Pain Don't Hurt (7 page)

chapter seven

Winning isn't everything, it's the only thing.

—
VINCE LOMBARDI

A
fter returning from Thailand I really hoped to try to rematch Tommy
Glanville. The opportunity arose promptly, and I was offered the rematch on May 5, 2001. Mo was going to be fighting on the same card, only he was going to be fighting in an eight-man tournament. What this meant was that he would have to fight three times in one night, if he was to win. Eight men are matched into four fights; the four winners then are matched into two fights, and then finally, the last two winners fight each other. K-1 hosts tournaments like this all the time, and they are so fucking brutal. A single injury accrued in the first fight could mean a loss in the second or the third. Small injuries that a fighter would normally think nothing of risking in a single fight have to be considered more carefully. A cut above the eye in the first fight could mean the second fight getting called off due to swelling. Never mind the third. Each fight becomes a balance of trying to win and trying to not take so much damage that the next fight is lost. It's a whole other ball game. I was going to help Mo get ready, and he was going to help me. We both took this card very seriously. Mo had the tournament to win, and I needed to avenge my loss. You see, losing to Suttie wasn't something I felt so urgent about “fixing.” Jason was a hurricane; he was a violent, dangerous fighter who had respected me. Our rapport was good before and after the fight, and I felt that he had thrown everything at me. He was the better fighter that night, fair and square. I was satisfied with that and glad that I had survived. I had earned my stripes just for that. But Tommy, Tommy was different. I knew I was better than him, and I needed to prove it.

Something else had happened before this camp. . . . In January of 2001 I became a father for the first time. Amy, my wife, was a nurse in a ward that dealt primarily with small intestine surgeries and transplants. She dealt with a lot of very sick children on a daily basis. Despite our problems as a married couple—and there were many from the beginning—I knew she would be a good mother, so I had no problem going ahead with planning for a child. At least, not until he was here. Then I was scared to death. This changes any and every human being who is fortuitous enough to be blessed by parenthood. Some for good, some for bad. It shifted my insides around and put a new kind of love, and a new kind of fear, in me that I had no idea I could feel. I was simultaneously more in love with my tiny son, Ben, than I had ever been with anyone or anything ever, and scared of him. The entire reason I fucking existed suddenly was there, in his eyes. I was also petrified of screwing it all up. I was afraid of being a bad father, afraid that somehow I would inadvertently repeat or reuse my father's “parenting techniques.” The mixing of this incredibly deep love with this horrible crippling fear and desperate need to protect him made me feel so lonely and sad. I became convinced I wasn't good enough for him. It was as though I had been handed the greatest gift on earth, and yet I knew if I touched it I would break it. The day of his birth I received a call while I was in the hospital. I was offered a fight against Kakuda, a Japanese fighter. I had accepted right away since I just wanted to get away to think, to feel safe in how much I loved my newborn son. That fight was pulled, just like the last Japanese fight I had been offered, and replaced with the offer to fight Glanville again. With the opportunity to train again with Mo, who was already a father, and hopefully glean some sage wisdom on how to do this dad thing, I jumped at the chance to leave, even though it killed me.

Because of these things, I went to dark places for this camp. I used to sit during drills and visualize the crowd booing me as I walked out, throwing things at me, hating me as I entered, loving Tommy and his comical bravado. I visualized them shouting at me, and all of that irascible moxie would just fuel me, make me want that much more to tear him down in front of all of them. As I would push further into these bitter thoughts, Mo would suddenly quip, “Hey, man, focus!” Or something similar. Then he would make the “So what?” face. That would yank me right out of my anger pothole and back to reality. Vengeance is one of the roads one walks to avoid focusing on the immediate moment, and Mo, armed with his halcyon strength, was committed to bringing me back to that focus. He did his best to force me to abandon my pursuit of retribution, which was as much if not more aimed at myself and my failure than it was at Tommy. Obsessiveness is one of the less dazzling traits you'll find in most athletes. This is doubly true for me.

