match and could even have been the “fight of the night” were it not for the disqualification.

The following is an excerpt from chapter two of my book. I spent a week at Cesar Gracie Jiu JItsu in California. On a boring Saturday afternoon Cesar and I lounged around his gym discussing the UFC and his style of jiu jitsu. During the conversation Cesar outlined a peculiar theory of technique versus location. 

 Cesar Gracie had his own time zone. No fighter is ever on time, it’s like a culture of lateness with them, but Cesar’s even worse. If he says he’s going to be somewhere at a certain time, be sure toadd at least thirty minutes to it. I arrived at his Antioch gym at 1032, afraid I was going to be late for our 1030 appointment. As it turned out, I was twenty-eight minutes early. Cesar arrived at 1100 sharp, perfect if you livedin Cesar Standard Time.

Cesar was an odd mix of laid-back skateboard slacker and Andrew Dice Clay without the Mother Goose stories. Settling into his office chair and never removing his sunglasses, he provided glowing insight on the sport of MMA as his phone consistently vibrated. To his credit, he never answered it until Gary Shaw, the owner of EliteXC, called.

Cesar’s form of jiu jitsu was known for incorporating Sambo, leglocks, and spending a considerable amount of time without a gi, the standard dress for martial arts.“We train a lot with both-gi and no gi. It is a fight after all and there aren’t any in the streets, you know? But it’s the open-minded attitude that probably sets us apart. We try whatever works best and promote a healthy atmosphere with no rivalries in the gym, no egos, that kind of stuff. Otherwise the talent pool gets depleted.”

“If you want to see a gym with no egos, check out Team Quest,” I joked.

“I like the guys at Team Quest. Some of the hardest working people are in Oregon. But their technique sucks,” he said.

After looking out the window for most of our time together, Cesar finally spun his seat around to face me; an indication that this topic was of a personal nature.

 “Here’s what I think. As you go from south to north, technique goes down while dedication goes up. You see the people in L.A. are pussies. They don’t want to work. They want the rewards without putting in the time to earn them. They’re not dedicated and hardworking people. They’re all flash. But as you go north, that changes and people get harder. Their work ethic gets better until you get to Oregon. Technique is another story. Technique in L.A. is good. They know how to use the principles of jiu jitsu. It actually gets better as you come north to here and then gets worse as you go farther north to Oregon. Up there they’re all wrestlers, which is fine if that’s the style you’re comfortable with. But wrestling is not jiu jitsu.”

“So the best technique is here in Northern California?”

“Of course,” he smiled.

Submission wrestling and jiu jitsu are not the same thing. Wrestlers are trained from an early age to pin their opponent’s shoulders to the mat, which is the goal of freestyle wrestling. As they emerged in MMA, wrestlers had to re-learn their art and incorporate new moves to achieve a different outcome-a submission-instead of a pin. Jiu jitsu, on the other hand, was conceived around the principles of using leverage and chokes to achieve the same outcome and borrowed selected moves from other martial arts. Another difference between the two that favored wrestling was their starting positions. Most jiu jitsu classes started from the knees instead of standing. The opponents faced each otherwhile already in a downed position instead of on the feet. Jiu jitsu fighters never had to learn the art of the takedown like wrestlers did since wrestling started in the standing position. Therefore jiu jitsu practitioners were not as proficient at taking their opponent down. The two arts weren’t worlds apart,but slight differences existed that distinguished one from the other.

Though I wasn’t convinced, it was compelling enough to deserve a deeper look. I dubbed it ‘Cesar’s Theory of Efficiency,’ because the variable of work was the common thread and efficiency is a product of work. It goes like this:

Efficiency equals work out divided by work in, or E=WO/WI. A high rate of efficiency is achieved when a small amount of work is put in and a great amount of work results. Unless Work Out (WO) increases at an equal or greater rate than Work In (WI), efficiency will decrease.

A good example is a bicycle. A bike achieves a high rate of efficiency since a human merely has to expend a small amount of energy by pushing the pedals (WI) in order to produce movement (WO).

The philosophy of jiu jitsu is similar to a bicycle-a man of smaller stature with good technique will not have to work hard to defeat a man of larger and stronger size. Good practitioners of jiu jitsu are able to decrease work in(WI) and therefore increase their efficiency as long as work out (WO) stays constant.

With me so far?

In Cesar’s theory, the people of Oregon are less efficient than the people of L.A., because they have to work harder to achieve the same result. In other words they expend more energy than is necessary to win a fight. If they had better technique, they could work less and achieve the same number of victories in competition.

So according to Cesar, there is a directly proportional relationship between efficiency and distance. As you travel north from L.A. to Oregon, efficiency decreases.

I ran this theory by Park College Professor of Statistics Gary Colonna to test its validity. He agreed with the principle, but added that distance may not be afactor unless more data was presented.

“If the people in Santa Barbara worked harder, but were less efficient than those in LA, and those in San Francisco worked even harder, but with less efficiency,and so on up the coast, you might be able to show that distance between sites was a factor. But, about all you can really say is that people in Oregon work harder, but less efficiently than those in L.A.”

Translation-Since Cesar was really only comparing two variables (L.A. and Portland), instead of a series of them, the variable of distance is inconclusive. But one variable that could be measured is victories, or percentage of wins.

Dr. Colonna continued. “If Gracie's allegations about work and efficiency are correct, and more winners come from L.A., you could conclude that efficiency is superior to work-in,” meaning good technique is more important than hard work. “If more [winners] come from Oregon, work-in is superior,” meaning dedication is more important than good technique.

The next logical step in proving Cesar’s theory right or wrong would be to compare the number of MMA victories among L.A. based fighters to the number of victories among Portland based fighters.

