Iceman: My Fighting Life Read online

  And we all had plenty of those already.

  CHAPTER 4

  BE WILLING TO LEARN

  Laura, me, and Sean. Just goes to show you can play with stuffed animals and still be a badass.

  MY MOM HAD DIFFERENT METHODS FOR PUNISHING each of her kids. Laura liked to be the center of attention, so when she was bad, my mom sent her to her room. It just killed her not to be in the middle of the action. Sean was a big eater, so to punish him my mom would take away his favorite foods—such as cheese—for a week. Danny, the baby of the bunch, well, he was so worried about disappointing my mom that all she had to do was give him a disapproving look and he’d start to cry. But for me, nothing was worse than talking. Any my mom knew it.

  Every time I got into trouble, we’d have to sit down and have a conversation about it. I couldn’t stand sitting still, evaluating what I had done, and trying to figure out why it was wrong. I knew the answers pretty well, usually before I did whatever I’d done. I didn’t have the patience for long talks. Finally, one day after an argument I asked, “Why can’t you just spank me? The talking takes so long.” She answered, “I’m not hitting you, Charlie, because you need a punishment that is painful. And I know the talking hurts you a lot more than the spanking.”

  A lot of times we’d take what my mom liked to call “peripatetic” walks. That meant we were going to take a stroll around the neighborhood and she was going to lecture me. But we were both so competitive that neither of us would walk even a step behind the other. She’d be trying to tell me what I’d done was wrong, while I would try to walk faster than she was. Then she’d catch up, take a two-step lead, and keep going faster. Back and forth it went. It was hard to learn my lesson when both of us were so fixated on walking faster than the other. Mostly, the punishment my mom doled out taught me two things about myself: I didn’t mind getting hit, and I didn’t like to lose.

  On one of these walks, I signed up for my first karate class. I was twelve and had gotten into the show Kung Fu Theater, which aired late on Friday nights. They put on demonstrations during the break that taught how to kick or throw a punch, basic moves, and I thought they were fantastic. It was something I wanted to try. A lot of people I knew were getting into jujitsu. But martial arts in general were a big deal in Southern California—the movie Karate Kid was a huge hit at the time—and I was such a big fan of all the different disciplines I started getting a subscription to Black Belt magazine.

  I wanted to join one particular dojo in town. My mom and I went by it three or four times on our walks, but it was always closed. So, one day we walked into another place, Koei-Kan Karate-Do, which was run by Jack Sabat. I was lucky the other dojo was never open because Koei-Kan was perfect for me. There are dozens of different forms of karate. Some—such as tae kwon do—are more sports-oriented and focused on learning self-defense. But the style Jack taught, Koei-Kan, while still about discipline and concentration, was more combative. It concentrated on debilitating opponents, not just keeping them at bay. It utilized pressure points and emphasized good striking technique. Koei-Kan was about building fighters. And it perfectly fit with Jack’s personality. He had grown up outside Detroit and served four years on an aircraft carrier during Vietnam. While in the military he wanted to find, he says, “the most hard-ass” system he could. And Koei-Kan was it.

  That subscription to Black Belt magazine paid off. I’d eventually earn my own black belt.

  The dojo was open seven days a week and I was a gym rat. During the school year I’d go to work out after football or wrestling practice. And during the summer, I spent every day there, sometimes until Jack locked the doors at midnight. For me, it was never about getting the next level of belt. I just wanted to learn. If you’re going to be good at anything, you’ve got to be willing to learn as much about it as possible. At first I was really good at roundhouse kicks, they just came naturally to me. But I still needed hours of practice to perfect them.

  The instructors at Koei-Kan emphasized technique and being self-motivated. They’d show us something once and tell us to go off into a corner and do it five hundred times. Then they’d come over to check on us, point out a small flaw in our technique, and tell us to do it five hundred more times. We did high kicks, jabs, hooks, straight punches, reverse punches, roundhouses, side kicks, back kicks, elbow blocks, knee blocks, outside blocks. It was real Mr. Miyagi, wax-on, wax-off, Karate Kid stuff. I’d be there for three or four hours trying to master these precise and specific movements, and my body would ache, without ever taking a punch. But the repetition helped me understand what I could do with each different technique; the movements became a part of my muscle memory. We’d grind away, and pretty soon my body only knew one way to respond when I needed to use that move. The repetition helped us build seamless combinations and gave us a clear perception of what the move was, how it was used, and how to apply it. And, really, hitting is what I wanted to do more than anything else.

  * * *

  MY FAVORITE ACTION MOVIES:

  Best of the Best—1989, starring James Earl Jones as a coach who takes a team to the world tae kwon do championships.

  Karate Kid—1984, Ralph Macchio as a lonely kid who learns karate and finds himself.

  Rocky—1976, if you don’t know…

  Diggstown—1992, Louis Gossett, Jr., an old boxer, fights ten men in twenty-four hours.