Mo was facing possibly fighting Duke Roufus (Rick Roufus's brother), Paul Lalonde, Pedro Fernandez, Tomasz Kucharzewski, Michael McDonald, Jean-Claude Leuyer, and Gunter Singer. Mo wasn't worried, as Mo doesn't get worried about fights ever. But the greatest concern for us as his teammates was Duke. Duke wasn't at the level of his brother Rick, but he was still a talent. So we worked to prepare Mo for all possible matchups and focused on what might be the most difficult, imitating their styles as we went along.

I had elected my friend Jason Johnston to be my cornerman. Jason is exactly the kind of man you want in your corner, literally and figuratively, and this could be plugged into really any circumstance in life. He is the ultimate in backup. Jason was a recon marine before he went into kickboxing. He dabbled in Ironman competitions and fitness figure modeling, alongside being a talented heavyweight kickboxer. Jason had an absurdly sunny disposition, and he was honest to a fault. The guy just leaked positivity and calm. He never buckled under pressure, and he never got heated when things got tense. He was also bullshit-proof. He would tell me exactly what I needed to do in between rounds, without sugarcoating it but without shouting at me. I knew that if I couldn't have Mo in my corner, I needed an equally cool and honest head there to talk to me. Jason was perfect. A few days before the fight, I flew out. Jason and Mo met me there. This time I was fighting at the Mirage. While we in the lobby, Jason commented, “Do either of you act any different before fights? It's bizarre how calm you both are!” To this Mo responded, “Just another day at the office, right?” And promptly flashed the face.

A mutual acquaintance of ours, another cornerman, saw all of us standing together and came over. He smiled up at Mo and said, “You still doing this? You're an old man!” to which Mo deftly responded, “Yeah, but I'm a bad old man.” Maurice Smith was almost forty at this time, which is practically primordial for a kickboxer. He had accrued no injuries in his time as a fighter, looked not a day over twenty-eight, and he moved exactly like the twenty-eight-year-olds, so not only was this not an exaggeration, it was possibly a downplay of just how fucking bad he really was.

The days leading up to the fight were standard. K-1 treated us very well but also put us through our paces when it came to promoting. Back then everything in kickboxing was run by Japanese businessmen, with Kazuyoshi Ishii at the helm. Ishii was the epitome of what you would expect from a high-level Japanese businessman and martial arts master. He was always well dressed, and he always presented himself with maximal class. He demanded the same level of poise and gentility of the fighters he brought to fight in his organization when they were not in the ring. You were required to show up at all press appearances on time, well groomed and in a suit. You were expected to behave yourself. Speak when spoken to, answer the questions asked of you to the best of your ability, and never interrupt or shout either at a journalist, at other media personnel, or at another fighter. Ishii frowned on clownish behavior. He didn't value shit-talking or bashing between fighters. He valued fighters who put on a show worth watching. You didn't have to win, but you had to show fighting spirit. Like the Japanese fans, Ishii wanted to see your heart.

One night on the evening of May 4, Ishii had requested that all of the fighters come to a nightclub in Las Vegas located inside of the Hard Rock Hotel. We were there to do promoting for the fights, meet with media, do some TV interviews for networks, and just generally be available. I was less than thrilled by this, as it was the night before the fight, and all I wanted to be doing was resting. At one point I looked over and saw that Ishii was sitting by himself. My bravery rose and I approached him and sat beside him. He turned to me and smiled. “Mr. Miller, are you enjoying yourself?” His English was a bit broken, but he spoke enough to be a true gentleman and ensure the comfort of the fighters he was employing at any given moment.

I responded, “Yes, sir. I just wanted you to know, I am the American fighter you are looking for, and tomorrow night I will prove it.”

He smiled and grasped my hand firmly in his. He seemed pleased with my self-assurance. I stood, bowed to him, and bade him good evening. As I walked away, I felt the bag of bricks I had just harnessed to myself pull at my neck. I had promised Ishii I would win. Fuck it. All the more reason. Now I really had to.

