Rob takes the hood off his head along with his sweater before he steps into the cage. “Rip him up Reaper,” a voice whispers. Rob steps into the cage, relaxed and poised, staring into his opponent’s eyes standing across from him amid the noise of the crowd chanting his name in adulation. The referee moves to the center of the ring and motions his hands, “Ready…fight!” Rob circles around his opponent, finding the opportune time to deliver a strike. Without a hesitation, Rob delivers a right cross. His opponent dodges, and a returns a few exchanges; neither of the exchanges lands. Rob engages his opponent, clinching him tightly but finds his way to the canvas with his opponent on top. His opponent delivers a few punches to his head, none of which are clean. Rob blocks his punches, still conscious from the onslaught. “He is out! He is out!” someone yells in the crowd. The referee steps in and calls a halt to the fight at thirty seven seconds into the first round. Rob gets up quickly in astonishment, thinking “what in the hell has happened.” He hears the final decision, shakes his head in disappointment, and walks off the cage with his coaches and trainers. This is Rob’s “part-time” job. A job that entails beating people up with an adequate salary. This is Mixed Martial Arts--abbreviated as MMA. It’s like another day in the office for Rob when he fights, as if getting bruises and cuts on the face is a normal lifestyle.
Rob Rosales is a fourth year student at the University of California, Riverside. He lives by himself in an immaculate apartment complex, not too far from campus. His apartment is clean, decorated with frames and movie posters along the walls and plaid
rugs to enhance the ambience. Standing six foot tall, with black hair and well-tanned skin, his soft demeanor may deceive you into thinking he is anything but lethal. He walks without a swagger. He wears simple designer shirts and well-fitted plain jeans, obviously not into advertising himself as a fighter when he owns several sponsored fight shirts. His hair, well-trimmed and nicely groomed, only indicates that he is a well kept and approachable person. He was never the bully to steal milk money or push people around. Nonetheless, being a professional mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter, it would not take much effort for Rob to put someone in the hospital for a few days—if they’re lucky.
MMA is a growing sport, becoming one of the premier entertaining pastimes for males between the ages of 18 and 34. Assimilated from different martial artforms, including Muay Thai Kickboxing, Vale Tudo, Jiu-Jitsu, and Judo, MMA is on its way to superseding the boxing industry in its now regressive form. One of the more prevalent MMA organizations is the “Ultimate Fighting Championships,” widely known as the UFC. The UFC pits two fighters against one another in the infamous “octagon,” an eight-sided cage. Rob, however, fights in “King of the Cage,” known as KOTC, a smaller organization compared to its father, the UFC. The KOTC organization rank to the UFC is similar to the rank of college football to the NFL—KOTC being the college football. There are two rounds in a bout—each five minutes. The rules are quite simple: no eye gouging, strikes to the groin, kneeing a downed opponent, biting, head-butting, and hair pulling. To walk out victorious, a fighter must do one of the following actions: force his opponent to tap through a submission, knock him out unconscious, or simply lash a barrage of strikes to a downed opponent until the referee deems that he is no longer “intelligently defending himself.”
“But I was defending myself,” Rob claims. He was referring to the pre-mature stoppage of his fight on October 7, 2007 in KOTC. The fight was stopped just thirty-seven seconds into the first round. “I don’t know man, I think the fight was rigged somehow,” Rob says, trying to reenact the fight, punching and kicking the air like a mime until he finally works his way to the floor. He lies on his back with one leg entangling the chair leg, “See, now this is the position I was in until it was stopped, but I wasn’t really out, I was just trying to grab his body as he was punching me from the top.” Rob is explaining to me the half-guard, a position in Jiu-Jitsu where the combatant lying on the back has one leg entangled to a leg of another combatant in the top position.
“The referee just made a bad call,” he shakes his head in disappointment. “I really wanted to showcase my skills in that fight, man. I didn’t learn much [from that fight] and I trained so hard,” he pauses, then exclaims, “for eight weeks man! And then I lose to some controversial decision that lasted for only a few damn seconds.”
Only a few seconds. That’s how long it takes to gain or lose a crowd’s affection. But, a few seconds in a cage represents hours of sweating, blood and intense training, while isolated from family and friends. Fans, unfortunately, do not get to see the heart of each and every fighter putting their lives on the line to excite the crowd and bring in revenue for MMA organizations. For Rob Rosales, the fight is easy. It’s the story leading up to the fight that reveals the personality within the fighter, a young man juggling a fighting career with a college lifestyle.
