We would work out in the hotel in the mornings and train at night, slogging through the cold to a special room a few blocks from the hotel in a residential part of Shinjuku, wandering between skyscrapers like kayakers drifting amid icebergs. Zé would bravely lead the way, the stalwart soldier, and like ducklings, the Brazilians would fall in behind him, using him as a windbreak, wilting in the icy blast. Rodrigo and Rogerio always took a cab. The building we trained in, situated on a tiny one-lane street with quiet people bicycling past, seemed almost abandoned. Rodrigo would work out for maybe an hour: grapple, then spar, then work pads with Dórea and Alvez.
One night, the liaison woman from Pride came in with some urgent news: Sakuraba had gotten hurt. Sakuraba was a storied Japanese fighter who had crossed over from pro wrestling and become famous as the “Gracie Killer” when he beat Royce, Royler, Renzo, and Ryan Gracie, and he had fought some of the legendary fights of Pride. Wanderlei Silva, a Brazilian fighter who was undefeated in four years of Pride, had beaten the living shit out of Sakuraba three times, and they were going to fight a fourth time, but Sakuraba had busted a rib (I felt his pain) and was dropping out of the fight. The woman translator asked Zé half jokingly (but half seriously) if he or Rogerio would be able to step in and fight. Wanderlei was nicknamed the “Ax Murderer,” with good reason. Zé shook his head strongly that neither was ready, and he was absolutely right. They weren’t ready for Wanderlei; he ate fighters like them for breakfast (Wanderlei was at the height of his powers and seemed invincible). I think Zé could’ve fought Wanderlei and beaten him if he had been super prepared, in the best shape of his life. He would’ve needed a strategy and a plan and months and months to mentally prepare, because the Ax Murderer handled jiu-jitsu guys like they were tissue paper. Wanderlei was the principal fighter for a team called Chute-Box, which traced its roots to the old battles of box Thailandes and luta livre with the Gracie students. He was a stand-up fighter, a devastating striker with boundless animal ferocity.
Zé, Rodrigo, and Rogerio were whisked away to meet with a Yakuza boss who was a longtime fan and friend for dinner in secret, and I walked home in the dark with Amaury and Marco (another friend and trainer) and thought about the Yakuza guy I’d fought years ago, whether he was here and whether he ever thought of me.
The Brazilians came to Japan earlier than anyone else; we were still two weeks out from the fight. They came in order to have time to acclimate, to adjust to the cold and the time of a different hemisphere.
Rodrigo and I had plenty of time to chat in the idle hours, wandering the streets, dawdling on the way to and from meals, and I kept after him, pestering him about the past and the present.
When he first fought Fedor, he had had back trouble for a long time and two hernias from surfing that had never been properly dealt with. For a while, he had been barely able to walk, but through extensive rehab overseas he began to get better—and then he beat a Japanese fighter named Kikuta and returned to Rio. While he was in Rio, the Pride organization asked him to fight Bob Sapp. When Rodrigo told them his back was a mess and tried to decline the fight, Pride threatened to strip him of the heavyweight title. In desperation, he called his rehab doctor in Holland, who laughed and said, “Well, it’s going to be a big test for you.”
Rodrigo still had trouble walking and couldn’t sit or stand for more than ten minutes or so without pain, and so had to keep alternating, which made flying interesting. Bob Sapp was the former NFL lineman who weighed 355 pounds. Zé assured Rodrigo that he could beat Sapp, that he had a strategy, and Rodrigo allowed himself to be convinced. Then, when he actually got in the ring with Sapp and looked up at the size of him, he couldn’t believe that he’d taken the fight. His strategy went out the window, and he shot right away for Sapp’s legs (“shooting for shoelaces,” as a wrestler might say). Sapp grabbed him and bounced him on his head. Rodrigo came to with Bob Sapp on top of him, punching him in the face, breaking his cheek and eyebrow. That fight was one of the classic MMA fights of all time: Rodrigo hung on and found a way to submit Sapp.
Rodrigo’s back still wasn’t healed when it was time to fight Fedor. “For like two months I was not walking well. I was coming down in my shape, and he was in the best shape he’s ever been in” was Rodrigo’s take on their first fight. I’d seen the fight on DVD, and Rodrigo got pounded pretty thoroughly, and the camera kept showing pretty Japanese girls crying on the sidelines.
