Issue 135

December 2015

Some fighters compete for the money, others do it for the glory, but are some motivated by a masochistic urge to get their kicks from the violence inflicted upon them? Fighters Only investigates...

We casually call it the ‘hurt business’ but do fighters need to have a masochistic streak to get to an elite level in MMA? Do they enjoy the pain of fighting? It’s a difficult subject, with huge shades of gray, whether the pain is physical, mental or emotional. Yet is there a level of truth in it? There are theories that the desire to fight, and consequentially to be hurt, is part-healing process, part-therapy for some combatants. Fighters Only asks the athletes, trainers and sports psychologists about the notion – with intriguing results.

Making friends with pain

No fighter ever wants to lose, but there’s no doubt there can be satisfaction when an epic battle ends in defeat for them. Witness Rory MacDonald’s elation after his war with Robbie Lawler for the UFC welterweight crown in Las Vegas in July, or the performances of Diego Sanchez, Clay Guida and many others.

Does embracing the pain, embracing the grind, really mean, at base level, taking the hurt? How much some fighter can endure is almost worthy of a black belt. Who’s the toughest? Who can take the most? Are the words ‘sacrifice’ and ‘commitment’ just synonyms that mask masochism? After all, the words ‘pain’ and ‘injury’ form part of the everyday language that we all accept as part of combat sport. 

“It’s such an interesting word – masochism,” says MMA legend Randy Couture, who fought until he was 47. “It implies that we love the pain or get off on the pain. One of my favorite songs by Gary Allan is called Get Off on the Pain.

“I don’t think it’s something I ever liked. We train as hard as we can to avoid it. But I guess it’s something we make friends with. Our passion to do what we do far outweighs any pain we experience. You look at guys like Forrest Griffin and when they get hit and see the blood, that’s what flicks their trigger and lets them know they’re in a fight. It’s almost like that’s when they start.

“When I got punched, it was what set me off and put all that training in motion. It got me in gear. I don’t know if that’s something I liked, but it’s certainly something I learned to deal with. We train our bodies and they get used to a certain level of pain. That peaks in competition when the intensity is high and your opponent is there in front of you trying to impose his will on you. That’s the pinnacle of both those things – the pain you’ve learned to endure and the adrenaline high that you get from walking out to that cage and putting it on the line.” 

Peak performance and mental conditioning coach Brian Cain takes a different view on fighters ‘enjoying’ pain, explaining: “I don’t think any fighter enjoys the pain, I just think they accept it. They know it’s a part of the process and they’ve been competing in combat sports their entire lives and have just got used to getting hit. I just think they’re better at dealing with it than most.”  

Strength through suffering

Brian McCready, a performance coach in the UK, believes many fighters do have a masochistic streak. “From the outside looking in, you have to assume that’s needed. You have to have a degree of that just to train the way they train, let alone fight the way they fight. It’s a fascinating subject and one not many people are brave enough to touch on.” 

McCready works with fighters at Kaobon Gym in Liverpool, UK. “It’s brutal and grueling just watching them train. I can see that one or two of the guys actually enjoy it, though. There’s one theory that it goes back to the zero to seven-year-old period in our lives. In some ways fighters are punishing themselves and they get some kind of release from it. From zero to seven is where we make sense of the world. The only way you can have pleasure is to have pain. And I think it’s programmed in a way.”

Most fighters, reckons McCready, are unaware of their push for pain, and he has some fascinating cases. “One fighter lives in the back of the gym and they have to force him to go home at Christmas. He feels he needs pain all the time. Even when they finish a three-hour session he carries on himself. He doesn’t know when to stop. He’s definitely a masochist.” 

Brandon Gibson, striking coach at the Jackson-Wink gym in Albuquerque, New Mexico gym who works closely with Jon Jones and John Dodson, was at the MGM Grand Garden Arena and witnessed McDonald behind the scenes after he fought Lawler. “Rory was backstage afterwards almost in ecstasy even though he lost the title fight. He was ecstatic because he’d been through this battle and that’s what he was preparing for and living for. It’s what he wanted.”

