When we touched gloves, I felt the energy of his body. The enigma he had been became human. This was his first weakness, his transformation from a question, a mystery, into nothing more than flesh and blood. I could hurt flesh and blood; I could only punch through the specter of an enigma. The tattoos that covered his body told a story about a boy who wanted to hide behind a skull and cross-bones, a boy afraid of his own fear. But I knew the way the needle bit his skin, the way he clenched his teeth to keep from wincing. I could see the pierced holes in his nose and ears, even his nipples. This was a costume he never wanted to discard; this was the costume I would have to tear from him. As we did the ceremonious glove touch, I realized I had the ability to destroy him. Any weakness he exposed would allow me to end his life with my bare hands, if it weren’t for the rules, if it weren’t for the referee.

*************************************************

When I was fourteen, my father severed all ties to me. He’d fought for custody, tried everything—alcohol, lies, violence. My body was still frail, just starting its own fight with puberty, when I saw dad hurl my sister into the garage door, when I flew at him and ate a backhand. What are you supposed to do? What’s left except to make sure your mom and your sister are safe? I slept each night only after I knew my mother and sister were asleep. I checked the locks repeatedly, got out from the warmth of bed at the slightest stir, and often sat on the porch alone at night, watching, listening to the neighborhood. With my father gone I was the man of the house. Mom worked sixteen-hour days so we could live comfortably, and I desperately longed for a father figure.

At the local movie rental store, like any teenager, I wanted to see what was in the special video section, the one enclosed by thin drywall with the signs “Must be 18 or older to enter.” I thought what I wanted was pictures of slick breasts and asses covered in oil. I walked towards it, glancing every few steps over my shoulder toward the clerk. He seemed uninterested in my guilt, preoccupied with actual customers. Before I reached the porn, I saw a video faced out, with a muscular man in black spandex shorts, blood painting his bronzed, squared chest. This wasn’t what I came in for, but I had to have it. In bold yellow letters it said “The Ultimate Fighting Championship.” And in the lower right-hand corner it read “Unrated: Contains Violent Material.” As such, the clerk called my mother for permission, and I soon had found my new father, “The World’s Most Dangerous Man,” Ken Shamrock.

I played basketball in junior high, but I couldn’t stand the politics. Whoever had parents willing to schmooze the coach played more. Simple as that. Coach always told me to sit beside him, but I purposely sat at the end of the bench, away from coach, away from the team. This space stood for what I wanted; the ability to control my own outcome, to compete when I wanted, to be able to blame myself, and only myself. As a sixth man I led the team in more categories than any other player, but my mom chose to work shift after shift rather than play the political games of soccer moms. Needless to say, I’m a better person because of it.

I quit basketball, bought Ken Shamrock’s book and read about his journey from foster home to foster home. His story was something out of a John Irving novel. I carefully cut out pictures of him and taped them to the ceiling above my bed. I called every martial arts school in the area, but they all focused on the traditional, outdated, and ineffective “flashy” martial arts. Ken often won his fights with submission – a choke or joint-lock – but in Altoona, the small former railroad town I called home, there was not a mixed martial arts school. In MMA all fights begin with the combatants standing, so I decided to take the most basic approach to developing myself as a fighter. I began training at the Altoona Boxing Club. A former barber-shop turned boxing gym; the Altoona Boxing Club has several duck-taped heavybags, an unused toilet against the wall, and the smell of sweat and leather. It was here where I could learn the fundamentals of how to fight standing. Each time I stepped onto the blood-stained blue canvas, each time I hooked my thumb through Everlast wraps, I grew as a man and fighter.

*************************************************

After three months of training I entered a Golden Gloves boxing tournament in Pittsburgh, a city with a reputation for pugilism. The smoky, dimly lit arena and the energized, alcohol-induced crowd cemented my feet to the ground, glued my hands to my ears. The air was so thick two breaths felt like one. I couldn’t throw a proper punch without stumbling around like a drunk, no, more like a person naturally uncoordinated and then drunk. I’d thrown thousands if not millions of these same punches in the gym, but when nerves entered into the picture, like a free throw shooter at the line, I choked. I wanted to grapple my opponent to the canvas like Ken would, but boxing compared to MMA is like checkers compared to chess. Limited to using only punches, I found myself quickly outclassed. I was pelted into the corner like the lone survivor in a game of grade school dodge-ball. Punches kept coming. The air was knocked out of me. My concrete feet stood firmly in place despite my coach telling me to circle-out. Each punch he landed further reinforced the idea that I was a quitter, that I didn’t have the heart to be a fighter. Plus, I couldn’t see. I had been hit with so many punches that my headgear spun around to cover my face; my opponent couldn’t see the eyes he was watering, the nose he was bludgeoning. I heard a pounding metal sound, the bell, I was saved by it. Before starting the second round, already battered mentally and physically, I quit, again.