“I got into fighting so I could look as sexy as Brad Pitt in Fight Club.” That was the answer he first gave me when I asked why he chose to become a fighter during a UFC pay-per view event at his house. After several minutes of watching the UFC, he finally opens up a Liquid Blow can, one of his few sponsored energy drinks. Then he begins to answer my question seriously, this time amidst the noise caused by his friends yelling and screaming at the TV. “High school sports were fun while it lasted and after graduating from high school,” he says, in a mellow voice, “I wanted something that was a mixture of football and basketball—something with contact that could test my mental strength.”
“Was it not fun enough?” I ask.
“It was, but I felt as if I needed to partake in another sport because I had an athletic background throughout my whole life. Then MMA started getting big in the mainstream about three years ago, and that is when I actually decided to give it a shot.”
I was impressed on how he became a professional fighter in two years, having his first debut in October of 2007. For an average fighter, it takes at least five to at least seven years to become a professional fighter with years of training under different martial artforms. Curious as to how he found his way into the MMA world, he did not hesitate for a second to give me a one-word answer, “Todd Medina,” he says, with sharp eyes staring into mine. It was obvious this man, Todd Medina, meant business.
Having been involved with MMA for over ten years, Todd Medina is one of the few fighters who have been there since the beginning. His days started from the early UFC shows in the mid 1990’s, when fighters trained under a single martial artform were pitted in the cage against a different styled fighter to test whose art was more supreme. He trained under the likes of Carlson Gracie, one of the few men responsible for redefining the ground game in what is known as Gracie Jiu-Jitsu. Throughout his illustrious career, he has trained with highly renowned fighters like Vitor Belfort. He then created his own fighting system called “Freestyle,” a style assimilated from the better techniques of each martial artform. He now takes Rob Rosales, one of his twenty students, under his wing and currently runs a fight gym known as Todd Medina’s Fight School in Costa Mesa, California.
“He is one scary ass lookin’ dude—I mean shit, he’s literally got shoulders big enough to cover his neck!” Rob exclaims. I imagined myself in the Octagon, being pummeled by Todd Medina. He assured me of Medina’s clean record so I could trust that he’d let me keep all my body parts.
Two hour pass and Rob tells me that he is going to bed at eleven o’clock at night.
“You’re going to bed a little early there aren’t you?” I ask.
“I’ve got work tomorrow at Starbucks, then later on at In and Out,” he answers, while walking upstairs to his room. He stops, pauses for a second and whispers, “Wait dude, don’t tell my friends down there that I work okay?”
“Uh, sure.” I answer.
He takes one step slowly one, by, one, contemplating if he should tell me the reason why he said that. Finally, he whispers quietly so that his voice wouldn’t resonate downstairs, “I just don’t want them to see me at work because it’s embarrassing when someone sees you and says ‘holy shit dude you’re a KOTC fighter!”
I comply, while holding in my snicker. The scenario of a random person or his acquaintance coincidentally running into him at work, for me, is something to muse at—especially when he is hiding from those fans that know him. I figure that for Rob, being a fighter, it’s especially difficult when trying to avoid being noticed at random outings, possibly because he separates his MMA life from his mundane lifestyle. That is how Rob is anyway, a quiet, down-to-earth guy, who dislikes the attention he receives. The sponsors, advertisements, are nothing more but benefits for his “part-time” job.
“It just feels weird when you see fans where I work, but whatever, I’m used to it. It’s just part of my job you know? Fans and all those crap are just stuff that comes along with it,” he says. He finally makes it to the top of the staircase and insists that I come down on Thursday to hang out with him at school and at his gym. He mentions that his fight is in December or January, so it would be imperative that I observe one of his harder workouts.
Thursdays are considered one of Rob’s harder training days, especially when he attends three classes a day at University of California, Riverside and commutes from Riverside to Costa Mesa later in the evening to train with the ever-intimidating and almighty Todd Medina. On top of that schedule, Rob manages to work in a strict daily diet, taking in 1600 to 1800 calories in just six meals a day. This allows Rob to cut weight from 185 pounds to 170 pounds by fight night. He lives off of protein shakes, almonds, plain cottage cheese, and tuna, literally.
