Chapter 18

The following three months were a lesson to George in the passing of time. So many of the things he used to depend on for variety and entertainment were stripped from him, causing the days to pass like weeks, and the weeks like days. Without friends, George had no one to pull him away from his apartment between training sessions. Ricardo had given George so much “homework” that he didn’t have time to do much of anything anymore besides watch recordings of MMA matches to study strategies for specific rounds, different kinds of opponents, and fighting against the cage.

Training remained a constant grind. George was no longer dazzled by new techniques to fuel his imagination. Rather, Ricardo seemed obsessed with the basics, things George had learned long before he’d earned his blue belt. Every drill was among the most basic of techniques, with only the smallest details to differentiate between how he’d learned them before and how he was learning them then.

“Slide your knee in across the top of the thigh. There’s more space up there,” Ricardo said, correcting George as he tried to escape from under Mo’s side mount.

George had been drilling this for over fifteen minutes, attempting to escape from the position to the guard with little success. Mo’s ability to hold a position was uncanny. But as soon as George followed Ricardo’s new instructions, the drill began to go differently. As George forced his knee into the gap between himself and Mo, taking care to slide it across the top of Mo’s thigh rather than trying to get it past his knee, he felt his knee sink into the space. Mo’s center of balance changed, and George could feel himself tipping the man closer to his own center line, making it easier and easier for him to escape. George shifted his hips inch by inch until he had successfully pulled Mo into his guard.

“Wow,” George said to himself between gasps.

“That’s why we care about details!” cheered Ricardo as he clapped his hands. “That’s what I’m talking about!”

The team drilled more basics that day, including how to hold onto positions like mount and rear mount. George met with similar success, struggling for the first few minutes of the drill before finally stuffing Pablo’s attempts to escape.

“Again, George, good job!”

The team continued their brutal practice of the basics until George was utterly spent. He was tired in muscle and bone, and felt as though he would fall apart like chicken in a slow cooker.

“Alright, gentlemen, now that we’re warmed up, Scott has a special exercise for us!” Ricardo announced.

George looked around the room and found that Pablo, Mo, and Roy were all as tired and surprised as he was. They’d just been through over two hours of hard training. Why on earth would Ricardo think it was a good idea to do something harder that what they’d already done today?

Scott stood from where he’d been lounging on the mat and turned to address the rest of the team. Unlike everyone else, he didn’t look tired. He was sweating, but he held himself like he always did: like it was a normal day and he was just waiting in line for something. He looked no more exhausted than someone who was waiting in line to use the ATM. But George noticed there was something different about his face. There was the faintest hint of a smile where there was usually a flat-line expression that was neither smile nor frown. Something amused him then, George thought, and he had a sneaking suspicion it had something to do with the exercises he and Ricardo had decided to put the team through.

“Alright boys, grab your gear. We’re going for a short ride.”

 

A half an hour later the team, piled into a suburban, rolled through the gates of Travis Air Force Base. Scott had got them through with little more than a flash of an ID and a nod to the guards, and soon the suburban was navigating past efficient-looking buildings and depots of vehicles George couldn’t name. Within five minutes they’d arrived in front of a large field. There was a gravel lot to park vehicles, and not much else. In the dimming light George thought he could see a line of large tires laying on their sides in the middle of the field. Beyond, poking out of the trees that lined the large grassy area, George spotted some small, wooden structures too simple to be buildings. Then it occurred to him where they were and why they were there.

“Scott, are we here to do an obstacle course?” George asked aloud.

Scott answered with a smile that was positively cheerful for him, which made it positively chilling. “Among other things,” he said.

Minutes later, when the team was dressed in tennis shoes and workout clothes, Scott finally explained. “What will define our team will not be our techniques,” he said. “When Ricardo started this stuff back in ’93, it was new to most people. Not anymore. That’s why so many MMA athletes put down our school and our Jiu-jitsu. They think we’re an old hat trick. But what defines our art is not our technique. It’s our strategy and our training.”

George nodded, absorbing this information. He knew there were other Jiu-jitsu schools. Maybe thousands of them. He’d seen the videos of their competitors and noticed a marked difference between them and Ricardo. Ricardo was more than a collection of techniques. There was much, much more to the family’s art than armbars and sweeps. It was exciting to him to finally hear it explained.

Scott took the team to a collection of tires laying on the ground. They were of different sizes, some of them truly massive.