As a freshman in high school, I found myself in a place where the self-conscious mixes with the rush of hormones and where physical development ranges widely. I became enamored with the vascular bodybuilders on magazine covers, the gorgeous, half-naked women straddling their bulging biceps and smiling, of course.

I’ve always been small. Throughout high-school I looked like I was twelve, and my 5’2” 125lb frame made me insecure to say the least. Supplementing with protein shakes as the magazines said, and hitting the weights in an attempt to make up for what I wasn’t given naturally, my confidence slowly began to build alongside my body.

I joined the wrestling team as a senior, but something still fascinated me about Ken Shamrock making champion fighters cry uncle with ankle-locks. Often he didn’t even throw a strike, instead using his agility, conditioning, and knowledge of leverage to make his opponents submit with grappling holds. It was such a humane way to end a fight with so few rules, both fighters walking away completely unharmed. Literally translated to mean “the gentle art,” jiu-jitsu focuses on using energy displacement and leverage to prey on the places human beings are most vulnerable: the neck and joints. The application of these strategies, imported from jiu-jitsu to MMA, was the work of the legendary Gracie family.

The Gracie’s brought their skills from Brazil and opened Gracie Jiu-Jitsu academies throughout the United States. The most renowned academy is the Renzo Gracie Academy in midtown Manhattan. I still had the itch to learn, to redeem myself through MMA. Even the girl I dated in high-school was a black belt in Taekwondo at a school her family owned. I couldn’t swallow the pill of forgetfulness. My insatiable appetite led me to the video store again and again. I’d rent three, four, five MMA videos, spending the weekend alone,
watching and rewinding, watching and rewinding.

*************************************************

It was in college that I fell in love, with poetry. I took the same critical approach to fighting and poetry: both are arts. As I learned about metaphor and acute observation, I began studying exercise kinesiology, researching training strategies and nutritional sciences. I experimented and implemented routines that increased my strength while allowing me to maintain the same bodyweight. At eighteen and picking up extra hours in the produce department at a local grocery store, I began driving to Manhattan when I had the finances. Renzo’s academy is in the basement of a business building; there are no signs posted to advertise. After a few jiu-jitsu tournament victories, I taught an MMA class on the weekends utilizing what Renzo taught me, my boxing experience, and my endless video watching. It began as something selfish. The reason I taught was to learn. Relationships with friends and women were put on hold. I went to school, came home, did homework, trained four hours, and finished the day surrounded by fruits and vegetables.

Just days before I turned twenty-one, I made my MMA debut. With a mixed skill set, a body that had matured—I was now 5’7” and 155lbs—hardened muscles from weight training and healthy eating, the knowledge of jiu-jitsu from world famous instructors, and a residing, pounding insecurity about being small, about being a quitter, about the last time I fought in front of a crowd, and about my father leaving at such a crucial stage, to say I had hunger, I had fire, would be a dramatic understatement.

It was fire that I saw in the eyes of my favorite boxer, Arturo Gatti. Two years before my MMA debut, fate made me pull into a parking garage in Atlantic City facing the wrong direction, and ironically, directly beside his limousine. My sole purpose for the trip was to see him fight. I wouldn’t have known it was him if he hadn’t rolled his window down so I could see his eyes. Shark eyes. I saw his fire. He won the fight despite breaking his hand early in the bout. For my MMA debut I would purposely wear a beanie at all times to distort my appearance, to cast a shadow over the fire of my eyes. I didn’t want anybody seeing my fire until I burned them with it.