Gibson also sees the same in his gym, every day. “It’s not the most crucial factor but I do see it in a lot of these guys,” he says. “Sometimes it’s reserved and hiding under some layers, but it’s definitely there with all of them. It’s the common denominator. One of the cornerstones of Greg Jackson’s camps is ‘suffering.’ Suffering will make you stronger. Pain will make you stronger. Spilling blood will make you stronger. I see it most in guys like Carlos Condit. It shows in his fights. He enjoys that pain, that brutality and that way.”

He adds: “I train Tim Kennedy, who really is a warrior,. He served in the military for over a decade and fought in Afghanistan and Iraq. In the Yoel Romero fight Tim ended up taking a pretty

severe cut. When I was backstage with him after the fight, he was disappointed and frustrated and he needed 13 stitches. When the doctor was looking to insert a painkiller to numb Tim’s eye, Tim said, ‘Don’t put that on, I need to feel this pain. I deserve to feel this pain. There shouldn’t be any numbing of any of this. This is the cut I deserve for losing focus. It’s my battle scar and I should feel every part of this.’” That says it all.

Gibson adds he’s embraced the masochist in himself by sparring with Andrei Arlovski and John Dodson. He reckons it develops trust and respect between fighter and coach. 

Give and take

Retired UFC middleweight Tim Credeur agrees with Gibson. Fighters, he believes, not only want to dish it out, they want to feel pain to respond. He looks for fighters to train whom he believes are born that way. “They want the hurt, but they want to respond,” he says. Nor, indeed, are those characters broken by the agony of defeat. “When Dustin Poirier loses a fight, he does not believe he’s a failure. Normal people would be depressed and have to get a counselor. Dustin knows nothing can break him and it won’t – no matter what pain he takes. His brain doesn’t even work like that. His DNA is coded differently.” 

Back to Albuquerque and coach Mike Winkeljohn cites Diego Sanchez, who has engaged in countless

toe-to-toe wars in his 13-year MMA career. “Diego has such an incredible heart and he really comes alive when he’s in a war,” says Coach Wink. “I’m not so sure he will enjoy taking a beating, but he enjoys the feeling he gets when he sees the realization on his opponent’s face that he can’t stop him.” 

Sanchez, therefore, enjoys taking more punishment than an opponent as a psychological weapon. “He likes seeing his opponents mentally break,” Winkeljohn adds. “They realize, wow, how can I stop him? Mentally that breaks down that individual and that makes a big difference in the fight. He uses that to motivate himself. He knows his heart is bigger than the other person’s. When he turns a fight into a battle, he knows his heart and willpower will likely come out on top.”

UFC flyweight Brad Pickett shares his philosophy. “I like being in a three-round war. People ask why anyone would want to be in those hard fights? When I beat Yves Jabouin by first-round knockout it was very easy, very quick. But I felt a little bit cheated that I wasn’t in a barnburner. I always get more pleasure out of those fights. Hit me, show me what you’ve got. 

“You see a lot of fighters do that. I know I’m tough. Sometimes I want to prove to myself just how tough I am. That’s just what I’m like. I’ll take one to give one. I’m not saying I enjoy pain. To be honest, I don’t feel pain within a fight. I never have done. In sparring you probably feel it a bit more because it’s not competition. You can get it if you go somewhere new and you have new sparring partners. But when you’ve been in the same place sparring the same people all the time you don’t really get that. You can get hurt a little more and you feel it a bit more.”

Chris Lytle says he never had a masochistic streak when fighting, but was “prepared to take two to land one big one.”

“It was definitely part of my game plan,” he laughs. “I was grappling recently but I almost want somebody to punch me once because I feel better after it. In sparring, it sounds weird, but I kind of like to get hit somewhat. I’m in my comfort zone, it relaxes me and I’ve got to keep my hands up and be on my A-game. I love that feeling.”

