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  The good news was, heading into our fight, he was struggling. In his two fights in 2002, he had been beaten down by strikes from heavier opponents. Looking to create a marquee fight, Dana suggested he drop down to light heavyweight. It was a golden opportunity: a great payday and a chance to beat the hottest fighter in the sport, me.

  I loved the idea. But I would have loved the idea of fighting anyone. I had been begging Dana to find me a match and get me back into the cage. The more I had to talk about taking on Tito and the more he ducked me, the more anxious I was to perform. Rhythm is so important when you’re a fighter, and I had been fighting every five months for a few years. But by the time I was scheduled to step into the ring with Randy, in June of 2003, it would have been seven months since my last fight. Nothing you do in training can compare to the reality of a fight. I needed to get my timing down and get my wind back and prepare my body for the punishment of close combat.

  I was trying a lot of new things in my workouts. I did some stand-up wrestling and sparring and added a lot of interval training. We’d set up six markers around a field and I’d have to sprint to one, backpedal to another, do a bear crawl to a third. I’d have to do each one in less than around twenty seconds, then I’d get to rest a minute before having to do it again.

  But about six weeks before UFC 43, I had a setback. While sparring one morning I tore the MCL in my knee. It wouldn’t keep me from fighting, but it would drastically alter how I trained. Severe lateral movement, the kind that comes from the violent twists and turns of wrestling, was out of the question. Instead I could only work on my stamina and my stand-up. There would be no going to the mat.

  By the night of the fight, though, I thought the injury to the MCL was a nonissue. Even after the long layoff, my timing had come back in my last few weeks of sparring and I felt strong. Most of all, I was just pumped to be back in the cage, and still a little annoyed that Tito was such a punk. I told one reporter who asked how I felt about going against Randy, “He has balls, unlike some people I know.”

  Randy has a rep for being at his best in fights that he is expected to lose. And he strolled up to the cage that night as if he didn’t have a care in the world. He was dressed in sandals, red shorts, a white fleece-lined jacket, and a blue cap. He could have been going to the beach. He also looked about thirty pounds lighter than he had been. That he was dropping down in weight and had lost two fights made people think I had the advantage. The money in Vegas was coming in heavy on my side.

  Randy is such a skilled fighter that you never know if you’re going to have to stand and strike with him or spend your night trying to keep from going to the mat. I’m always looking for the knockout, the earlier the better. It feels good, but my punching power is my strength as a fighter. No matter how prepared you think you are for it as my opponent, it doesn’t compare to actually taking a hit, which is why I came out punching against Randy. But he had his hands held high, and when I got in too close, he gave me a couple of knee kicks. I countered with a left shin kick, then boom, he got his hands around me and slammed me to the mat. It was that fast. I can’t lie. It hurt a little bit. I was able to get in a couple of knees to his thigh, but his jabs were coming in quick and were landing. I was eventually able to get up, but I did change my strategy a bit. I wasn’t thinking I was slow when I was in the ring, but that’s how it looked afterward. Randy was cutting off the Octagon, and I was dancing around trying to find my way in for a punch. But Randy moved in on me again and put me on the ground, keeping me there for the rest of the first round.

  I was frustrated walking back to my corner. My knee wasn’t hurting, but I had no reaction time when it came to grappling. I could barely move out of the way the first time he took me down, and it wasn’t because I didn’t see him coming. I had trained to protect my knee, but it had cost me more than I thought it would. I was not conditioned for wrestling, and my timing was way off.

  * * *

  WHAT HURTS MORE THAN UFC:

  Dentist

  Listening to Antonio sing karaoke

  Pushing 220 pounds in a wheelbarrow up a hill

  A paper cut

  Sitting through an afternoon of Dora the Explorer

  * * *

  I could have stayed on my feet and punched all day. And for the first two minutes of the second round I felt great—despite a small cut that had opened above my left eye—as we boxed back and forth. After the fight a lot of people said that they were surprised Randy could go toe-to-toe with me. I wasn’t. He had never lost to someone considered a striker. And he had as many fights end because of knockouts and submissions from punches as he did from any moves he made on the mat. I had no reason to think he wasn’t dangerous no matter how we fought. He had a steady jab that kept finding its way past my defense, and a right that was on the money that night. Eventually, in the second round, he forced me up against the cage, and while I escaped, he caught me and brought me down again. This is where the lack of wrestling endurance caught up to me. For about thirty seconds I had the top position and was landing punches. But they didn’t really hurt Randy because I had so little behind them.