*************************************************

My fight would take place April 21st in Columbus, Ohio; MMA is illegal in my home state of Pennsylvania. Two nights before, I sat in the bathtub. A bathtub isn’t simply a bathing cubicle to a fighter. It represents a means to practice timed underwater breath holds. After each exhalation I made sounds like Jean Claude Van Damme in Bloodsport. (As cheesy as this sounds, this is my gauge for correctness.) My mind scattered like ants to fire. Everything seemed to be a sign, and I began to notice things previously unnoticed, like the trail of hair running along the middle of my abdomen. The majority of hairs slanted to the left. I wondered if he’d have a hell of a left jab or left hook. A sip of cold water traveled down the wrong pipe. Gasping for air as my eyes watered, I speculated that the fact I was choking in my tub might mean I would get choked in the cage. “Tap Out or Pass Out,” a poem I wrote in an undergraduate class, came back to me. Outlining a premonition about my first MMA bout, a vision that I’d be in full mount throwing rapid-fire punches, forcing my opponent to his stomach and applying the rear naked choke. It ended with me crying and hearing the applause of a wild crowd. A classic “tell not show” poem, but a great possible outcome to a fight.

Following the bathtub routine I usually throw on shorts and walk into the yard for yoga; it’s always late at night so nobody can see me. This time, it was two in the morning, and having rolled in bed for three hours even Pharaoh, my Jack Russell terrier, was making disgruntled moans. It was cold for mid-April, but my internal temperature was revving from the bathtub heat. On instinct, I dropped my shorts and continued my routine of yoga, downward dogs and all. The moon was blindingly bright. The grass’s cold dew pricked my warm feet, sent an energy through my body and out my freshly shaven head. I looked up, followed the steam’s trail, believed it was being sucked away by a vacuum, the moon ferrying the impurities from my body. Merged with nature, I felt Lacan’s jouissance and finally understood what my professor had been trying to tell me. With chills came normalcy, the cleansing process was complete.

*************************************************

The promoter paid for the hotel room the following night, so it was two beds and a toilet. (I spent more time in the latter.) Before sleeping I became agitated, nerves and anxiety, sub 5% body fat and cutting water. The precise process of weighing-in, too, is an art form. I counted the breaths of my training partners and thought, “Is it necessary to breathe so damn loud?”

The day of the fight. We arrive at the weigh-in and rules meeting early to see the barbaric cage being built piece by piece. It’s unified on television, pristine. Perfectly cut into an octagon shape, the smooth, glossy, promotion-patched floor. I was aroused by this structure; even the name “The Octagon” had a euphonic ring. But seeing it built from the ground up scared me.

Here were workers, specifically hired to piece together an eight-sided steel cage. It seemed absurd. The clanking cacophony of sounds was nauseatingly different from what I expected. With each pound and crank I stepped further and further away from the beauty of the sport. I stepped into the place of an uninformed spectator. I felt ashamed of what I had worked so hard to achieve. I felt proud of my body, the battle it went through, but as for what I was about to participate in, I felt a cold disappointment.

The pounding of metal on metal continued. People weren’t here for me to showcase my talent. They weren’t paying the big bucks to watch my art. They were here for blood. They were here to see testosterone raged men and out of work porn stars as promised by the promoters and by the countless Pay-Per-View channels. They were piling into this arena to see how much punishment a human can take. They were here for the much sought-after (but very rare) broken bones, misshapen noses, and above-the-eye cuts that drip down the face, onto the body, staining white shorts pink. They were gathering, just as people have throughout history, to see a lynching. The racism might have vanished, but the spectacle of watching violence remained.

This primal thirst to see people not only vulnerable, as in a theatrical play, but physically vulnerable, was the sole reason this arena would have a sell-out crowd. The first impression of my dream was one of disgust. I tried to play it smart, get there early, see my environment, adapt to it.

The way I adapted was by sitting on the toilet. From the stall I heard the pounding and clanking. It wouldn’t stop. The fight would begin with a similar sound. I remembered that pounding metal I heard prior to quitting in Pittsburgh.

*************************************************

Fear drives me closer to the source. Having an intimate relationship with what scares me, bridging the distance, is a code I live by. I left the stall, asked the workers if I could get in the cage. I felt it give, bent down with the curiosity of a child picking up seashells, rubbed the material with my fingers.

*************************************************

I weighed-in at 154.7 pounds, made the 155 pound limit, and reached into my book-bag, which had been filled with poetry books during the semester, for olive oil, protein bars, fish oil pills, bananas, and the staple of any smart fighters post weigh-in meal, Pedialyte. My weight was back to above 160lbs. My mind was at ease from confronting the cage, my body too, having absorbed the much needed electrolytes. The dieting, the training, and the asceticism were over.

The promoter posted the fight card outside of our room. I was first. My nausea would soon end and my goal would soon be fulfilled, or at least attempted. I pulled out the Theodore Roosevelt quote I carry in my book-bag:

“The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again, who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at best, knows the triumph of high achievement; and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”

-Theodore Roosevelt, “Citizen in a Republic”, April 23, 1910

The quote has been with me ever since I read it in 9th grade, but I’d never realized it was said on April 23rd, my birthday.