Elite striking trainer Duke Roufus understands the concept completely: “I think that’s what the fight game is all about. You put yourself through hell to get to heaven. Sometimes when you fight and you lose, you still win. Sometimes when you win, you lose. There’s just something about being in those types of battles. Those fierce battles are the memorable ones. My first fight back in 2005 I actually took on a guy I’d lost to. For five rounds we were going chin to chin, fist to fist and ironically after that fight I proposed to my wife in the ring. I was on such a high from the battle and the experience.” 

He touches on the McDonald-Lawler fight too: “Rory went to battle so hard, we’re now going to find out the true greatness of Rory in his next performance. You can tell he’s that type of guy. There’s no quit in him. Getting your ass kicked by another person is pretty demeaning on the male ego. You feel like a little b-i-t-c-h. You’ve got to build yourself back up psychologically and emotionally. It’s very demoralizing getting beat up by another person.

“The good fighters need to be challenged and they want to feel that hurt and that burn. That’s what it’s all about – that uncomfortable feeling in the gym. It’s what makes you successful in the ring.” 

Therapeutic violence

Roufus thinks nurture also plays a part in a fighter’s relationship with pain. It’s a big part of fighting, which serves as a form of therapy for his star pupil: “Anthony Pettis had a very hard upbringing. He looks like a pretty polished guy but looks are very deceiving. His father was murdered on his own block in a very tough area. He has seen a lot of things that have damaged him. Is he healing? Yes. But he brings that therapy into the ring. It’s therapeutic for a lot of fighters. I’m a firm believer in using it as a way to heal yourself. Sometimes if you’re too happy, it’s hard to find that edge. You’ve got to have a little struggle.”

Women’s bantamweight fighter Jessica Eye knows that only too well. The Ohio native grew up in adversity, and admits fighting is a healing process for her, a way of growing and, indeed, showing the world how a strong woman can succeed. 

Telling the story of her life, being empowered by the process is vital to her. “You never enjoy the pain,” she says. “You just have to be ready to understand it’s not real. It’s a pain you have to endure and it’s a pain you’re accepting of. You have to understand that nobody is trying to hurt you.

“Nobody is trying to do anything to cause you harm or any mental anguish. But that’s just what happens in your first year of fighting. There’s a lot of mental abuse and a lot of physical abuse. It’s not done to hurt you or make you feel bad about yourself, but to show you what this sport is truly about.” 

“You look at the most amazing athletes in the world and most of them have had to come through the of darkest days. Look at Ronda Rousey. Who knows what Ronda would have been like had she not been living out of a car and endured some of the things she did with her family? That strengthened her. That built her character. Most people – the average person – never truly finds that strength in themselves. They never truly step out of their comfort zone, whereas fighters are constantly being taken out of their comfort zone and constantly being challenged – physically and emotionally.” 

McCready goes back to the theory of how formative years shape individuals. “The obvious connection is childhood abuse and the misunderstanding of what was happening at the time. It could come from a belief that the subconscious has stored something which says internally, ‘I deserve and need to repeat the pattern.’” 

Grin and bear it

Couture, again – reflecting hard on a complex subject. “Your emotions and pain is something that your body feels, but your mind is often somewhere else. We’re able to control that voice and push that stuff away and put it in a box to the side,” he muses. “That’s something we learn to do as athletes. It’s odd now being an actor and having to learn to emote those things that I once pushed to the back of my mind. I’m now having to let them show when I spent most of my life hiding them and putting them away in a box and not allowing them out.” 

For Winkeljohn – and the other coaches – there’s no doubt that fighters have a degree of masochism in their system. They just call it different things, or deal with it in different ways. “It helps them cope with the pain and pressure that’s involved. I’m not sure that’s their main drive, but it’s something they put up with to fulfill their dreams of being the best they can be.”

Being prepared to take the pain, and embrace it, says Winkeljohn, is “a trade-off between the cost versus reward.” For fighters and coaches, the mental pain lasts forever, and losing a fight lasts forever. “But the physical pain is only fleeting,” he adds. 

Every fighter then asks themself a question: Is the reward worth the injuries and pain? “Every individual is different and some people who want to obtain the highest level of athletic ability are willing to put their bodies in there and get punished for it,” adds Winkeljohn. Pain and pleasure. For a fighter, maybe they are just one and the same.