The second time they fought, Rodrigo’s back was better, and he felt that Fedor was not in such good shape. The fight was stopped after a huge gash was opened on Fedor’s head by a head butt ruled “accidental,” and the fight was declared a “no contest.”
In the months leading up to this next fight, Rodrigo trained twice a week with people at the gym who were supposed to act like Fedor, and Danillo supposedly fell into that category. As far as I could see, he didn’t grapple like Fedor at all; he would pull guard. Murilo was more technical, his game was similar to Rodrigo’s, and he was the calm spiritual mestre. Zé pushed Rodrigo hard and was always there, working and yelling. When they came to fight, Zé never relaxed.
As for my unwilling roommates, Luis Dórea and Luis Alvez: I watched Dórea work with Rod and he was good, a real pro, and Rod’s boxing was smooth and hard. Rod said that Dórea was a good boxer; he just knew a lot about fighting, and was an excellent corner. He could manage the fight.
“And he always plays me up, makes me feel good, tells me about how I am better than my opponent all the time,” Rodrigo said. Dórea had been brought in to raise Rodrigo’s boxing, to build him up; and part of that is mental. Dórea had to convince Rodrigo that he was faster than Fedor.
Luis Alves was an old-school muay Thai trainer who didn’t do much but seemed to be there because he’d been with Rodrigo for a long time. Rodrigo knew him and trusted him.
With a week to go, we entered a time of boredom. That was actually the hidden test of fighting: the deadly waiting. Everything, our common will and strength, was bent to the purpose of getting Rodrigo to the fight—in the purest, strongest, readiest state—and prepared to peak at ten forty-five p.m. on New Year’s Eve. He had been training hard, and we were also focused on getting him rested, allowing his body to heal, allowing his stamina to recover while maintaining the knife’s edge of strength.
W. C. Heinz wrote a classic novel about boxing called The Professional, and in it he describes the task of bringing a fighter to his apogee: “It is one of the most difficult of scientific endeavors, this struggle to bring an athlete up the mountains of his efforts to the peak of his performance at the precise moment when he must perform. That peak place is no bigger than the head of a pin, shrouded in the clouded mysteries of a living being, and so, although all try, most fail, for it requires not only the most diligent of climbers but the greatest of guides.”
On Christmas Eve, determined not to lose to the Dragon Lady, I took one of the last of the free breakfast passes down the streets of Shinjuku to a Kinko’s copy shop and made color copies on special, thick colored paper and meticulously cut them out—and kept everyone in breakfasts. The forgeries weren’t perfect, but nobody was looking for them. I also had to carefully conceal my presence from the maids who cleaned the room or they’d start charging us for the extra person.
Luiz Alvez started calling me gringo traquina, for a TV commercial with a naughty kid who was always doing the wrong thing, and Zé liked it. They gave me grief, but took the passes when they needed them. They had accepted me as a member of the motley crew.
One day, for a break, we took a bunch of cabs to Meiji-jingu, the major Shinto shrine in Harajuku. Zé sat beside me in the cab, eyes bloodshot, grumbling and muttering. He wanted to be home in Rio, in the sun. He had an e-mail from a friend that said the surf was big. These guys didn’t really want to be here; the magic was gone, and they were just here for one thing: to get Rodrigo through, to deliver him to that one day, that one moment, in as close to perfect shape and mental condition as possible. It is hard to miss the holidays, hard to be away from family.
We wandered down leafy boulevards beneath the shrine’s massive gates, clowned a little, and took photos. As with any group of male professional athletes, there was a lot of farting and general hilarity.
It was cold, and the sun filtered weakly through the winter sky. Danillo made fun of the Japanese until Rodrigo gave him just a hint of a remonstrative look; and when we entered the shrine proper, Rodrigo quietly put a finger to his lips, enough to hush us all.
The shrine was extensive, and the grounds seemed to cover hundreds of acres; the architecture was classically Japanese: so utterly balanced that it calmed the soul.
The days crawled by, and then suddenly ot