  Bloodsport—1988, Jean-Claude Van Damme in the Rocky of martial arts movies.

  * * *

  I couldn’t get enough of sparring, which Jack let all of his students do almost as soon as they joined the program. At first, we were covered in protective gear, which allowed us to go full bore in as aggressive a situation as possible, without worrying we were going to get hurt. So many students begin sparring without any padding and get busted in the first week or two, then lose their incentive to practice. But your appreciation for the discipline, as well as the combat, is greater when you’re not getting grounded every time you step on the mat. Once we were comfortable with being hit, the real merciless stuff began. We’d run at each other full speed from opposite sides of the mat to practice our defensive maneuvers. We’d use our knuckles as weapons. We’d spar for twenty minutes, and if either fighter was still standing, Jack would make us analyze what had happened and figure out why no one was hurt. We’d stand against a wall and learn how to fight off multiple people at one time when there was no escape. The only thing you can do is counter and move side to side, which helped us develop resistance and skill. We’d do that drill for ninety minutes some days. It got to the point where I became so comfortable that I liked having the wall behind me and three or four guys coming at me from all sides.

  My early karate days. I’d take anyone on—no matter how old or skilled they were.

  Accuracy was an important part of the program, so we’d punch stationary boards fitted with fake heads and chests. Then we’d punch moving targets, aiming not just for anywhere on the head or the body, but for specific points such as the lower jaw or the cheekbone or the temple or the floating rib. We’d spend thirty minutes building up the strength in our shins by using them to kick sandbags in an alley behind the building. Jack had morning sessions and evening sessions, with about fifty people in each session, and it was holy hell for two hours.

  The rest of the time, I was looking for someone to spar with. I wasn’t bloodthirsty and I wasn’t a thug. Then—and now—I was quiet and reserved and held back a lot of expression. But in the same way some kids love playing basketball and others never want to leave the baseball field, I always wanted to spar. I was still pretty thin, but I had strong legs. Jack used to call it tendon strength. But my greatest gifts as a fighter were internal. I never stopped moving forward. I fought with a single purpose: When I was on the mat, all I wanted to do was take the other guy out. It wasn’t emotional; it was about the competition. It helped that I had no fear of getting hit. When someone is fearless, when pain isn’t a factor, it’s impossible to break his spirit. And a
fighter with heart will almost always win out against a fighter with skill but no will.

  When I was fourteen and had earned my green belt (the levels are white, green, brown, and black, with each belt having three separate classes), I joined my first national competition. Around fifteen of us from the dojo flew out to New Jersey and stayed in a Howard Johnson’s. I came in second place nationally, winning a match with a roundhouse kick to the midsection and a hooking punch to the head—a move not all that different from the knockout punch I use now.

  When I got back from Jersey, I sparred with anyone who’d take me on, not just kids my age. I didn’t care how old they were or what their belt was. I was becoming so mature as a fighter that the guys I sparred with assumed I was older than I was. During the summer, people new to the dojo would offer me construction jobs. When I’d answer that I was still in school, they’d ask me what college I went to. I’d have to tell them I was still in high school, and eventually it became a joke around the dojo. I never looked at it as if I were better than anyone else my age—I still don’t think of it that way. But I knew then that I could fight, and that I would want to do it for as long as I could.

  CHAPTER 5

  WHY? ’CAUSE SCREW THEM.

  IF YOU WERE A KID LOOKING FOR ACTION ON THE weekends in Santa Barbara, you went to Del Playa Drive in the Isla Vista section of town. Three things could happen once you got there: You’d meet a girl, get in a fight, or get drunk—sometimes all three. But I didn’t drink. In high school my friends told me there was no way I could wait until I turned twenty-one, so naturally I accepted the challenge. So for me the odds were fifty-fifty I’d get into a fight.

  Santa Barbara is one of those idyllic towns that are perfect for attending college, and UCSB has a rep as a big party school. That means there were a lot of kids who wouldn’t look at you twice while walking around during the week but found courage on the weekends, when the taps were flowing and the sun went down. Fights would start over anything, from the way one of the guys you were hanging out with looked at someone else, to some drunken college kid saying something stupid. When a lot of guys are drinking and looking to meet girls, there will occasionally be some aggressive behavior. Most of the time, we actually tried to walk away. Such as the night I was with Dan and some young drunk guy bumped into us. He looked Dan up and down and said nothing, then looked at me and started mouthing off. Before it escalated, Dan said to the guy, “Wrong choice.” I started laughing so hard we just turned around.

  But at times it was impossible to walk away. One night I heard about a friend who had been threatened. I took my friend to the guy’s house and told him, “If my buddy gets touched in the next couple of months, I’m coming after you. I don’t care who does it, I am coming after you.”

