Born to Fight (27 page)

I found out most of this information after the fight. Before the fight, I had enough on my plate – or not enough on my plate, as it were. It was a tough weight cut, that one. It just wouldn’t fall off me, that extra weight, no
matter how many calories I missed or how much I trained. With the lack of food and very thin air I became a pretty grumpy bastard, and I wasn’t the only one, as my corner had decided to eat as I did in solidarity.

Things got pretty testy between us until one day, when I decided we all needed a change of scenery and suggested we should get out of the city for a few days. We planned to drive south to Acapulco to jump into the ocean, see a little of the countryside and get some training sessions in away from the pollution of the capital.

Halfway to our destination we stopped at a roadblock, which was manned by a number of balaclava-clad men holding knives and machetes. As we approached them it became apparent these guys weren’t police or army – they looked too young and small, and they weren’t wearing uniforms. As it turned out, they were a student group fundraising.

The incident actually ended up being surprisingly chilled. The guys explained that they were protesting the killing of 42 student teachers in a town nearby, as well as the government’s complicity in the murders, and they were trying to raise funds so they could support the victims’ families. They were happy to let us go on after we gave them a very small contribution.

The trip was a good one, I suppose, but it didn’t put any more food in my belly and my mood just got worse and worse right up until weigh-in. The situation was exacerbated by drama on the home front, with some keyboard warriors deciding to have a go at Julie, claiming they knew me and they had some compromising information on me.

It was something Julie and I sorted out easily when we were back together again, but thousands of kilometres away, and me near-delirious with hunger, it grew in my mind as something much larger than it actually was.

Even though that trip was the culmination of all I’d been working for since I got to the UFC, I was really missing Julie and the kids. I had wave after wave of melancholy while I was there, thinking a lot about my past and future, and my family, and my siblings back in New Zealand.

As I’ve said, I didn’t think much about Steve, John and Vic when I didn’t have to, but maybe my natural defence against unwanted thoughts was weakened by lack of food, or maybe the hunger was a mental trigger.

When I finally made weight and got to eat a decent meal, everything came back into focus. My team was a team again and I was a fighter again, but the thoughts of loss lingered. I walked into that Octagon ready to fight but, in the first round when I caught Werdum right on the chin
and sent him onto his ass, I started to think about the life I’d built in Western Sydney.

I never usually thought about anything in the ring except the bloke in front of me, but in that moment, I thought about my kids and my wife. A pulse went through me, an urge to be with my wife and kids. It’s a great impulse for a father and husband to have, but one that needs to be suppressed if you’re also a fighter.

I took the first round of that fight, but I got knocked out in the second. It was a cleverly orchestrated move that did it, with Werdum faking a takedown and then launching into a flying knee. I was still ducking when it landed, trying to avoid the takedown that never came. It was a good knockout, that one. Clean. Well done, Fab, you got me good.

It was another fight I failed to win, but probably also another that didn’t affect my stock in the division too much. I’d managed to knock Werdum down twice in the first round and had taken the fight on very short notice.

I still had at least three fights left with the UFC, and even after that loss I’d stay in the upper echelons of a division that didn’t have too many big names excelling at the time. I figured I was still only one or two matches away from fighting for the belt.

It was still a very upsetting loss, though. I knew you only got so many chances at glory in the fight game – especially at the age of 40 – and regardless of the circumstances you have to seize your opportunities.

When I got home, any lingering disappointment over the fight disappeared as soon as I had Julie and my little ones in my arms again. I went back to sunny Sydney in spring, with days full of soccer practices, princess parties, toys and kids’ meals. It was pretty hard to stay upset about the loss.

I only had a couple of weeks of sunny domestic bliss, though, until Victoria called and turned my world instantly cold. John was gone.

I couldn’t believe it. Even though John had tried suicide before and was as vacant as he was when I saw him, I still couldn’t believe he was dead. I still can’t really believe it now. When I hung up the phone I waited for the wash of sadness to come, but it didn’t. There was only shock.

I travelled back to New Zealand to help with the arrangements. John had left instructions for his body. In the church in which we’d grown up, it was essential that the body stays intact after death, but John had always hated that church and had insisted that he be cremated. John wanted out of this world, mind and body.

The service was at Mangere cemetery, just a couple of kilometres from where we grew up. It was a small
ceremony, with just a handful of people, with my Sydney and Auckland families present, and a smattering of people from our childhood.

Of course it was a sad and sombre affair, but there was one moment I really appreciated. I didn’t think it was in him, but Steve got up in front of everyone at the service and spoke about John and our father and what life was like when we were kids. Most people at the service were hearing about all that stuff for the first time.

I’m so proud of Steve for doing that and I’m also proud of Victoria for getting through all the trauma the way she did. I’ve never told them, and I probably won’t, but maybe someone will read this and tell them.

I’m really thankful for the things John did for me, too. I might not have moved to Sydney without him, and without him I might not have stayed. I might not have fought in Japan without him. I might not have met Julie.

I wondered if there was something I could have said to John to keep him from doing what he did. I’m not sure I could have done anything. I never really got through to him, even when we were younger and it was considerably easier. I still wish I’d tried, though. In many ways John was a stranger to me his whole life, but maybe I could have helped him somehow.

If there is one message to take away from all this – this book, my story, my life – it would be that there’s incredible power in talking to someone about the hurts happening in your life. Speaking to Julie in those early days changed my life like magic, as it did when I spoke to a counsellor in 2010.

I speak to God, too, and He is always there, always listening. With Him, I’m never alone, even when Julie and the kids aren’t around. Without that, and without them I have no idea who I might be.