*************************************************

I sent my trainers out like worker scout bees to find my opponent. I wanted to know his build, his style, the way his breath smelled, anything. My task was stealth. I wanted them to find the guy while I hid in the background so I could see him; I just wanted to see him, this thing, this body that stood in the way of where I was and what I wanted. Shortly after, I saw him. We talked strategy. The promoter posted a “revised” fight card. I was still first, but against a different opponent. I sent them out again. The stresses of iambic pentameter couldn’t touch the stress I felt.

*************************************************

At 9pm, the promoter told us the physician they were flying in from Vegas was running late. This meant even more trips to the bathroom. On one trip I found my friends in the crowd and told them that the guy I was fighting looked like he was going to ride a Harley Davidson into the cage. I couldn’t armbar a Harley. They laughed but their laughter faded quickly because of the intensity of the anxious crowd. Seeing their faces wrinkle in that familiar way made me feel warm inside. I went back to the room to get ready.

*************************************************

Around 10pm the physician burst through our training room and slapped a black suitcase on the counter. The shadowboxing stopped. She opened the suitcase to reveal, a defibrillator. I felt blank. A panic planted my feet and I couldn’t move. They called my opponent’s name, and I heard the crowd over the heavy metal music. I watched him walk down the entrance and into the cage. This was a good sign, being introduced second, like a champion. I bounced lightly, completely covered in clothes, the beanie hiding my fire. My music came on.

Something changed in me. It was beyond confidence. I felt indestructible. There was nothing this other body could do to hurt my body. I had done everything possible in training. All doubts were removed. I didn’t doubt my cardio, my strength, my grappling, my striking or mind. The nights spent fighting sleep’s pull into darkness, the fact that I stood up to my dad, the fact that my mother was front row, everything in my life came to fruition and wiped my insecurity slate clean. I didn’t hear the music and I didn’t hear the fans. I felt primal, pure. Like when the moon vacuumed the steam from my head.

I threw my shirt and beanie to the ground. They put the 5oz gloves on and I entered the cage. I paced around feeling the canvas on my feet like I imagined Jackson Pollock would before he engaged with it. After viewing the fight on DVD, I realized this pacing mirrored the black panther I watched for an hour the previous summer at the Pittsburgh Zoo. The referee made me show him I had the bare essentials, a mouthpiece and a cup. He settled into the center: “Are you ready? (looking toward my opponent), Are you ready? (looking toward me), Let’s get it on!”

*************************************************

Sixty-three seconds into the bout my opponent tapped-out to the rear naked choke. His costume slipped off with each hue of purple represented by his face. When he clenched his teeth as he had done at the tattoo parlor, I held the choke with one hand and punched his masked fear with the other. He tapped-out. But it wasn’t until he winced that the ref threw me off, that I let go. The most passionate emotional response of my life ensued. I grabbed my mouthpiece, threw it to the mat, and screamed to the fans, “I told you so, I told you motherfuckers!” The fans were my father. The man who gave up on me when I was just fourteen years old. The man who didn’t teach me to shave, the man who didn’t see me in love, the man who didn’t see me graduate from college, and the man who wasn’t here now, for the greatest moment of my life; the culmination of not only the development of my body, but the development of my mind. The fans, my mother, my friends, everybody screamed my name. The name I share with my father.

Caged – Part Two

The cage was glazed to a silky finish, paradoxical considering its barbarous appearance. Smoothing my calloused fingers over it as though it were jade, I felt a coating on the octagonal cage that had been used to tame it.

As a small boy learning to breed rabbits from my father in the backyard of our Altoona, Pennsylvania home, I remember taming them. “97-98-99-100,” I counted to myself, as I pet their thick, shedding winter fur one hundred times to make them nicer. Despite my frail wrists burning as the repetitions exceeded the halfway mark, I persevered, “tame rabbits would have nice babies,” I told my father. The cage though, it would always be too mean to have offspring. It had been coated, to prevent lawsuits really, so if a fighter’s skin was split-jagged and bleeding, it wasn’t the cages fault. Nothing was.

After my debut fight, I had established an identity. My father, whose name I share, who had been nonexistent for nearly the past decade of my life, no longer subconsciously drove me to impress him. The process of training and subsequent outcome of the fight had removed him, not the way a teacher removes a students’ correct answer from the chalkboard, one swipe, but the way the waves erase a loved ones name, slowly eroding it, until it is as smooth as a Labrador’s velvet ears, yet somehow still gritty sand.