He returns from a three mile run at eight in the morning with a hood on his head. Having a hood on is not an unusual habit for Rob, especially when he runs outside or trains. He feels at ease under the hood--calm, poised and collected--as if the world around him didn’t matter. When the hood comes off, he means business. Either someone is going to get hurt or some fireworks are about to explode. There is no question as to why he is labeled as Rob the Reaper from his coach and training partners. The grim reaper stalks mysteriously before lashing out its scythe, similar to what Rob would do when the hood comes off. Seeing Rob with a hood on signifies an impending danger to come, an image of a lethal human weapon ready to inflict damage upon his opponent.
He takes a shower at ten o’clock after his three mile run, the first of three to four showers he takes a day. “I’m not down to have sweat all over me, that’s why I take so many showers, especially when you’re [grappling] with a guy for a few hours,” Rob says, then adds, “the worst part is when my partner has B.O.—makes me want to just knock him out instead.” After his shower, he makes himself a protein shake hastily and hops in his car, with me sitting in the passenger side of his silver BMW.
Living on a tight schedule is considered a normal lifestyle for Rob. He could have the easy way out to become a regular college student, but he refuses. MMA, according to Rob, entails “a lot of things like learning more about yourself in times of adversity, appreciating life, all that kind of stuff.” But with a hectic schedule comes discipline, and Rob knows everything about discipline ever since he was a child. Watching his own parents work eight hours a day and still manage a balanced lifestyle was incentive for him to emulate that work ethic. His parents led by example, just as how he intends to teach his friends and his peers that everything is possible only with discipline. Discipline can only achieve so much because if you’re not having fun, Rob claims, it is not worth pursuing. Fighting, for one, is worth pursuing because he finds it enjoyable to spar with an opponent, sort of like hanging out with a friend. Trading punches is a good way to communicate with training partners; when his partners land a clean punch on him, he’d smile, say that it was a clean punch, and continue fighting. But of course, this scenario only applies to his easier training days.
We head to his first business lecture a little after eleven o’clock and rush in to find a seat. Forty minutes into the lecture, he mumbles, “Oh shit! I forgot to eat my tuna fifty minutes ago.”
“Fifty minutes ago? Big deal,” I said, in confusion.
“No, dude I have to eat every hour or two to keep my metabolism going, to help me cut weight easier,” he whispers, reaching for his backpack to find his can of tuna. “It’s a part of my diet plan and I have to stick with it or else I’m screwed.” He twists off the top of the can and quickly devours his tuna, simultaneously jotting down notes from the professor. I watch with intent curiosity at his erratic behavior. With a mouthful of tuna, his cheeks bloated, still he murmurs, “gotta do what you gotta do!”
After sneaking in required meals in between his three classes, he returns home at four o’clock and spends the next 2 hours on homework. Afterwards, he loosens up a bit, picks up a big bag full of sparring equipment. He puts on fight shorts, and prepares to drive an hour west to Costa Mesa, California.
Upon arriving to Todd Medina’s Fight School, I anticipated finally meeting the highly acclaimed Todd Medina. As we walk into the gym, I first notice the abundance of pictures and posters he has pasted onto the walls right above the six aligned punching bags. What is more intimidating is the seven championship belts Todd holds as souvenirs along the opposite walls of the punching bags. Then a hand rests on my shoulder, taking my attention off the belts. I turn around.
“You’re Justin? Oh, so you’re that journalist Rob was talking about eh?”
“Yes I am, sir.” I reply. Judging from his large stature, I knew this was Todd Medina, the man Rob had raved on about. He has tattoos of a barbed-wire etched on his shoulders along with two pit bulls imprinted all over his chest. This was the man, the trainer, the inspiration of his MMA career.
“Finally nice to meet you buddy, if you’re into seeing people beat up on each other, you’re in luck,” Todd Medina said, in his raspy voice. He treated me professionally, something that I counter intuitively expected. “Check this out Justin, you came at a good time, because I’m going to mentally and physically destroy Rob today,” he said with a smile.
When training specifically for a fight, Todd usually concentrates on one fighter at a time and literally pummels him into the ground to prepare him for the rigor of an actual fight. This month is Rob’s time to mentally and physically prepare for battle as his fight in December or January looms around the corner.