            A cursory study of active professional fighters signed by major promotions (UFC,Pride, IFL, Bodog, EliteXC, and King of the Cage) claiming the greater Los Angeles area as their home training grounds in June, 2007, netted a total of 22 fighters with 262 wins. This results in an average of 11.9 wins per fighter. The same study of the greater Portland area netted a total of 18 fighters with 204 wins for an average of 11.3 wins per fighter.

Ironically, statistics are correct only half the time and can always be skewed to support either side of a theory by introducing different variables, such as journeyman fighters who call L.A. or Portland home temporarily and then move on. For example, Randy Couture and Dan Henderson were not counted since they started their careers in Portland but have since moved on to Las Vegas and California respectively. Also the fighters are not broken down by style. In other words, all fighters who live in Portland and L.A. were considered instead of only those whose fighting style is predominantly Brazilian Jiu Jitsu-a major component of Cesar’s theory.

Onthe surface, though, he may have been onto something so I decided to hold onto the subject until later when I could run it by fighters on the other side ofthe coast. After all, there are two sides to every story. 

The following is a short excerpt from the first chapter of my book, Title Shot. I spent ten days with Team Quest at their Gresham, Oregon training facility in February, 2007. One night after team practice Matt Lindland sat down with me in his office. 

Every profession or hobby has its own form of butt-sniffing; a way of finding out as much as possible through small talk or non-verbal means. The Army is plaque-happy. We give each other plaques whenever a soldier leaves a unit or moves to a new post. Anyone who’s been in the Army for a period of time has more than a few plaques on their office walls. When first meeting we look at them first to get a feel for where the guy has been in the hopes of making a connection to a mutual acquaintance. I once sat in a Colonel’s super-sized office at Fort Bragg who had four full walls filled with plaques and pictures of his career. Checking out these plaques is our form of butt-sniffing. Weightlifters ask each other, “How much ya bench?” Golfers ask, “What’s your handicap?” They’re all just variation of butt-sniffing.

But Matt Lindland’s office was void of any memorabilia to look at despite a lifetime of wrestling and MMA achievements. He’d shut down the butt-sniffing before it started. Only one poster hung from a wall, barely visible in the bad lighting of the closet-sized office where million-dollar deals were made. It was a pencil drawing of Matt having his arm raised in triumph at the 1998 World Wrestling Championships when he placed fourth and was drawn by a friend who gave it to him. It stood out like a cup of Folgers coffee in a Starbucks storage room, but it spoke volumes about him.

“You just have to go out there and fully know in your heart and soul that you’re going to be victorious,” he told me as he pointed to the drawing. “If you enter a fight, a soccer game, or a game of cards without expecting to win, you’re bound to lose."

This was the Lindland standard. Everyone has one. Some people are neat freaks and can’t stand to see their house, room, or car messy. Cleanliness is their standard. Some people are less inclined to keep their personal lives organized and live by the seat of their pants, taking each day as a “play-it-by-ear” adventure. For them spontaneity is their standard. Matt Lindland’s standard was to win, period. He expects it.

            But the desire to win everything only goes so far when it comes to getting paid. The underlying motivation for Lindland striding into a ring and entering in unarmed combat with another man was money. But not for the reasons most people want-to build wealth, gain fame, or buy toys. Lindland was as plain as vanilla yogurt. He wasn’t like the UFC’s poster boy, Chuck Liddell, who claimed a mansion, a Ferrari, and a Hummer as part of his eccentric collection of toys. Lindland would rather spend his money on a forty-acre ranch to keep his family safe and solvent for years to come.

            “My motivations have never changed,” he said. “I want to make sure my family is taken care of, my kids can go to college, my wife has a place to live comfortably. Those are the reasons I’m in this business.”

            But how will history treat the great Matt Lindland? Despite over twenty MMA victories over high-profile opponents and being ranked as the world’s number one middleweight, Matt has never won a championship belt.

          “Why should I?” he asked shrugging his shoulders. “What’s so special about winning a belt?”

           Well,” I replied, “as much as you may not like it, the world won’t remember you as fondly without one. We’re a materialistic society after all.”

           “If it got me a bigger paycheck, then yeah, I would pursue it,” he said rubbing his bald head. “But a belt doesn’t put food on the table. It doesn’t keep my family sheltered against the Oregon weather. It doesn’t get you to heaven, and it isn’t a value. So why should I focus my life on winning one? What kind of example would I be setting for my kids if they saw me as someone who puts so much faith in an inanimate object?”

          “It signifies the top dog of the heap,” I said. “Your friend, Dan Henderson, for example, has two belts and is all over the covers of magazines right now."

          “Fighting the best guys is more important to me. I pursued Rich Franklin when he was the UFC middleweight champion for years. I’ve made it clear that I want a shot at Anderson Silva (the current middleweight champion). I took the fight with Fedor [Emelianenko] despite being two weight classes lighter because he’s the best in the world. I’d rather be the guy who put himself in the line of fire against the best fighters in the world than the guy who won a belt and sat on it year after year.”

          This point was indisputable. As much as Matt shunned championship belts as shallow and materialistic, he could not be accused of avoiding anyone. In fact, he’d gone out of his way to fight bigger and better fighters. In 2006 he fought a heavier and more dangerous Quinton “Rampage” Jackson in the upstart promotion, The World Fighting Alliance. In a very close match he took Jackson the distance despite being slammed to the mat twice by “Rampage.” Lindland lost a decision that could have gone either way, but gained a ton of respect in the process. And in a sport where tough is common, respect is the only true way to separate the great from the mediocre.