Speaking in front of a crowd brought about bouts of palsy through my in-need-of-WD-40-jaw and down into my trapezius, before finally kicking its shoes off and calling my heart its home. Preparing days ahead of time, I carried water with me like toddler’s carry blankets, making sure I was properly hydrated, I thought, so my mouth wouldn’t be dry come speech time. It never helped. From the time the first person presented their speech, until it was my turn, my mouth filled with thick phlegm, so agglutinative I couldn’t spit or swallow. Even if I drank water just prior to speaking, this gummy paste would latch onto my teeth like the parasites on a shark’s eyes. This, of course, was a precursor to stuttering words I’d read aloud hundreds of times. I could hear myself stutter, but couldn’t stop it, the helplessness of watching a wildfire. “I can fight in cages with thousands watching,” I thought, “but speaking in front of people makes my nuts recede.”

Days later, my friend Cassie invited me to watch her audition for the role of Medea, in Penn State Altoona’s production of Euripides’ play of the same name. “So audition,” I asked Cassie, “is basically a cool word for try-out?” Being a guy surrounded by sports my entire life, I knew all about try-outs. “Just come watch,” she said, “you’ll see.” Cassie has acted in Los Angeles without a qualm, and she was truly audacious, letting herself become completely vulnerable in front of people she was either competing against or complete strangers with. And she reveled in it. I watched her audition; she laughed - the uncontrollable type when you know you shouldn’t and need to hide it or excuse yourself from the room, became a serial killer - brooding, pacing, shoulders hunched, hair a tatter, blank eyes, she bawled - the type where you can’t breathe, the type more a fight with oxygen than the cause. She shook afterwards. I congratulated her with the slap on the back my coaches used to give after I took a charge on the opposing teams biggest player. Later, in the bathroom stall, I too shook. Then cried, tears coming like a flash flood in Tucson.
Fear and insecurity bubbled to the surface of my life, again, like boiling garden-variety spaghetti sauce; thick clumps thrown, sticking, burning. My heart itched and I didn’t know how to scratch it. I entered the realm of fear when I stepped into the cage that April. The best way to confront fear, I had learned, was to knock on its door uninvited, and once in, to head straight for the kitchen, robbing it of sustenance.

I won the lead male role, Cassie’s co-lead, Medea’s husband, Jason of the Argonauts. I researched Jason the way I had anaerobic energy systems for fight training. It helped that he was a warrior. It would be my goal to be a warrior through him, in this other venue, to confront my glossophobia. Rehearsals weren’t until the start of the fall semester, about two months away, and I was taking classes full-time in State College during the summer to graduate in four years with two degrees. This provided ample time to develop ulcers.

Though my heart itched, that would soon be taken care of. My mind though, somehow fabricated the beliefs of everyone close to me. Everybody thought my MMA (mixed martial arts) debut victory was a fluke; that because he slipped, and I capitalized with the rear naked choke, it wasn’t a legitimate win. In addition, my only consistent outlet to nerves and problems in life is through physicality. I signed on the dotted line for my second fight. I’d be back in the cage on August 19th, one week before rehearsals for Medea.

I prepared my body as Cameron, the 155lb MMA warrior, and as Jason, son of Aeson. I would prepare to slay the dragon of insecurities, and slay the dragon guarding the Golden Fleece.

My training couldn’t be as intense because of my schedule, so I took more to the weights, wanting to become the iron I grunted to lift, and to online MMA instructional videos, hoping to at least retain what I knew. I woke at six most days, trudged along sleepily to an abandoned farm, did sprints through grass that rivaled deep snow in difficulty, making sure to bring my knees as high as the bulbs on the weeds. It simulated my opponents face. Wet bails of hay worked great for overhead throws, which I hoped would improve my ratio of fast twitch fibers. I hoped the increase in strength I picked up from these workouts would cancel out the lack of technicality I’d bring due to lack of sparing and rolling. Essentially, the farm became my training partner. Through my screams and incoherent trash talking - the farm was a great listener.

They called my name first this time, the night of August 19th, and rightfully so. Out of respect for my elders, (my opponent was 32 years old to my 22) I was fine with him entering the cage with the chip of ten years on his shoulders. I had a theory (half serious, half joking) that as a man aged, if he has worked throughout his life, he acquired a functional strength. I even went so far as to believe that on a man’s 30th birthday, he woke up quite a bit stronger than the day before, “man-strength,” I called it. Pound for pound, I knew my opponent couldn’t match my prowess in the weight-room. But my concern about his man-strength was the concern of my friends in the crowd as well.

