The day of the fight, Friday, I sat around the hotel all day, after a light breakfast of cereal and some fruit, and I didn’t drink any water at all. I watched TV, husbanding my resources. Around three-thirty, I got in the sauna suit and went down and rode the hotel exercise bike for ten minutes, then sat in my bathroom with the hot shower on for fifteen minutes, and then showered and went to weigh in. If I was over, I’d be pretty close, and I could make it by skipping rope for fifteen minutes at the weigh-in, I figured. I still hadn’t had anything to drink all that day. I felt a little funny but more or less rested.
Ben and I drove through Springdale and found Tori’s Station and went to weigh in. Come back at six, they told me. It was a big pink venue that sometimes had concerts and sometimes had weddings, seats for maybe two hundred people. Nothing fancy, but there was a big white mesh cage, which was exciting just to see.
We came back at six, and Monte told me that the weigh-in doesn’t matter. “If you’re anywhere from 185 to 190, you should be okay,” he said. Thanks a lot for telling me now, Monte, I thought, and weighed in with clothes on at 185 pounds. So I was probably down around 183.
My corners, Brandon and Ryan, were driving down that day from Iowa and were still on the road; they got there as we were helping Josh, also from our gym, get ready to fight. Josh, a muscular, broad guy who was maybe five foot nine, was blond and blue-eyed and originally from Zimbabwe. He was fighting a black guy. “Probably Monte’s idea of a joke,” Josh said lightly, “to have the white African fight the African American.” Josh was also fighting at 185, and I had rolled with him quite a bit. He was really strong on the ground. He was strong, period, but his stand-up wasn’t great. Josh had been very, very nervous, although he had gotten better since a few days ago. Now that his fight was here (his first), he was remarkably calm.
Josh was taken down in the first round, but he maintained his poise and never took much punishment. In the second round, he mounted and was raining down punches, and they stopped the fight. He came out with a big smile and said, “That’s a different kind of rush.” It felt inevitable, Miletich guys are winners.
Brandon taped me up, and I Vaselined my eyebrows, nose, and inside my nose, all to help avoid cuts. Mouth guard, cup, fight shorts, wrapped hands, and the fingerless MMA gloves. I was ready to go.
I started warming up and felt good, loose and crisp, my punches felt sharp, and then I threw the left hook and it barely twinged my rib at all. I was going to be fine. My legs still were a little hot, and I knew they weren’t fresh like they should be, but that would be okay. I was going to tower over this guy anyway. Josh had fought at the same weight, and the guy he fought was about five-six.
I shadowboxed hard, hit pads a tiny bit, and then, as we were close, just paced, shaking my arms slightly. I felt good. I was mentally ready to beat the shit out of someone. Brandon did an excellent job as a corner; he realized that my mental state was strong and left me alone.
Then we were nearly there. I saw my opponent backstage, and I thought, Man, he looks big for 185. I wasn’t going to have any real reach on him—he was probably six-one or six-two. Oh, well. Nothing to be done now but go out there and see what happens.
I paced around, just kept moving, and again took stock. I wasn’t 100 percent fresh, as I had been dehydrated all day, but I was good. I’d been drinking water since six and was finally pissing again. The “Why am I doing this?” thoughts had come and gone. This is what we do.
Over the P.A. system they announce the next fight: “Weighing in at two hundred and five pounds…” and I don’t hear the rest. Wait a minute, this can’t be my fight—someone must have given me the wrong fight order. But then I hear the end of the announcement, “…his opponent from Amherst, Massachusetts, Sam Sheridan, one hundred and eighty-five pounds.” I could scarcely believe my ears. Two hundred and five!
Are you shitting me?
I first think of all those lovely meals I’d skipped the last two weeks, all those nights going to bed on a protein shake with my stomach rumbling. Man, I could have eaten like a king these last two weeks and been fine. I am giving up twenty pounds.