The next day at the venue I sat listening to the announcers call the fights. Mo fought his first two fights before me, so I was partially distracted, paying attention to how his fights went. Mo fought Pedro Fernandez first. He won, in a unanimous decision. I didn't get a good look at him when he came in the back. I was still focused on myself and what I was going to do. A win was what we wanted obviously, but with a decision it meant he'd spent more time in the ring and in the fight, so there was a possibility that he might have taken damage. It was unlikely, as Mo's style was to take little damage, but the potential was still there. I wasn't sure if he had, so I waited and listened. A half hour later he fought Gunter Singer. At the beginning of the second round, Mo crushed Gunter with a right-hand. The crowd roared. Mo came into the back and glanced at me. I was warming up at this point; I caught his eye just for a moment, just long enough to see that he was unmarked and to see him make solid eye contact and give me a thumbs-up. A few more fights passed and someone from the organization came in the back and called my name. “Mr. Miller, we are going to have you and Mr. Glanville walk out at the same time. So you will meet in the hall and enter the ring together.”

Uhh. What the fuck?

That is never how it's done. This threw me. Typically you walk out at completely different times. I mean, you don't even come near each other until the first bell. Fuck this. I didn't want to see him before. I didn't want to nod and fucking half-smile and be forced into either uncomfortable silence or fake pleasantries before I went to beat this guy's ass; no thanks. That's for after the fight. At the end, when it's done, it's a job, and whoever wins wins, and you buy each other beers and it's all water under the proverbial bridge, but before? No.

And I didn't have a choice. Because this was what the powers that be wanted.

I was stomping at the ground by the time they brought me out to the hallway to walk out. Tommy's big blond head was barely visible on my periphery. I refused to turn and look at him. Nothing personal; it was just better for both of us this way. We got the signal and started walking out. The crowd was booing me, ferociously. This was Tommy's town. As we walked, they started playing a clip from an interview Tommy had done two days before. They had been very secretive when he had done this interview, and I couldn't understand why. It all became apparent in the seconds it took me to get to that ring. I looked up at the screens just in time to hear him say, “Mark is from the Iron City, so that's where his chin was forged. He's really tough. But tonight, he's my bitch.”

The crowd roared with cheers. I whipped my head to look Tommy full in the face right before we entered the ring and just started laughing. “Really, Tommy?!” I shook my head.
All right fucker, it'll be like last time, only this time, you won't get up.

Tommy was in the corner shimmying like a show pony. First bell sounded.
Let's go.

I came out baiting him. The game plan was to keep everything straight down the pipe, let him back me up, and then unload. Fighters get cocky when they think they are backing you up. They get brave. I let him drive me back a few times, clinching on him when he got close. He threw a few low kicks, and I checked them. He hated it. Absorbing the impact of a kick on your thigh is stupid, because you can't do it very many times before your leg is dead. But if you lift the leg being kicked, stiffen the lower part of the leg, and “check,” or take the impact on the shin . . . Trust me. As bad as it might hurt you, it hurts them far worse. Tommy was pawing at me. I was circling out, frustrating him. He feinted a low kick and I lifted my leg to check, but he went for my back leg instead, dropping me to the floor. As I was pushing to get myself up, he placed his fucking foot on my back, as if he was going to stand on me while I was on all fours. The ref yelled at him to get back in his corner. I got up. A few more pitty-pat exchanges occurred and then I was back in the corner. Tommy had me angry.

In Tommy's corner he learned that he had a split over his eye. He also got told by his corner repeatedly to not “follow [me] around.” Tommy had a weak gas tank, and he tired easily. They couldn't figure out how I had made contact with him, and now they were worried. Shit was happening that they hadn't counted on, and Tommy was getting tired. I was in my corner fresh as could be.

Second round started and he began pawing at me again, desperate to gauge distance. I threw a right kick slicing directly at the top of his thighs. It hurt him, and off of that I threw a knee directly to his sternum and circled out. Tommy followed me, followed me, followed me. . . . I threw a kick, and he checked it, but I got a solid jab and a cross off on him. The cross bobbled him. He stepped back. Eager, I rushed in and threw another big cross, which he sidestepped, and I threw myself off balance and ended up on the floor. Tommy came up behind me and pretended to hump my back. The crowd cheered. I have no tolerance for this bullshit. You wanna showboat, fine, but you better beat me decisively now; otherwise, you're going to look like showboating is all you have. And I intended to exploit Tommy the next time he fucked around in there.