  Randy was beating me at my own game, something he had done to other fighters. When he’d fought for the heavyweight title against Vitor, he’d adapted his style and mimicked what Vitor did.

  The third round was more of the same. We traded punches for about two minutes before Randy was able to get me on the mat. For most of the fight I had been pretty good at warding off his worst blows, which kept the ref at bay. But this time, he had the perfect position, mounted right on top of me, and he went after my head. He must have gotten off fifteen punches, all of them landing. It was a classic ground and pound. The ref knew there was no way of tapping out, no matter how many blows to the head I took, which forced him to jump in and stop it. With 2:40 left in the third, Randy Couture was declared the winner, and interim light heavyweight champion of the UFC. And what did he say during his postfight interview? “Tito, if you want this belt, you will have to come and take it.”

  Meanwhile I was headed to the hospital. I got stitched up, went back to the hotel, took a nap, then headed home.

  Honestly, I can live with losing if I deserve it. And I deserved to lose that fight. I could also live with the fact I was no longer the number-one-ranked contender, that I had just lost for the first time in four years, and that I had missed out on achieving what I had been working toward my entire UFC career. I could live with the idea of having to prove myself all over again before I got another shot at the title. I could even live with that it would take me two more years to get the payday I would have gotten for my next fight if I had beaten Randy.

  But here’s what really killed me about losing that night: I let Tito off the hook.

  The guy had been dodging me for seven months and had been talking a lot of shit. So were his fans. He was making it sound as if I were stabbing him in the back by even wanting to fight him, as if he had taken me off the street and taught me how to fight. I was the one asked to help him train in the beginning, not the other way around.

  While I was training to fight, he was talking about injuries and money. While I was willing to get in the cage with anyone, he was trying to pick and choose his opponents. Ultimately, he was rewarded for being afraid. But, to me, losing as a man is better than winning as a coward.

  The problem was, now I had to claw my way back into contention.

  CHAPTER 28

  YOU CAN WORRY ABOUT LOSING, OR YOU CAN DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT

  IHAVE A HARD TIME SITTING ON THE COUCH FOR LONG periods between the fights that I win. But when I lose, it’s as if I were caffeinated 24/7. All I want to do is get back in the cage and fight. I need to purge myself of the loss and remember what it’s like to kick someone’s ass. I don’t dwell on my losses, it’s not like that for me. I’m just damn anxious. My feeling is this: You can worry about losing or you can do something about it.

  I prefer to do something about it, which means gettin
g back to fighting. Dana understands this about me, and the beauty of our relationship is, even though he’s technically my boss now, he never puts what’s best for the UFC in front of what’s best for me. He knew after the fight with Randy that I would want to get back in action as soon as possible, much sooner than he’d be able to figure out who my next UFC opponent would be or how things would shake out in my weight class. He had to worry about putting together Tito and Randy first. That was the marquee fight, the one that was going to bring another huge payday for the UFC. After that, it would be my turn again. But I couldn’t wait for that.

  A Pride tournament began in August, just a couple of months after my fight with Randy. I thought I had a good chance at winning, and Dana wanted to get me busy. I was one of his assets, yet he was pushing me to do it for my mental stability, knowing I’d go crazy waiting for my next UFC fight.

  Pride, a Japanese mixed martial arts league, has always been the UFC’s biggest rival. It started back in 1997 when a Japanese promoter wanted to pit a popular pro wrestler against Rickson Gracie, the Brazilian jujitsu champ. The fight was staged at the Tokyo Dome and forty-seven thousand people showed up, not to mention what seemed like a rep from every media outlet in Japan. The event was such a big hit, the promoters turned it into a regular event, creating Pride tournaments that lured the best fighters in the world to Japan.