My mind flashes back to Thailand, and I think, They’ve done it to me again. The promoters have fucked me again. I can see Brandon’s angry face, and he is arguing with the promoter, but I’ll fight anybody right now.
Then I am up in the cage and aware of my opponent. He is a little bit shorter than me and not bulging with muscles, which is something. He isn’t overly nervous, though; he’s calm and ready to go, watching me back without animosity.
The ref, Rich Franklin, a fighter I recognize from the UFC, checks me out, asks me if I have a cup on, and then it’s time to go. I come out and offer my opponent an outstretched glove and he blinks, and we touch gloves (to show respect) and it’s on.
The first exchange is clear; we trade hard jabs and I think I hit him a little harder than he hits me. And then it’s into the swirling maelstrom.
I pursue him around and take plenty of hard shots to the head for my troubles, but they don’t hurt at all. Here’s the secret: It’s fun. You don’t feel any pain, adrenaline takes care of that—you’re just getting into it. I am having a blast, but I am also eating punches.
I hit him, he catches me. We go into a clinch a couple of times and I land a few knees and so does he, but I barely feel his knees. When my knees go into his soft stomach, I think, Go down, go down!—like the guy I fought in Thailand had gone down.
This guy is tough, though. I rock him with a hook and blast a kick into his side and he actually goes down, and I step forward to try to finish but he’s back up, and I realize two things: He’s tougher than I want him to be, and I am running out of gas already, in the first round. In just three minutes.
As the round ends, I know I am bleeding from the nose. I walk over to the corner and Brandon is talking to me, but it doesn’t really matter; I am breathing too hard, I am already “gassed.” He offers me some water, but I can’t take it. I bend down to listen to him and he tells me to punch my way in, and I’m not crisp enough, my legs are gone and I’m already in survival mode—and the only way I know to survive is to attack.
The round starts back up, and I go after him again. He catches me with a few good shots, and I am staggered this time. I go backward and manage to get him in a clinch, but I lose my mouth guard. He’s rocking me, though I never feel like I’m in danger of getting knocked out.
I am trying still to get through to him. I can hear my own grunts as I throw knees in the clinch, and they sound as if they are coming from someone else.
Then the ref stops the fight to look at me, and the EMT comes out, and I can hear them conversing right in front of me like I’m not there. I feel nothing. If they let the fight go, I’ll keep fighting. If they stop it, I’ll stop. I know I’m bleeding a lot, there is blood on my chest.
“His pupils are different sizes,” says the EMT, and that makes the decision for the ref. He waves the fight over. I can hear them announcing my name and that I am a journalist as I leave the cage, and it’s embarrassing: He’s not really a fighter, but look, he tried.
I was dully furious about the weight difference, though not about the fight. The fight was fun. The other guy deserved to win. I had fought stupidly and not dodged or slipped a single punch as I had been training to. Instead, I’d come straight at him, whether from anger or frustration I don’t know. I think I have a fatal flaw; when I get hit, I just want to hit back, without rhyme or reason.
I walked into the bathroom and looked at myself, and it made me laugh; I was covered in blood, like something out of a horror movie.
As I was taking stuff off, the local paramedic came and checked me out, and he pronounced me okay, and told me not to worry about the pupils until tomorrow morning. I wouldn’t need stitches.
One of the promoters came by and said to me, “That was a great fight. Anytime you want to fight in one of my promotions, as an amateur or professional, you let me know,” and I looked at Brandon with confusion: Did he just offer me a pro fight?
It turned out I was something of a crowd favorite, basically for bleeding all over the place and standing in there and taking my licks. People kept telling me it was the fight of the night, things like that. As my eye started to swell shut, I thought, yeah, well, great. I still lost.
Monte tried to explain the weigh-in mistake as a miscommunication and hoped to make me feel better by telling me what a good fight it was, but I just stared at him. I believed him that it was an honest mistake (Monte had a bunch of other shows going on in different cities, he was working with other pro