I met him the night I arrived at the fighter-meeting gym in Columbus, Ohio. Again, I hid my fire under the beanies’ cast shadow, but I overheard him talking about his weight: “About a buck fifty-four” he said with a twinge of southern accent, a bit of an overconfident raspy bar voice. My right knuckles itched with the thought of cascading into his jaw. “Won’t know the dude I’m fightin’ til tomorrow night.” I sensed this was the man I’d struggle in hand-to-hand combat against. He looked soft muscularly.

But I’ll be damned. He came out with a burst of man-strength after my initial off-the-mark jab and aggressively marched me close to the back of the cage with a flurry of whiffed left and right hooks. Nowhere to go, I lept forward, initiated a clinch, wrapping my hands across the back of his head. I felt my head rock back from a crisp inside uppercut. I felt his strength. I tried to stay tight to him to avoid damage. He remained reckless - which had made me desperate rather than him vulnerable. I left the ground for a split second as all the force of my right knee landed into his right inner thigh’s meat. No momentum shift. I continued an out of control strength struggle with someone I couldn’t win it with. I purposely threw a telegraphed knee, left it hanging, begged him to latch on so I could pull guard. He did, put me on my back; diamonds from the cage imprinted my shaved head and neck as I withstood his man-grip, trying to remember to breathe so if I made it to round two, I could be competent. Hanging on was my only hope.

“Grind his face into the cage,” his corner-men shouted, “he doesn’t like that!” “Elbows, elbows, elbow his nose damnit,” their spit flying into the cage as my opponent used his man-strength to drag my body towards them. A chant of “Hock-en-berry, Hock-en-berry” broke out in the crowd. His name. The ground, my opponent thought, were his waters, and he wanted to take me to the deep-end where he could drown me like an anaconda would. They cheered for the aggressor of course.

I shifted my hips, propelled my legs across his head, secured an armbar with the hopes of breaking his limb. As I began extending my body to lock his elbow 180 degrees, I was lifted into the air, shook off, and felt a hammer fist land just below my nose. I heard the Ooo’s of the crowd. Someone yelled, “you’re in control, Cameron.” “Control” reminded me to breathe. Fatigue’s slow, grinding pain overwhelmed me already because I wasn’t breathing as his relentless attack ensued.

“Hockenberry softening up the ribcage,” the announcer said excitedly, as he landed three left hands to my body from on top. I saw the punches in slow motion, felt little to nothing, wondered if I was having an out of body experience. Were the punches seriously damaging?

Cleverness, I found out, comes when your body registers that you are in a life-or-death situation. I trapped his arm, and as he forced the point of his chin into my lips then gums, driving through his legs, using his free forearm and elbow to try to lacerate the soft tissue of my face, I let it happen. As long as it meant he struggled. I grabbed the top of his head and pulled down when he wanted to rise up to reign down punches; I pushed his head up when he wanted to grind his chin into me. It was a game of counterbalances. If I was cut, if I bled, so be it. I was slowly sapping the energy from him, making him overwork to perform unimportant tasks. I used Eddie Bravo’s “Rubber-Guard,” a jiu-jitsu system reliant on flexibility that made my opponent constantly swipe (like a cat to yarn) my leg from resting on the back of his neck. Basically, I annoyed him, like the sibling repetition game:

“Stop it or I’m gonna tell Mom.”

“Stop it or I’m gonna tell Mom.”

“I’m stupid.”

“I’m stupid….”

“Hey!”

The ten-second gong sounded and I continued my game. I focused on getting three or four deep breaths in. I stood up sick. Questioned whether I had enough to take another round of intensity like that if I wasn’t breathing. The seconds between rounds passed and my body - acclimated to sprinting through weeds and resting, sprinting through weeds and resting - began to settle down. I focused on what I was going to do to him rather than how I felt. My right hand itched. I was putting him down with it as soon as the round began.
Round two began with him taking his hands off his knees. I landed a leaping right hook that rattled him. He wiped it off afterwards, and smiled at me, as though he had guacamole on his cheek. I’ve watched enough fights to know that if a fighter smiles after they’ve been hit, it means they are hurt. I threw a right Thai-kick, turning my hips like a can opener and unleashing the density of my tibia into the giving muscle of his left quadriceps. Not wanting to stand and trade, he immediately took me down to the ground, where he found reasonable success in round one. Back into his waters.

