Iceman Read online

  For most fights I’m lucky if I can get eight weeks of training in. But this one was scheduled so far in advance, I had ten to twelve weeks to get ready. My training had more of a slow build, which I liked on two levels: I knew I’d be in peak physical condition, but I also knew I’d have so much pent-up energy and readiness to fight that it wouldn’t take long to finish Tito off.

  I wasn’t in great shape for Rampage and I wasn’t in great shape for Randy. So, more than ever, I was committed to my cardio for Tito. I felt we were equal wrestlers and he might be better with submission moves, but I had the advantage standing up and in punching power. That meant I needed my wind. If I can bench four hundred pounds and squat six hundred, but I can’t perform aerobic exercise at peak physical levels for half an hour, I won’t last two minutes in the ring. Plenty of cut, muscle-on-muscle guys have stepped into the cage, and if they don’t land a knockout punch early in the fight, it’s over for them. They were so committed to power they didn’t see past the initial rush of adrenaline, when a fight settles down and your body feels as if it’s carrying double your weight. Your arms feel heavy, your legs feel heavy, and it’s hard to breathe. And that’s just when you’re dancing. Trying to evade a punch or even taking a punch can bring on the fatigue even faster. Just breathing can be a challenge in this scenario. It sucks to get to that point in a fight, and it’s immediately a reminder that you’ve got to train harder next time, because you never want to feel that way again. I’ve read about players in the NFL who practice a yoga technique called body armor. It’s when they take deep and slow breaths, all while their instructor is hitting them in the stomach and the side with a bamboo pole. The idea is to teach yourself how to regulate your breathing even while being attacked. Not easy.

  I always push myself to the limit when training.

  Without good cardio, every fighter will lose most of his strength—as much as 80 percent of it—early in a fight. It’s not about strength; it’s about strength over a long time. So I did all the things that push my body to its limit. I ran on the beach endlessly, building up my leg strength while struggling to dig out of the sand. They had me running sprints, playing catch with a football, running patterns, then hauling ass back to the guy who was passing me the ball. I need help keeping conditioning drills fun. I really hate straight running—not because of the pain, but because it is so boring. I did the wall ball, where I take a 125-pound medicine ball, throw it against a wooden beam, and make it bounce back at least three feet. It’s hard enough picking up the medicine ball. But to make it bounce back is brutal. Then do it five times. For three sets. With just a minute of rest in between. This built up my shoulders and helped my punching power. I would push a wheelbarrow uphill with two hundred pounds, which helped with my stamina, but going downhill it strengthened my grip and my forearms and my shoulders. I knew Tito would try to take me down, and these muscles are what would help me keep him off me. I did the sledgehammer drill, swinging a sixteen-pound sledgehammer into a tire one hundred times, again to improve or maintain my punching power.

  Notice how so many of these drills don’t use machines or high-tech weights. This is The Pit way, man. It’s hard-core. Nothing in a gym can beat pushing two hundred pounds in a wheelbarrow up a hill. I did push-ups, with my hands in different positions and at different speeds. I shadowboxed, jumped rope, hit the bag. Every day, twice a day, for two hours each session, I pushed myself to the limit.

  I didn’t ignore lifting weights, either. On the days I wasn’t with John, here’s what I told Muscle & Fitness magazine my workout schedule in the gym looked like:

  I’d rest sixty seconds between all compound sets and tri-sets. On some days I did a circuit, where I’d do three lifts, then I’d run out on a mat and do sprints, sprawls, and a bunch of other cardio exercises. Then I’d come back and lift again and repeat the circuit.

  I took one day off a week, Sunday. Saturday, however, wasn’t exactly a light day. That was core-body day. I would do sit-ups throughout the week, but that was just to keep me warm and working so I didn’t stiffen up. On Saturdays I had to do core work with a medicine ball, as hard as I could for five minutes at a time, then I’d get a minute of rest. I would do sit-ups where someone throws the ball at my stomach when I go down and I have to throw it back on the way up. I’d do sit-ups from the mat and I’d have to twist at my waist with the ball as well. I also did a lot of plank exercises. Looking at them, they don’t look all that tough, because you’re basically completely still. But that’s what makes them so hard. You get into the push-up position, but you put your elbows on the ground instead of your hands. Then you keep your body as straight as possible and pull your abs in toward your spine, as if you were about to get hit in the gut. Then hold it. For as long as you possibly can. You’ll feel it in your sides, up the middle of your stomach, and in your back.