  There’s long been a debate about whether Pride or UFC has better competition, which in the mixed martial arts world translates to the tougher fighters (this is dying down these days, since the UFC bought Pride early in 2007). Before Dana and the Fertittas swooped in, the rules in Pride had always been different. The first round is ten minutes, followed by two five-minute rounds. While pile-driving an opponent, stomping on his head when he’s down, or kicking him when he’s lying on his back are illegal in the UFC, they’re fair game in Pride. From a fighter’s perspective, they’re both full of equally badass guys. And most UFC guys had always been thrilled to have Pride as an option. The payday was great, the competition was top-notch, and mixed martial arts—while just gaining mainstream popularity in the United States—has always been immensely popular there. While we were getting crowds of ten thousand to fifteen thousand fans for fights in Vegas, Pride events were drawing ninety thousand. It was the difference between a band with a cult following doing arena tours and the Rolling Stones doing a stadium tour. Fighters in Japan were rock stars. During a visit I made to a mall, security had to be called in to control the mob.

  In 2003, Pride announced it was holding a middleweight grand prix that would span two tournaments. The first round of matches would be in August; the semifinals and finals would be held in November. As a UFC fighter, if I agreed to compete and won in August, I was taking myself out of the UFC rotation until the end of the year. I couldn’t wait to sign up. I needed the action. Besides, I was handcuffed until the Tito-Randy fight for the UFC light heavyweight title, which was scheduled for September 26, 2003.

  My first Pride fight was against Alistair Overeem at the Saitama Super Arena in Saitama, Japan. This was the first round of a three-round tournament that spanned four months. Still, thirty-seven thousand people packed the arena to the rafters to see the seven-fight card. Overeem was a good challenge for me. He’s a six-five Dutchman who specialized in Muay Thai, a form of kickboxing. While we’d been MMA fighters for the same number of years, he’d had six more fights than me and had lost only three. At times in 2000 and in 2002 he was basically fighting once a month. By the time we met, he had won twelve straight fights, with only two of them lasting into the second round. All of them ended by a submission, TKO, or knockout. There wasn’t a judge’s decision in the bunch. Regardless of his skill level, I knew I was getting into the ring with a seasoned vet, a guy who could stand with me, kick with me, and give me a good fight.

  So imagine my surprise when I knocked him out at 3:09 in the first round. We came out punching and kicking pretty hard. He even connected on a shot with my head that cut me pretty deep. Within the first minute of the fight I could feel blood trickling through my Mohawk and down onto my forehead. But when he went for another knee to my head following a combination by me, I took him down. Then I took full advantage of the Pride rules. I had him facedown and underneath my chest, so I took my knee and went to town on his head.

  Overeem has long legs and got himself out of the bottom position and back on his feet. But I still had his upper body locked up. So I kept kneeing his ribs and his abdomen, which were left unprotected. For a minute he escaped and showed some life, connecting on a looping right, then giving me a pretty good shot with his knee to the body. But I locked him up again to stop his momentum, and when we separated, I hit him with a straight right and he tried to shake it off as if it didn’t hurt him. He even smiled at me. But he looked like a different fighter. He looked as if he were done. He tried a spinning kick that missed and almost knocked him off-balance. Then he threw a wild punch and could barely get his hands up. I knew it was over. He had spent all his adrenaline. I hit him with a big right that landed smack in the middle of his forehead. His hands fell to his side, his head dropped down, and I went in to finish.

  If you’re watching on TV or in the stands, this is the moment when mixed martial arts looks the scariest. It’s like those When Animals Attack! shows on TV. We see someone who is wounded or vulnerable, and defying all human compassion, we go after the guy. But as a fighter, that’s exactly what you are looking for. There should be no hesitation when you see an opponent teetering on the edge of consciousness. You have to finish him. And that’s what I did to Overeem. I moved in with two more big rights, then I kneed him in the head, then I threw another combination. The flurry of punches lasted less than ten seconds. Then the tall man just folded up, like a building that was collapsing from the bottom to the top.