Where I annoyed him to the point where he would never, ever, share his toys with me. In fact, he exploded his torso upwards, coming down with the clenched right hand of a bully wanting, needing lunch money. I worked for an omoplata, heard the announcer and fans go wild. I felt the bones in his right arm click and clank like gears. Something gave. Then came that same swiping hammer fist I’d tasted earlier. I slithered to the left, using his anaconda attributes. His fist landed flush into the apron, crunching his knuckles and rolling his wrist forward, a position unable to support his weight.

I hopped out the side like our rabbits when I accidentally left the crate open, unleashing a left, right, left hook combination from behind to his kidneys as he crouched on all fours, head tucked in, as I stood above him. No longer did I want to annoy. I wanted revenge on the bully that just tried to steal the peanut butter and jelly my mother packed in my Ninja Turtles lunchbox. His body hunkered just like a turtle, without the dense shell. Strikes came like lightning: silent, rapid, and with the ability to damage. The storm finished when he gasped from a body blow, sucking air that wasn’t there, trying to stand up and grab the tamed cage. The rear naked choke sunk-in, as in my debut, I took the space after exhalation the way an anaconda would; I squeezed with all the passion Cassie used to secure her role. He tapped out. I couldn’t breathe. Started shaking as in the stall after Cassie’s audition. Kissed the soft rigidity of the cage that would temper Jason of the Argonauts.

Caged – Part Three

“This is not a team to lean back and rely on just one or two counter-attacks each half.”
~Guss Huddink

Crippled, war-battered men with missing fingers lean-back in their chair on the porch to relax. Half of a rocking chairs life is leaning-back. Dentophobia people lean-back for orifice-seeking, or producing, syringes. Children, legs asleep from leaning-over their video game controllers for hours on end, lean-back in beanbags to extend playing time. Common phrases we’ve all used or heard: “lean-back and relax” or “lean-back and take it easy.” Rapper Fat Joe topped the charts in 2004 with his song “Lean Back.”

[Chorus]
Said my ni**** don’t dance,
We just pull up our pants and,
Do da Roc-away.
Now lean back, lean back, lean back, lean back.

People around the world watched and mimicked his dance on TV, leaning-back to the rhythm while standing. On 3:00 a.m. trips from Altoona, Pennsylvania to train Gracie jiu-jitsu in Manhattan, my only companion the steam from a mug of green tea, you better believe I leaned-back anytime he called for it. Not just to stay awake.

And so I embraced leaning-back, when it was fun. And I avoided leaning-back when it meant laziness, when it meant rocking and not going anywhere. And my beanbags are still covered in piss from Pharaoh, my Jack Russell. I trained my body not to lean-back, to apply pressure, to make my opponent involuntarily lean-back after a left-hook kissed his temple. I trained to lift-up a 450lb barbell, to press 70lb dumbbells, to explode in sprints through rundown farms in State College, lifting my knees to meet the tips of overgrown grasses. I learned to twist, to jump, to throw, to sweep, to force, to trap, to punish, but never did I learn to lean-back. What’s to learn about it? Loafers lean-back. Even sex usually involves someone leaning back.

Fighters that come forward, stalking - Mike Tyson, Wanderlei Silva, I revere. The shoulders hunched, the trapezius muscle bulging just under the ears - the rolling hills of Pennsylvania. The “my-hands-are-on-my-ears-because-I don’t-give-a-shit-what-you-have-to-say-I’m-coming-to-kill-you,” style.

Top position always seemed dominant; late-night Animal Planet served as reinforcement. Despite victories, I hadn’t tasted being on top in my previous two fights. I never felt overwhelmingly preponderant. A level of control? Yes. Was the notion that the fight could change drastically from my opponent simply turning to face me in the back of my mind? Yes. Paranoia? Check.

And so in the cheap-ass promoter-paid-for hotel in Sandusky, Ohio we discussed a strategy for my third mixed martial arts bout - my first at the dried out and possibly too lean weight of 145lbs. At the start of the bell, we planned on working my feeling out process: landing several Muay Thai kicks to my opponent’s thighs, moving around, seeing how he reacts. Then Whooosh! Shooting in for a takedown - never attempted in my fight career - and initiating the top game. A position I hoped to elbow-slice my opponent’s forehead open with the ease of a hot knife through a ripe Anjou. Pressing the back of his head against the cage. Open up with a flurry until the ref, as happened in my previous two fights at 155lbs, would jump in to save my opponent.