  This was a brutal day, but conceivably my most important, for two reasons: (1) I’m a knockout puncher, and all the power in a punch comes from your hips and the torque you can generate. That power is developed when you work on your core muscles. (2) The five-minute intervals were key as well. That’s how long a round in a UFC fight lasts. I needed to be trained to go as hard as I could for those five minutes so I knew I could last a round.

  Everything I do while training is designed to simulate ring conditions. I aim for high-repetition, explosive lifting, with the goal being to have the capacity to explode powerfully over an extended time. Doing a one-rep max is not going to do much for me. I need to have explosive power for fifteen or twenty minutes. I told Muscle & Fitness magazine, “In the ring, I might exert a tremendous amount of energy or strength performing a throw, tackle, knockout combo, or escape, but I’m not going to get a 90-to-120-second rest period to recover and regain strength. I still have to perform. So that’s the way I train.”

  One drill Hack came up with after my first fight with Randy, probably because he could not believe what kind of shape I was in, was a rowing and wrestling circuit. On a basic rowing machine, he’d have me go full tilt, making me row eight hundred meters in less than two and a half minutes. Then I’d have to roll off the machine and onto a mat, where I’d wrestle someone for two and a half minutes more. It would be five minutes of breathless agony. Seriously, it sucked. Then I’d get a minute rest. Then Hack would have me do it four more times. The rowing would get my shoulders and lats into shape, while the wrestling would help my stamina and strength and keep me in wrestling condition for a fight.

  It was hard enough rolling off the machine and onto the mat to grapple with someone in a standard position. But half the time Hack had me starting out on the bottom and made me try to wrestle my way back to my feet. If you haven’t been doing that drill for a while, it’s a week or so before you don’t feel like puking. I hate the wheelbarrow drill more than any of the rest, but this is a pretty close second.

  * * *

  WEIRD THINGS I EAT (ACCORDING TO MY KIDS):

  Hot sauce (from the bottle)

  Shrimp heads (fried)

  Salmon eggs

  Octopus

  Green muscle drinks

  * * *

  I get so geared toward peaking for a fight that I even change my schedule. I’m a night owl by nature. But fights happen late, as late as 9:00 P.M. Vegas time. I want that to feel like the middle of my day, which means I wake up later than usual—around 11:00 A.M.—and go to bed later than usual—around 4:00 A.M. My diet is reduced to cottage cheese, fruit, nuts, grilled chicken and salmon, steamed vegetables, protein shakes, and occasionally some sashimi or sushi. Someone makes my meals and sends them to me in boxes, so all I have to do is pull one out and heat it up. I follow a 40-30-30 plan: 40 percent carbs, 30 percent protein, and 30 percent fat. I also take supplements such as glucosamine, which helps rebuild my cartilage and wards off arthritis, and MSM, a sulfur-based pill that gives me more energy and rebuilds everything from cells to bone. And, of course, I load up on water.

  The deeper I get into training,
the less I go out partying, until I’ve completely removed alcohol from the menu. That doesn’t mean I don’t go out. In the days leading up to most of my fights, I’m out until midnight or one in the morning. But I’m just drinking water. What’s the difference if I sit around my hotel room playing poker on my PSP or if I go out to a club for a few hours after dinner? I wouldn’t be sleeping either way. I’ll work out from eight thirty to ten at night, then have dinner and go out for a couple of hours. Football players always talk about how the toughest games they play are in prime time, whether it’s Monday Night Football or the Super Bowl. They’re so used to playing in the middle of the day they don’t know what to do with themselves or how to recalibrate their schedule. It’s the same thing with fighters. By the time I step into the cage for the main event, I need to know my body is going to be comfortable fighting at that time of night.