  A week later I was with that friend and some other guys and we were coming out of a Taco Bell. In the parking lot kids from another school started up with us. A bunch of my buddies scattered—including the jerk I had stuck up for the week before. The two who stuck around weren’t worth much when it came to fighting. So this was the way it was going to be: me, two guys who couldn’t fight, and some punks who wanted to take me on. I looked for a wall to cover my back—if you’re outnumbered, you’re always better off if you have one less side to protect—then practiced what I had learned in Koei-Kan. Street brawls don’t look the way they do in the movies. They aren’t pretty and choreographed. Guys don’t wait to come at you one at a time. It’s all at once. I used some spinning back kicks, side kicks, and roundhouse kicks to fend some people off. At one point, a buddy yelled, “Look out,” just as I was about to get hit in the side of the head with a golf club. I did pretty well in the fight. I have a hard head and I hit hard and did more damage than they caused. I just didn’t lose many fights growing up.

  I got home that night and told my mom and Pops what had happened. It was a stark lesson in learning who my true friends were. They reminded me that I’ll always have friends when it looks as if I’m the toughest guy in the room, but when it looks as if that’s no longer the case, people will scatter. I didn’t hold it against him, but I knew if I was ever in a jam, he wasn’t going to be there for me.

  The truth is, though, with or without backup, no matter how much I practiced what my mom had preached when I was five years old about walking away, sometimes it was hard not to find excuses to fight. That’s how it was in my family. One year, when Dan applied for a job, a question on the application asked if he had ever been in any fights and then gave him some options—1–10, 11–20, 21–30, 31 or more. Dan circled 31 or more, and only when he was asked about it during an interview did it dawn on him that thirty-one or more fights are more than most people have in a lifetime.

  Some people started with me because I had a reputation for being tough because of my karate. Hundreds of kids went through Jack’s program every year, and hundreds more were a part of the karate community in Santa Barbara. Word spread that I liked to spar, and that I was pretty good at it. Normally it takes six to nine months to move up a class for each belt in karate. With three classes in each belt (white, green, brown, and black), a student could spend nearly three years at each level. But, by the time I was sixteen—after just four years in his dojo—Jack felt I was ready to take my black belt test. The exam was a five-hour session that usually began before dawn and was so grueling, students would lose twenty pounds of water weight.

  My mom had other ideas. She knew that when her kids went out, the night might end in a fight. She had a boys-will-be-boys attitude about the whole thing. If I became a black belt and had hands and feet that were actually considered lethal weapons, she worried that I’d be putting my future in jeopardy every time I’d get into a scuffle. I was never worried about that, but I didn’t want to upset my mom, so I waited.

  Which was fine. I found other outlets to satisfy my competitive urges. I had always been a good athlete. But because I was small, it seemed I had to prove myself whenever a new coach came to town or I went into a new school. When we changed school districts in junior high, we were playing a pickup football game one day on the playground. I was picked second to last, just before a girl, and that crushed me. By the time I had left my old school I was always one of the first guys chosen. Now people thought I was barely better than a girl, which is tough to take when you’re eleven years old. Then, early in the game, I picked off a pass and ran it back for a touchdown. I wasn’t picked second to last anymore after that.

  It was the same thing in youth football. We’d get a new coach, who’d take one look at my scrawny body and assume I’d be useless. I didn’t give off the aura that I was especially tough or hardworking, and I’d have to fight to earn my position every fall. Then practices started. And I’d be flying all over that field, throwing my body around. I didn’t care if I got hurt and didn’t worry too much about hurting my teammates, either. Hey, you gotta commit. Even today, I still love the movie Rudy, about the kid who was too small to play but still walked on at Notre Dame and got on the field.

  I may have looked scrawny, but I was an animal on the field.

  In high school we all started on a level field, and during the tryouts I showed I was a pretty good athlete—and that hitting people wasn’t a problem. I was a linebacker on a freshman team that wasn’t all that good. Then, midway through the year we lost all three of our centers in the same week, one to injury, another to illness, and a third because the guy wouldn’t do his homework. Coach Archer, the freshman coach, sat us down and asked if anyone had played center before. No one wants to play center when you’re a freshman in high school. We all stayed quiet, avoiding eye contact with him, looking up at the ceiling. Then one of my buddies yelled out, “Hey, Chuck played center in peewee.” Because of that, I became a center for all four years of high school football. Between that and linebacker, I was on the field for every play except when we punted—some other guy did the long snapping.

  I loved it though. Even now, I can’t sit still for more than a few minutes,
even when I’m having a conversation. However, my coaches didn’t always appreciate how eager I was to hit people. I was really fast as a kid. Covering the field sideline to sideline wasn’t a problem. More than once my freshman season I timed my coverage on screen passes so I would collide with the receiver the second the ball arrived. It was obvious I could have been there earlier to pick the pass off, but I really just wanted to hit someone instead. Finally, Coach Archer pulled me off the field and yelled at me to make the interception.

  With karate and football, it was no surprise I gravitated to wrestling. And it turns out I was a good wrestler.