“What will separate us from the other athletes there will be our mental conditioning. We will be more effective fighters under stress and fatigue. When the third round comes, and both our fighters and theirs are exhausted, our fighters will continue to fight effectively. These exercises will help bring us to the point where most men begin to shut down. Then we’ll go to work.”

The exercises did as promised. George worked with Roy to flip a tire as tall as he was across the field, end over end. George and Roy’s feet slipped in the wet grass, making the task nearly twice as hard. George thought of what he would give to have a nice pair of football cleats to give him traction with the ground, but the slippage seemed to be part of the exercise.

“The mat’s going to be slippery, too, George,” Scott said when George brought it up. “You’ll deal with it now just like you’ll deal with it then.”

When George and Roy finally brought the tire all the way across the field, Scott called them back. “Hustle!” he barked when George and Roy walked. They picked up their pace to a jog, which was all they could manage after that night’s workout.

Back at the line of tires, Scott told the team members to do the whole thing again, but this time individually. George was directed to another tire, a little smaller than the last. George struggled to move the slippery object, and tried to command his muscles to do what he wasn’t positive he could do when he was fully rested.

“Pick up the pace, George. You’re getting left behind!”

Scott was right, George realized. Mo, Pablo, and Roy were ahead of him, struggling yet succeeding to flip their tires over. It was disheartening to see them pulling ahead like that. He could feel the tire, not yet halfway up to an upright position, slipping from his grip. As he ordered his arms to continue working, he knew they wouldn’t, and the tire fell with a loud thump onto the tip of George’s shoe. George, surprised though unhurt by the tire falling on his foot, fell backwards onto his backside.

“What’re you doing, George?” Scott demanded. “You haven’t finished this exercise.”

“I’m just a little tired,” George answered. He’d never heard Scott talk to him this way before. He sounded hard and demanding. It was as though George had promised him something that he wasn’t doing. George wondered if Scott got this communication style from his time in the Navy. “Just give me a minute. I just need a short break.”

“How much time do you get between rounds?” Scott asked.

“I don’t, um�"two minutes,” George answered. He was wary now. Scott was making a point by asking him the question.

“Two minutes,” Scott repeated. “You’ve already been sitting here for one minute. If I gave you another minute, do you think you’d be able to lift that tire?”

George, still panting, took a moment to assess his physical condition. His arms screamed with fatigue. His chest hurt from the effort to breath. His legs hurt from trying to keep their balance on the slippery grass. He was more tired than he could remember being in recent memory. Maybe more than he’d ever been tired in his whole life. No sports coach had ever pushed him quite like this, and the night was just beginning.

“I don’t know,” he admitted.

“Get up,” Scott ordered. It wasn’t a yell or a growl. It was a simple command, and one Scott clearly expected to be obeyed.

George climbed to his feet.

“Lift the tire one more time and we’ll call it a night,” Scott said. “One more time. That’s all.”

At that, George turned to the tire. He sighed with relief. He was sure this would go on for another hour and a half, but if he only had one more flip left to do, surely he could dig down and find the strength somewhere.

Bending his aching legs, George slipped his stiff fingers under the edge of the tire. He grunted and gritted his teeth, pushing with his legs and then lifting with his arms. His thighs, biceps, and shoulders cried out as he fought to move the large, black tire up and over. His grunt became a full yell as he finally felt gravity take over as the tire flopped onto the grass again. He’d done it, and in his mind he celebrated his small victory over the tire.

“Where are you going?” Scott asked as George began heading back to his small pile of gear to get water and dressed into dry clothes.

“Aren’t we done?” gasped George, pointing to his things on the edge of the gravel parking lot.

“I lied,” Scott said unapologetically. “We have a lot more work to do tonight. I just told you we’d be done to show you something. I wanted to make a point.”

George slumped in defeat and put his hands on his knees. He tried to control both his breathing and his frustration that Scott would play with him like that.

“What point?” George asked. “What point did you want to make.”

“That fatigue makes cowards of us all. That your body isn’t the problem. There’s nothing wrong with it. It’s all in your head.” Scott walked to the tire and stood beside it. “You said you couldn’t lift anymore. But you did as soon as you wanted to. You need to learn that your body will be only as strong as your mind allows it to be. You’re going to be fighting against people who’ve been fighting for years. You have to have more resolve to win than they do. When it’s the third round and you’re tired and injured, you have to put that aside for five minutes so you can finish the job.”

Scott stood there beside the tire, looking down on the doubled-over George. Neither of them said anything for a moment, and all George could hear for that time was his own breathing and the sounds of effort coming from his teammates.