  And before the fight with Tito, I was feeling very comfortable.

  CHAPTER 32

  WHEN YOU GET AN OPPORTUNITY TO HAVE A GOOD TIME, YOU’VE GOT TO TAKE IT

  WHEN THE FIGHTERS GET TOGETHER TO SHOOT those promo posters for Pride and UFC cards, it’s usually pretty friendly. Look on YouTube and you’ll find video of Quinton Jackson and me joking around and laughing while doing the publicity shots for our first matchup. Often we won’t even be in the same place. They’ll take my picture in one place and my opponent’s in another, then put the poster together.

  But Dana, who’s a master at building tension and drama leading up to a fight, wanted Tito and me together. He flew us both into Vegas, then had us in a studio, posing nose to nose for two hours. We did not speak once. Not a hello, not a how’re-you-doing, not even an I’m-going-to-kick-your-butt. I didn’t care, it didn’t bother me one bit. I had nothing to say to the guy. We’d just stare, less than two inches from each other’s face, and look as nasty as we possibly could. I don’t think either of us had to try very hard. And I know neither of us was faking it.

  I had been waiting so long for this fight, and training so hard, that by the time it finally rolled around, I was as relaxed as I could possibly be. I didn’t see any way I could lose or not knock him out. Dana kept telling me he couldn’t wait for me to “smash Tito’s fucking head in.” He even made me promise that, once I won, I would give him my shorts and my gloves so he could put them up in his house.

  The tension between Tito and me wasn’t just posing for the camera. I wanted to fight, and soon I’d get the chance.

  It had been a while since Tito and I had sparred together. One of the last times was up in Big Bear, where I had hit him so hard he refused to get up and Dana just berated him. That’s when he was the champ, the face of the UFC. Times were different now. He knew he had never gotten the best of me. I couldn’t see any reason that would change now that we were doing it for real. I could tell he was afraid of me. If he were the champ, he would probably still be ducking me. Now, he understood the only way to regain his status as the ultimate ultimate fighter was to destroy me in front of a huge crowd. He had no other options.

  Here’s how chill I was in the hours before the fight. A buddy of mine and Tito’s stopped by Tito’s hotel room to say hello that afternoon and see how he was doing. I remember him telling me that Tito was pretty amped up, as if he were anxious, nervous, and worried about the fight. My buddy couldn’t help but laugh as he gave me the details back in my room. That’s because he walked in to give me the news while I was wrestling with two girls on my bed.

  Now might be a good time to explain a couple things regarding me and the ladies. Since you bought this book, I’m guessing you want to know about the world of an ultimate fighter—the whole world—and not just the fighting and the training and the brutality. And attention from women is a nice benefit of the job I’ve chosen. I hesitated to put any of these stories in here because I don’t want to come off like some kind of Wilt Chamberlain bragging about his conquests. But this is a part of the extreme, ultimate fighter lifestyle that is pretty awesome. And I figured you’d want to read some of those stories, too.

  It would be hard to find anyone who loves and appreciates women more than I do. That’s how a lot of the people I’ve dated—including the moms of my kids—become good friends of mine after we break up. I’m a nice guy, I like to think, and once you’re my friend, I’ll do anything I can for you, within reason. And when breakups happen, I’m pretty honest about why. I’ll stay friends with my exes because, usually, there are reasons that I liked them, there are reasons I decided I wanted to spend so much time with them when we were dating. Just because things don’t work out doesn’t mean a lot of what I liked about someone has disappeared. A lot of times, they see it the same way and we can move on with our lives without too much drama.

  I’m not into drama. If I wanted headaches and hassles and stress, I’d be an accountant. I chose this life because it’s fun. And I want to take advantage of all of this carefree, have-fun, do-what-you-want-to-do life I’ve set up. No matter how hard I train or how seriously I take a fight and my career, when you get an opportunity to have a good time, you’ve got to take it. And I don’t buy into the old cliché that you’ve got to abstain before a big fight. So if I relaxed with a couple of girls before the Tito fight, no harm. One time, a couple of hours before a title fight, Dana made one of his incessant calls to check on me. I answered, “Can’t talk now, I’ve got two girls in the shower, gotta go.” Sure, it freaked him out. But I had a good time.