He starts Rob off by making him box fifteen rounds, each three minutes against a fresh partner at the beginning of a new round. In the beginning rounds, Rob circles around the ring, loosening up his arms and legs, throwing quick jabs to warm up his body. Come round five, sweat begins to run profusely all over his body. Still, Rob tries to maintain his composure. He picks up the pace, throwing right crosses and left hooks. It now seems that both Rob and his partners are throwing punches with more authority as the rounds progress. Instead of running through the motions, a full punch with faster acceleration is thrown, simulating an actual fight. Battered and bloody in the tenth round, Rob’s face begins to crumble as he begins to breath through his mouth. He breathes in and out, huffing and puffing, glancing at Todd to see if he is going to end the round and call the next person. The time moves by slowly for Rob as he defends for his life from the barrage of punches landing on his now weakened body. Panting and breathing in gulps of air, he begins to back up more and more, hastily blocking the punches being thrown at him and attempting to dodge the strikes.
“Next partner! Last round! Finish strong Rob! Finish! Do not quit on me!” Todd yells from the corner of the ring. A refreshed and revitalized new partner enters.
Rob tries to control his breathing in the last round. He lingers around the ring, throwing a left jab that seems like slow-motion. He begins to breathe heavier—almost hyperventilating. He throws a flurry of punches but to no avail, due to the lack of power in his exhausted arms.
“Five Seconds…Four…Three…”
Rob hears Todd counting down the seconds in the background, hoping that he would finally end the round. Todd looks at his watch, slowly counting down in what seems like a halt to time. It feels like an eternity has passed. Rob begins to clinch his opponent to regain his energy. His arms begin to move as if ten pound weights were harnessed around it. His partner refuses the clinch and gives Rob a little taste of a two punch combination first to his ribs then to his temple. Rob does not give in.
“Two… One…” Todd pauses for a second, looking at his watch, having all the authority to call an end to the round. He counts down to one second and waits a little more before finally stopping the round. Five seconds was essentially fifteen seconds for Rob. “Take a two minute break. Then it’s time to do some Jiu-Jitsu.” Todd said to Rob, who was trudging to a nearby seat, hydrating himself with a water bottle. Rob’s training subsequently follows with mountain running and a few more grappling sessions.
Six hours later, Rob’s first real training sessions has ended. He limps out of the gym not saying a word. With an ice pack covering the cut and bruise near his right eye, he slowly opens the door and gets into the car. Before he sits on the seat, Todd runs out of the gym to congratulate Rob for making it through his first training session. This is not an eccentric act from Todd, considering that Rob and Todd’s relationship of a coach to student blends in more with a father to son relationship.
“Good job today, Reaper.” Todd said, with a look of encouragement.
“Thanks,” Rob replied, fatigued from not only the three hour training session but his whole day schedule. It is obvious that he isn’t in the mood to talk. Todd sensed this and ended the conversation early.
All I hear in the first thirty minutes of our drive back to Riverside is the movement of the icepack rubbing back and forth near his right eye and the sounds of motors from the cars outside the window. He finally speaks.
“Well that was fun wasn’t it?” he says, in a more approachable disposition than earlier.
“Definitely man,” I answered, feeling a bit sorry for him for having to go through hours of pain and punishment. But it definitely isn’t punishment for him because it only makes him a stronger fighter. At least he enjoys it.
“It seemed like I was dying out there, but I was having a good time. You just learn a lot more about yourself when you train you know?” Rob is always curious as to how much heart and pain his body can endure. Fighting is almost like a test for his mental and physical prowess. The difficult aspects of training reflect what kind of character he possesses. Training and fighting, in general, is an allegory to human life. If you put in the work, you will see the results of your effort. “You reap what you sow” is one of the few lines Rob would always say. If you quit during training sessions, then you have quit on life. Persevering, ultimately, leads to greater rewards and an awakening in the mind—that the human mind can accomplish great things. For Rob, he has persevered through the rigors of training all the while balancing a college lifestyle. At least he is content with fighting as a “part-time” job, even though it takes up his whole day. It could be worse, a 9-to-5 job in a small cubicle. Rob is one of the only few people in this world who can state, without reservation, that he gets paid for beating up people. It’s fun for him at least, and that’s the only “god damn thing that matters.”
It is Friday. He wears sunglasses to school to hide his bruises and cuts near his eye. It’s a typical day for Rob because he knows later on that will train at night with Todd again. Since its Friday, he doesn’t start his homework right away, because he’ll have the whole weekend to do that. Instead, he relaxes until the clock reaches six o’clock. It is time to train again. He brings along his equipment with a protein shake in one hand, envisioning how practice will unfold. He wonders if his opponent in his upcoming match is training harder than he is. “Of course not,” he tells himself. He smiles as he leaves his front porch, putting the hood over his head--calm, poised, and collected.
The reaper is coming.
set for the upcoming UFC 94 event.