  Afterward Dana, who was in town for the tourney, ran into the ring and gave me a hug. He was happy for me, of course. But, with Ortiz-Couture just a month away, he was also glad to know his number-one contender was ready for whoever won.

  CHAPTER 29

  IT NEVER PAYS TO MOUTH OFF

  I’M NOT SURE WHY TITO WAS AFRAID TO FIGHT ME but wouldn’t hesitate to fight Randy. Maybe he felt he had to fight or else he’d become even more of a joke as a champ than he already was. Or maybe it was the money: Tito was getting $125,000 for fighting and another $50K if he won. Randy was getting $105,000 for showing up and a $70,000 win bonus.

  The fight was held at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in front of seventy-six hundred people. And as he always did walking into the Octagon, Randy looked calm and collected. In fact, he was grinning from ear to ear, as if he had a secret that no one else knew. Tito came in looking as intense as he ever had, and once he was in the cage, he did that bounce he does, lifting his knees up to his waist while jumping as high as he can. Maybe he does it to get himself pumped or to get the blood flowing. But he ends up looking like a character in Donkey Kong. It definitely didn’t do much to scare off Randy, who just kept smiling, as happy as could be.

  Unlike Tito’s title fight with Ken Shamrock, which started out fast and furious, this one felt more calculated. Both fighters came out slow, feeling each other out. Then, around 2:30 into the fight, Tito tried to get in a few knee shots. But he got in too close and left himself vulnerable, because Randy took him down. For a minute Randy had the better position and tried choking Tito out, but it was still too early in the match and Tito had too much energy for Randy to finish him off. Tito slithered away and tried to box with Randy for a minute or so. But, again, Randy used his superior wrestling skills to take Tito down. With two first-round takedowns Randy not only won the round, he had shaken Tito’s confidence. You could see it in his eyes that he was rethinking his strategy. No one during his title defenses had so easily put him on his back. Now Randy had done it twice. This was an interesting fight.

  Clearly rattled, Tito came out in the second round with a high kick, trying to catch Randy off guard. It didn’t w
ork. Randy deftly avoided the kick and soon had Tito on the mat again. This time he forced him against the fence and administered the kind of ground and pound he had given me in our first fight. Tito was utterly defenseless, both in that instant and, as everyone watching began to realize, against Randy’s superior fighting skills. At the end of the second round, unable to get anything going physically, Tito was reduced to yelling at Randy from across the cage, trying to get in his head with some trash talking. It didn’t work. Randy was up two rounds to none.

  When Tito began the third with a lunging attempt at a takedown, Randy sprawled, which sent both fighters scrambling for position. Somehow, Tito ended up on top, only to have Randy reverse. When they got to their feet, it didn’t last long, as Randy again threw Tito to the mat. This fight, like a lot of fights, had a pattern. Randy was happy keeping Tito on the ground and put him there every chance he could. He wasn’t all that interested in striking, and once he realized the fight was his, he had no reason to take that kind of chance. Besides, he was scoring points and doing damage. He was neck-cranking Tito against the fence while delivering elbows, forearms, and punches. Randy is a freak of nature. At forty he looked stronger and hungrier and better prepared than Tito, who is twelve years younger. Tito just seemed exhausted and frustrated by Randy’s constant ability to foil his game plan. Round three went to Randy.

  As long as he avoided a knockout, Randy was going to win this fight. Tito’s corner knew that, too, which is why they were screaming for him to strike Randy hard as soon as the round began. But Tito’s moves had no impact. Randy took him down again and delivered some more ground and pound. It was becoming a familiar sight. Things were so bad for Tito that Randy nearly choked him out. The ref was right on top of the action, ready to call it, looking for a sign Tito was gone. He escaped, but was forced against the fence again, where Randy threw punch after punch that connected.