  Before the Tito fight, after the girls left, it was just me, Antonio, and my brother Dan hanging out in my room. I was in the bathroom shaving my body—a lot of fighters do that before a fight because it makes it more difficult for opponents to grab us. Besides, it hurts like a bitch when someone is trying to get a grip on your leg and he’s pulling out clumps of hair because his hands are too sweaty to hold on. Antonio and Dan were listening to some music, and we were all yelling back and forth about what we were going to do that night after the fight. There was no tension, no fear, no worry about the fight. I wasn’t thinking about strategy or how to stop his submission holds or how to keep him on his feet so I could knock his ass out. If you took a snapshot at that moment, we would have looked like three buddies getting ready to go out for a night of partying in Vegas. And that’s what we were. I just happened to have the biggest fight of my life to finish before all that happened.

  I wanted someone to talk to while I was in the bathroom, so I asked Antonio to come in. He helped me shave my legs and my back. Then Dan was trying to tell us something but we couldn’t hear him, so we told him to come into the bathroom. He walked in, saw Antonio working on my body with the razor, and said, “What the hell are you guys doing?”

  I don’t know what it looked like, but I knew what I was doing: getting ready for a fight.

  CHAPTER 33

  WHEN YOU’VE GOT A GUY DAZED, KNOCK HIM OUT

  IFELT GREAT HEADING INTO THE TITO FIGHT. I COULDN’T have been calmer or more sure of myself. I may have felt that way if I hadn’t had the company of a couple of ladies before the fight, but why take the chance? Plus, it was a good crowd. George Clooney was there. By rule, anywhere Clooney is must be the coolest place to be on that night. Michael Clarke Duncan was there, Joey Pants—the guy who lost his head in The Sopranos—was there, too. So were Randy Couture and Ken Shamrock and just about every other big name in the UFC.

  When I entered the Octagon, I smiled. I was thrilled—after two years of Tito’s using every excuse he could think of to avoid me—that we were finally going to fight. So much had happened in those two years regarding our popularity. I had become a crowd favorite. Tito was now getting booed. Dana has said that he’d made a lot of mistakes when he’d first started running the UFC, but the biggest one was backing Tito Ortiz. When he entered the cage and did his warm-up lap and pulled off another punk move by giving me a little bump, anyone could see why Dana felt that way.

  Before most of his fights Tito rips the TEAM PUNISHMENT beanie he wears during his introduction
off his head and throws it into the crowd. Two years earlier someone might have grabbed that and either framed it to be hung in their house or put it on eBay. But tonight, when he tossed it over the side of the cage, someone caught it, then threw it right back at him. That was fucking classic.

  While I might have been feeling good, I think Hack was pretty anxious. He offered me a water bottle while we were waiting for the prefight hoopla to settle down. When I said I didn’t need it, he drank most of it without taking a breath.

  In the final moments before the fight, Tito was doing that stupid Donkey Kong bounce, where he jumps as high as he can and lifts his knees to his chest so it looks as if he’s about five feet off the ground. He just kept staring at me the whole time. And I kept staring back, looking as cold and vacant as I could. My natural disposition is to look nasty when I’m not smiling, so I can intimidate without really trying.

  Finally, Big John McCarthy, the fight ref, called us to the center of the Octagon. Big John epitomizes how popular the UFC has become. He’s a Los Angeles cop and Brazilian jujitsu black belt who studied with Rorion Gracie. He has officiated at more than five hundred MMA fights and helped rewrite the rules for the sport when it was getting resanctioned by all the state athletic commissions early in this century. He refereed his first fight in UFC 2 and has been a central figure in all our fights since. He’s got a phrase synonymous with the start of every match—“Let’s get it on.” He’s got his own Web site, his own mixed martial arts school, and his own Big John merchandise. Only in the UFC, where the fans are as rabid as they are, could a ref become the kind of brand name that he’s become.