a Muay Thai kickboxer, especially one as experienced as Nakaya Nielson. They were hesitant because of all those knee and elbow strikes. There had never been a mixed martial arts competition before, at least not in Japan, so they didn’t know how they would fare. They knew that submission wrestling was effective, they just didn’t know how effective.
I had high expectations, so when Fujiwara asked me if I would fight with him, I said, “Yeah, sure, I’ll do the fight.” In addition to wanting to test my skills, I also wanted to get revenge for what Nakaya Nielson had done to Fujiwara.
The fight was put together, and then the press started. Nakaya Nielson talked all kinds of trash. He kept saying how he hoped that I had good insurance because when he was through with me, I was going to need it. He kept saying how he was going to put me in the hospital, over and over and over. The guy was like a broken record, and people were listening to what he had to say. He had been fighting a long, long time, and he was a trash-talking expert.
I, on the other hand, was still relatively green. I was young, and trash talking was definitely not my strong suit. I kept thinking, “What’s with all the hostility, I don’t even know this guy.” So when the press came by asking what I thought about my opponent’s comments, I just shrugged my shoulders and said, “I guess we will find out in the ring.”
I still hadn’t worked on any standup fighting at that point. Well, that’s not entirely true. Back when I was fighting in the Toughman competitions on the East Coast, I had enrolled at a boxing gym and started taking lessons. My training had lasted a total of two weeks. They wanted me to reposition my stance, hold my hands in a different way. I was a brawler, and it worked for me. I figured that if I started changing everything I did, my game might fly right out the window.
I didn’t feel the same way when training to fight Nakaya Nielson. I had started to realize the importance of learning how to strike efficiently and effectively, and I would get better and better at it as I got more heavily involved in MMA competition, but at the time I didn’t feel like it made all that much difference. I knew Nakaya Nielson understood nothing about fighting on the ground, and once I brought him down into my world, he would be little more than putty in my hands. If he could keep the fight standing, I might be in trouble, but I doubted very highly that he would be able to do that. This was back in the days when you were either a striker or a grappler, and although competitors from both disciplines had yet to converge in a ring to see how the different styles mixed, I had a hard time seeing how Nakaya Nielson would keep me from taking him to the ground with little to no takedown defense. I had managed to take Kowalski to the ground, and he had one of the best takedown defenses in the world. Nakaya Nielson might be able to catch me with a punch or a knee on my way in, but I had been hit with a lot of punches and knees. If he wanted to knock me out, he would have to hit me with more than one shot.
Because of my confidence, excitement was the only thing that I felt when I climbed into the ring with Don Nakaya Nielson on the night of the fight. Forty thousand fight fans had turned up to watch this first-of-its-kind battle, and it sent a chill down my spine. There was no fear, no hesitation. This was the moment I had been waiting for, a chance to test my skills in combat. A chance to prove myself in front of thousands of people. And to top it all off, I got to prove myself against a guy who’d gotten on my bad side by talking a whole bunch of trash.
We circled each other in the center of the ring for a moment, and when he didn’t go for anything, I threw a couple of jabs as bait. They were not good jabs, and I think they elevated Nakaya Nielson’s confidence because he threw a powerful kick. Before the kick had a chance to land, however, I dropped low and shot for his legs, dumping him hard to his back.
In a matter of seconds I had isolated one of his arms and slapped on a key lock, which put pressure on his elbow and shoulder. Nakaya Nielson had two reactions—he began screaming in pain and furiously slapping his gloved hand against my back. He was trying to tap in submission, let the referee know that he was done fighting, but there was some confusion. Nakaya Nielson had wanted a Muay Thai kickboxing referee to be the other man in the ring with us so the fight would lean in his favor. But there was a downside to that, as Nakaya Nielson was now learning. The referee had no idea what a submission hold was. He thought Nakaya Nielson was trying to punch me in the back. He thought Nakaya Nielson was screaming out of anger. Since the referee wasn’t stopping the bout, I kept cranking on the hold. I could hear the tendons and gristle in Nakaya Nielson’s arm and shoulder crackling, and still I cranked on the hold. Nakaya Nielson was screaming really loud by this point, “AAAaaaaaaa,” and the referee was looking at him like, What? What does he have? What is he doing to you?
It took at least ten seconds for the referee to realize that his boy was in some serious pain and pull me off him. With Nakaya Nielson rolling around on the ground, cupping his mangled arm, I stood up and the crowd went nuts. Forty thousand people went absolutely nuts. There hadn’t been any highflying stunts or flashy strikes; yet they loved it. Right then I knew that mixed martial arts competition was going to be the sport of the future.
After that exciting bout, it was difficult to go back to pulling my punches and releasing my submission holds while in the ring. I loved professional wrestling, don’t get me wrong, but I loved reality combat even more. I had no idea what was going on over in Brazil, that they had been holding mixed martial arts tournaments for half a century. I thought we were breaking new ground by having fighters from different martial arts disciplines square off against each other, and I loved every minute of it. I loved it because in a real fight I was master of my own destiny.
Professional wrestling wasn’t so bad when the fans knew the bout was worked, but that wasn’t always the case. I remember one time Fujiwara wanted me to put him over in a worked shoot. Everyone would think the match was real, only I would lose. I had to pull my punches, and I couldn’t kick. I understood that’s the way the business worked, but I didn’t want to do that anymore. I didn’t want people thinking that I was getting my butt kicked when in fact I wasn’t. I gritted my teeth and bore it, but when Suzuki and Funaki came to me in secret and said that they were thinking of starting their own organization, one that was going to be more shoot and less work, I was all ears.
I was the biggest foreigner in Japan at the time, and they needed me in order to get their organization off the ground. It was a big risk to take. If I went with them and their organization failed, my professional wrestling career in Japan would most likely be done. Fujiwara wouldn’t have taken me back, and the other organizations probably wouldn’t have taken me in either. Despite what I had riding on the line, the decision didn’t take long to make. In addition to wanting to fight, I was also deeply loyal to Funaki. I wouldn’t have gotten where I am today without him. Fujiwara offered me a substantial raise to stay, but I didn’t take it. I had made up my mind—I was going to fight for a living.
| 4 | A Glimpse of the Future |
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WHILE FUNAKI AND SUZUKI WERE GETTING things organized in Japan for the first Pancrase event, I returned home. With no more ties in North Carolina, the family moved back to California and settled in Lodi, a midsized town in the north of the state. It was a great place to raise a family, but it wasn’t the best location for what I was trying to do. If I was going to start fighting, real fighting, then I needed to keep up on my training, spar for at least a couple of hours every day. The problem was I had no one to spar with.
In an attempt to solve that problem, I started going around to all the karate schools in Lodi and Sacramento. I was a pretty big kid, and I’d go into a place and approach the head instructor. Almost every time, I had the same conversation.
“What you looking for?” the instructor would ask.
“I’m training for some fights, and I need someone to punch and kick at me. Perhaps do some grappling.”
“Oh, that’s great,” he would say. “Sounds really interesting. I don’t think this would be the right place, but I know of a dojo that’s probably right down your alley.”
He