If you’re depressed, speak to someone. Just do it. Just reach out. Hell, send me a message on Facebook if you want to, but whatever you do, don’t keep it all to yourself.

I’ve never cried for John. I think about him all the time, but I can’t really get into the sadness of it for some reason. I do honour his loss, though, by living my life in a way he never got the opportunity to.

Jules and I married in 2007, but it was a bit of a slapdash affair. We ended up tying the knot in the back garden of our place, after the boys and I had spent the night before partying at the Intercontinental Hotel. Maybe it wasn’t the biggest and best wedding in history, but as far as I see it, a marriage is a marathon, not a sprint, and Jules and I have only just started to hit our stride.

The UFC wanted me to get back into the Octagon in a relatively short turnaround after the Werdum fight and I was more than happy to oblige. I’d only had one win over my previous four fights, but no one behind me had gained much contender momentum, either. When the rankings came out after the Werdum loss there were four guys in front of me: Cain and Fabrício, who were finally set to face off for the title; Junior dos Santos, who’d been beaten so badly in his last two title fights against Cain there was no appetite to give him another shot; and Croatian–American fighter Stipe Miočić. He’d only had two losses in his fourteen-fight career, with his last loss being a wafer-thin decision loss to JDS. When they scheduled me against Miočić in Adelaide, I couldn’t have been happier. With the current status in the division, a win against Stipe could quite possibly mean a shot at Cain. It would also be a fight on home soil, and my fourth main event in a row. There was nothing bad about any of that.

After the Werdum fight my weight had started to balloon out again, but as I got back into my conditioning – and mostly thanks to Zuu training, a new type of intensive interval training that concentrates on primal, animal movements – I quickly started shedding the weight and getting my gas tank filled up again.

In the few months leading up to the Miočić fight I moved back to Auckland for my camp. My team of Steve and Lolo and conditioning trainer Alex Flint all lived in Auckland and I had great facilities and training partners there. An added benefit of being across the ditch was that I’d be away from my kids and all the delicious food that I liked to eat with them.

I trained hard during that camp and felt like I was getting where I needed to be, but I couldn’t keep myself from flying back a number of times to hang out with the kids. I was working hard in Auckland, so when I was in Sydney I allowed myself some meals I probably shouldn’t have had. I thought,
Fuck it, I’ve had enough kids’ birthdays without any cake in my life
.

My weight was roughly where it should be a month before the fight – with fifteen or so kilograms to shed – but after that, I just couldn’t seem to lose much more. When I flew to Adelaide a couple of weeks before the fight, I was still a good twelve kilograms over the limit.

The diet was strict in the house we were staying in, and the training relentless. Four days before the fight I went into the Adelaide Intercontinental to check myself on the official scales the UFC had set up in the basement of the hotel.

‘Oh, that’s not good,’ I said to myself. I was still nine kilograms over.

Over those remaining few days my team did everything they could to help me shed my last kilograms. I trained and sweated and ate like a rabbit and, in the 48 hours before the weigh-in, we tried to strip all the water out of my body, first in a sweat suit and finally in a sauna suit. I started to cramp all over, with Steve having to punch my legs and arms regularly to keep them from locking up.

On the day of the weigh-in I still had quite a few kilos to lose. The cramping had moved to my jaw and I was delirious, speaking nonsense to a confused Steve and Lolo. I was in a starving, dehydrated daze. The boys thought it was time to admit defeat, time to get some food and water into me, and just go in heavy. There would be penalties for that, monetary penalties, and also a bollocking from Dana and the media, but my team didn’t see that we were going to make it.

My jaw was still cramping up so it was hard to get any words out, but I made my thoughts on the matter clear. We were only a few hundred grams over, and I reckoned if we squeezed this stone just a little bit more, it felt like we could make it.

We got to the stadium with all the other fighters having already been on the scales, and just moments before I was supposed to get up onstage. The UFC was monumentally pissed with my team – they had requested that I turn up
to the weigh-in hours earlier – but the television audience didn’t know any better, so it was all fine. I got up on those scales and tipped them at 120 kilograms – the absolute limit for a UFC heavyweight fight.

At that stage of fight week I’m normally like a caged animal, but I was quiet and reserved after getting off the scales. In the post weigh-in interview I told Stipe he was getting knocked out but I didn’t say it with much gusto, even though I did still believe it.

That night I invited everyone who had come to Adelaide to support me to the house for a barbecue. There were people from church, guys from Auckland and Sydney, my team, my training partners, Caleb and, of course, Julie. It was a big gathering, a long way from that first Sydney fight of mine deep on the toilet card.

Everyone was in good spirits that night. The stories rippled through the place about how close I’d come to not making weight, but that I’d managed to get under the bar with minutes to spare. I was happy, too, but in a restrained mood. For some reason I couldn’t eat much, either, but got down what I could and headed off to bed with Julie nice and early.

I arrived at the ring feeling pretty good. I walked in to the song
Freaks
, made by a Samoan–Kiwi mate of mine, Savage and DJ Timmy Trumpet and as I got to the Octagon
the crowd made it known why they’d bought their tickets. That stadium wanted a knockout, and I wanted to give it to them. One more knockout then I reckoned I was a good chance to fight Cain for the gold.

Stipe faced me in the middle of the Octagon, we touched gloves and started to wheel. After about twenty seconds he ran in, grabbed my front leg, turned me and dumped me on my back. I’d been slow seeing the shot and hadn’t gathered nearly enough power pushing off him.

I knew in that moment my shitty weight cut had completely gouged my energy levels. There were 24 more minutes left to go in the fight and I was probably going to be getting a beating for most of them.