“Is all this some sort of Navy Seal thing?” he asked.

Scott nodded. “Probably,” he said.

Then George stood up straight and walked to the tire. “Alright,” he said. “I’ll finish.”

To his surprise, he did.

 

Scott’s training sessions lasted for two weeks. They were always the same. George and the others would put in a regular two hours of training in the evening, and then they would pile into the suburban and head down to Travis Air Force Base for another two hours of training. And Scott’s training rarely consisted of practicing fighting techniques or MMA drills. More often they were mind-numbingly difficult physical tasks, such as doing sit-ups as a team while they all held a log to their chests, or swimming from one end of a swimming pool to another and back again without taking a breath. That had been especially hard for George, who’d never been a great swimmer, but after a few tries he finally relaxed his body enough to get past the panic and the fear of drowning.

By the end of the two weeks, George noticed something different about himself. He was lasting longer during sparring sessions, and getting more and more techniques right on the first try when drilling with partners.

“You’re more assertive,” Ricardo observed when George asked him about it. “You’ve got to the point where you impose your will more on your opponents. This is a critical thing in fighting. Often, the man who gets his way first is the winner.”

 

Four weeks after the Scott’s Jiu-jitsu version of Seal training, the team was recovered and making final preparations for competition. Everyone was close enough to their respective weight classes that no one worried about it. George’s efforts with the weight cut had been interesting. He’d first cut weight, then bulked up his muscle mass, and then cut weight again. He felt like he was in the best shape of his life, and was eager to see how he sized up to the competition. Unfortunately, none of the team members knew quite who they were fighting yet.

For that reason, Brotherhood Jiu-jitsu’s MMA team met together in Ricardo’s home one week before the competition.

“Some of you have already heard, but for those of you who don’t, we’re up against Team Vengeance next week,” Ricardo announced.

George didn’t have a clue who Team Vengeance was, but he was happy to hear that some of the others did. It wasn’t too hard to put together from simply listening, but he wondered where these men were getting their wealth of information.

“That’s Phil McGary’s team, isn’t it?” asked Roy.

“It is,” Ricardo confirmed, “so we can expect to see Strange. He’ll be yours, Pablo.”

“And Gordeaux,” added Roy. “So he’s what? A welterweight?”

“So he’s mine,” said Mo.

“We’re pretty sure he’ll have them on his team since he’s worked with them so much in the past. They practically help him run his gym. The others he’ll have picked from other places. So that leaves lightweight, middleweight, and light heavyweight.” Ricardo rubbed his chin. “We need to figure out who they are and see if we can get some footage on them.”

Scott, who’d been thumbing through something on his smart phone, said, “Rumor is he’s bringing in Sandman Valdez for lightweight. Also, Roddy Gomez quit his gym four months ago and began frequenting Phil’s place. I’m betting that’s our middleweight.”

George let out a breath. So his opponent had a name now. Roddy Gomez. George was sure he could find some videos of his fights, and if he could, he’d start studying them right away.

“Alright, guys,” said Ricardo. “We need to find out who he’s bringing in for light heavyweight, and we need to be sure of who we already think he has. Otherwise we won’t know until the weigh-ins and rules meeting. We want enough time to study these guys.”

Everyone nodded. George could tell they were all deep in thought. All of them, except for Roy, had a likely opponent. Now they were thinking about how they could prepare for the time when they would step into the cage with them. George could feel the anxiety, too. It was different, now that his opponent had a name. Soon, after George had done his homework, he’d have a face, too. And that changed things, to be fighting someone who wasn’t Mo or Roy or Pablo or Scott. Someone unfamiliar.

“We have only a few days before we leave,” said Ricardo, bringing the team out of its meditation. “I don’t want any of you to train hard at all. Only long, soft training. But not too long. Eat good, lean meals. Stay energetic and active. Don’t worry about losing the last five pounds until the morning of weigh-ins.”

George thought he could see a shimmer of tears in Ricardo’s eyes. The man was getting slightly emotional.

“Thank you, all of you, for your dedication to this art and to my family. You all laid aside your jobs and families and put in months of preparation for all of this. It’ll all be done soon, and you’ll all be able to go back to your lives. And whatever happens in a week, thank you. Thank you. I don’t think I can say it enough.”

The meeting that night ended with each man hugging Ricardo on his way out the door. George did too. And he found himself strangely emotional, even though he was trying not to be.