Iceman (21 page)

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.

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.

W
HEN 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.

I
FELT 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.

At the center of the cage Big John told us, “Fight clean; fight fair; fight hard.” Then he said those magic words that get every UFC fan pumped: “Let's get it on.”

And then, after all that buildup, we did nothing. We were both tentative, standing toe-to-toe, exchanging jabs, and just feeling each other out. It was more cat and mouse than badass on badass. I was cautious since I didn't want to give him any confidence but hoped to remind him how hard I could hit.

Tito Ortiz dodged a fight with me for months. I finally had a chance to knock him out. And I did.

Then, he went for a shoot to take me down. I avoided it and threw a left hook that just missed. Tito just smiled. Seconds later he caught me with a quick jab on my jaw, and I thought, hmm, he's been working on his skills. Then it was back-and-forth. He hit me with a few inside kicks, and I fired off a left-right combination. He hit me with a left, I hit him with a right. I don't think either of us was hurting the other. He tried for another takedown and I moved out of the way.

I was giving him too much respect. He was keeping his hands up, blocking a lot of my punches. I went for a kick, which missed, and he slapped his head, basically saying, come on, is that all you got? I was doing what I always do in a fight: looking for the knockout. I'm not the most patient fighter. My strategy is to find an opening, land a big hit, and end the fight as soon as possible. I don't mind going the distance, but I'm a striker, and I like these things to end because I knocked my opponent out cold.

Tito and I were playing a little back-and-forth, but eventually I would knock him off his feet.

As the first round ended, I saw my opportunity. He hit me with a right and then a leg kick to the body. I countered with a big looping right, probably my favorite punch, but he ducked under it. But I quickly followed with a left-right-left combo that caught him. Then I nailed him with a left-right-left-right-left-left-right and a right high kick, which caught the back of his head. With only five seconds left when I began my flurry, I had him trapped along the side of the cage. And that kick to the head really stung him.

The crowd was going absolutely nuts. It was so loud I don't think anyone around the cage could hear the bell ringing. Big John actually jumped in, and Tito seemed shocked. He pushed Big John out of the way and started yelling, at Big John and at me. I thought he was challenging me, asking me if that was all I had. I'm not sure he knew the round had ended. Even Joe Rogan, sitting ringside, wondered aloud, “What's he doing?” when Big John stepped in. That's how hard it was to hear. Even Rogan didn't realize the round had ended.

But it had ended in my favor. Tito was looking loopy. I knew what was going to happen next. When you've got a guy dazed, knock him the fuck out. We started the second round and he hit my thigh with a solid shin kick. But he had yet to get close enough to get me down. And that was the only chance he had to win this fight. There was no way he could stand with me and throw punches. He's not strong enough or tough enough. I'd known that since I'd put him on his knees at Big Bear and he wouldn't get up. The guy was a grappler. Not a striker. He moved in to throw a combo and I caught him in the eye with my glove. Three seconds later I seized the moment. I threw every punch in my arsenal: jabs, rights, hooks, and uppercuts. I was throwing as fast as I could, working in a rhythm fighters only hope for, as if I were working a speed bag. Only the bag was Tito's face. But really, it could have been whomever I was fighting. It's not Tito I'm throwing punches at, it's just a guy, and I am trying to connect and keep on going. I know if I land, I will knock him out.

As much as Tito tried, he couldn't stop me. All of my punches found the holes in his guard. His face was bloody as he fell to the ground. Then Big John leaped in and called it.

Thirty-eight seconds into the second round, I had knocked Tito out.

Here's what happens when you win a big fight: Girls flock to you. I was once at a club in Vegas with my girlfriend after I had beaten some guy up, and right in front of my girl, another woman came up to us and handed me her key. When I fought Tito, I wasn't dating anyone seriously. So after a night of celebrating at the clubs, I brought some company back up to my room. A lot of company. I can't remember how many women, but I know it was more than two. I had promised Dana the gloves and trunks from the fight, and he had forgotten to get them in the celebration after. He came by my room in the morning, knocked on the door, and someone let him in. He saw two girls asleep in the living room, two more girls in the bathroom, and a girl in bed with me. None of us had any clothes on. And Dana remembers seeing condoms hanging from the lamps, on the floor, pretty much everywhere. He looked at me, asked me for the gloves and the trunks, then said, “Get me the hell out of here.” I ended the morning by having sex while doing an interview on the phone with a radio station. Again, I'm not trying to brag. This is just the way it was.

Tito talked a lot of smack before the fight, but I'd shown him the floor. And it took less than two rounds.

What else can I say? It's good to be the winner.