I was on the bottom, taking it. Taking glancing blows, remembering to find my breath as I learned in fight two, and truly being the annoying son-of-a-bitch I’ve come to be known as. Watching him struggle, with a mouth-pieced grimace that resembled a smile, to pin my arms down, to break the grip my legs formed around his bony waste, was déjà vu. Acting as Jason of the Argonauts months prior taught me to be ultimately aware. I heard the baritone Sandusky, Ohio Bike-Week crowd whose voices matched their machine, my stepfather vociferating from the back row, my opponent grunt like the very creatures I watched on Animal Planet. I even heard my breath like the about-to-be-killed silicon-breasted woman in a slasher.

Did I mention that the takedown failed at the beginning? That after landing those two solid Thai kicks he sprawled and stuffed it perfectly? That it resulted in a clinch, where I tried to lift his body high into the air, and fold his head back down through his neck and into his chest? Did I mention how badly that failed? How he held onto the cage to prevent it, which is illegal? How he countered with a gorgeous, textbook knee up through my belly button and into the deepest gorges of my abdomen that took my breath away? How about how I jumped to pull guard to bide time so I could catch my breath only to have him catch me and deliver me to the mat with a thud that had the biker-fans revving like their motorcycle engines? So it goes.

But I felt in the zone, time slowed down. It would only be a matter of seconds before my opponent blew it, and I capitalized, choking him until either he tapped-out or passed-out. “Tap-out or pass-out,” the phrase taped to the ceiling above my bed. I ended the day and started the new with it. It had worked twice, 2-0.

His shoulders relaxed, his intertwined back muscles, the ones I saw glistening under the lights as he rhythmically bounced in the octagonal steel cage, became rippleless.

“Exhaustion,” I thought. “He gassed already.” The fact that I consistently swam until my goggles filled with tears, not chlorine, the fact that I ran hills until my thighs wanted to vomit lactic acid, the fact that I was the better conditioned athlete, had prevailed for the third consecutive time. His dead weight felt easily maneuverable. I remembered corpses from my internship with the coroner. “No, they had rigor,” I thought. “They wouldn’t feel like this.”

Threading his right arm through and under my right leg while working high guard I secured an excellent triangle. Heard the fans scream. Decided not to go all out on it, in order to save my energy for the later rounds.

At that moment he stacked me, driving through his legs until I was forced to support our combined weight on my neck. He pulled out, broke free, landed in side mount. I had never been in so vulnerable a position. Scrambled desperately, regained my guard in seconds, tried to take this battle until the deeper rounds. He seemed to have the same idea. So I made my move to explode, get on top and be dominant based on his passivism. He leaned-back. At the same damn time I forged forward, he leaned-back.

And I found myself in a position I’ve never been in, on top. He had leaned-back, as I’ve read about, to secure a textbook heel-hook. A move named because its lever is the heel, rather than because it shatters knee ligaments, a cast iron wok through a window.

He leaned-back, purposely, like a La-Z-Boy, but to inflict great bodily damage. Dropping a right fist into his orbital bone came to a halt. I wanted it badly. Four seconds left in the round. Pain was near.

My teaching career flashed. Here comes the University of Arizona’s Poet-in-Residence, strutting down the hall… on crutches? My graduate studies appeared. How would I get to school that was well over a mile away? I couldn’t afford - safety-wise or financially - to drive my manual 2000 Hyundai Accent to school everyday. What about a future with my family and kids? Would I be one of those dads that desperately want to play basketball with their son but can’t because of injuries suffered as a young man? Did I mention I broke the ankle he was honing in on three times during my basketball career in junior high? That all the rehab in the world couldn’t get it back to where it was? That the first break was misdiagnosed and therefore healed improperly?

I learned the lesson. Acknowledged it by tapping the mat three times. The yin-yang of Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. The art had slapped me in the face, like the Ferris wheel operator at Lakemont Park dressed as a clown when I was ten-years-old:

“Thanks, come again!”

////END////

“Caged.” Aethlon: The Journal of Sport Literature (Issue XXV:1 Fall 2007/Winter 2008)

Cameron Conaway is a graduate of Penn State Altoona with a BA in English and Criminal Justice. He is the Poet-in-Residence at the University of Arizona’s MFA Creative Writing Program and a member of the 2008 Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth “Crafting the Essay” instructional staff.