God in the Octagon

Round 6

Fight the good fight of the faith. Take hold of the eternal life to which you were called and about which you made the good confession in the presence of many witnesses.-1 Timothy 6:12

The next day I was back full time at the gym and I was talking with Dana. I trained my butt off and won my next two fights via knockout. After each fight, I did what I saw fighters like Benson Henderson, Yoel Romero and Mark Hunt doing, thanking Jesus for each victory and each defeat in the octagon, bring my faith into the ring for the first time. After each fight, I would always kneel down and pray, then in the post-fight interviews, the first words out of my mouth were always some praise to God, trying to tell people that success was not because of me, but because of Jesus working through me. And people began to notice this. Whenever a UFC fan stopped me in the streets, they would always say something along the line of "You're that Christian MMA fighter aren't you?" I saw that I was making a difference and I was glad that I could finally engage my culture and starting to rehabilitate my surroundings. In my sixth and what was supposed to be my final fight before my contract renegotiations with the UFC, I trained like I had never trained before. I had finally came into full acceptance that my fighting was just my way of spreading the gospel and reaching those parts of the world who may not know God and showing the world that God owns everything. When I walked into that cage on to fight one of the biggest fights in my career, I felt a wave of peace come over me, and I knew that through all the struggles, addictions and hardships that this was exactly what God had wanted for me. He was sending me into a culture that didn't know who he was so that I could engage these people, love these people and rehabilitate them towards a life in Christ. And when I won that fight, knocking my opponent out just one minute into the first round, I knew this was where I belonged, that this was going to be my church in the messed up city of MMA, and I was going to bring God into the octagon. From there, my MMA career exploded. I got offered sponsorship contracts that seemed too good to be, fight deals that no one else could have gotten and eventually, I was offered a shot at the featherweight title against Jose Aldo. I know that this was God's way of saying "You are spreading my word, and it is good." I took that shot in a heartbeat. The next few months felt so surreal; the interviews, the promos, the fans, it was just overwhelming and I was loving every minute of it. Then, at the press conference, things got heated. Aldo started dissing me in Brazilian for no apparent reason and I got angrier than a bull dog being teased with a giant juicy steak, and I was going to do something stupid like throw a water bottle at him or telling him what kind of a fighter I was, but instead, I just said "I'll see you on fight night." Then I got up and walked off the stage. When it came time for the stare down, I went back up on stage and didn't put up my hands like what I usually did, I just stared at this little Brazilian, hands at my sides. After that, I stuck out my hand to shake his, but he slapped it away, flipped me off, and walked away. That's the moment I knew, I was in his head. I hadn't sunk to his level when he started trash talking me and that bugged him, and now he was angry about it. And if there's one thing you can never get caught doing, it's fighting when you're angry. Fighting emotional will be your downfall almost every time. You have to shut yourself away from all feeling and emotion for that small time when you're are fighting, or else you can't focus at all. We see this happen time and time again; when Kevin Randleman defeated Mirko Filipović in the pride fighting championship, it was evident that Filipović had been too emotionally invested in the fight to be paying attention to what was going on in the fight. He had too much pride in his striking, some rightfully earned, some not so much, so when he lost via knockout, it was a shot to his ego and his alleged iron chin, causing him to lose on more than one playing field. That is what happened with my Aldo fight. I knew that I couldn't turn my emotions up to eleven and hope to win, but rather, I had to be calm, collected and follow the game plan. I walked into that cage, and stared down Aldo like a lion about to pounce. The ref called us to the centre, went over the rules, and told us to touch gloves. Aldo wouldn't have any of it, just staring right at me and shaking his head. That was the second-last mistake he made in that fight. His last was coming out with his hands down. When Aldo woke up, I can only imagine the anger, disappointment and embarrassment that he was filled with to see me being crowned the new UFC featherweight champion, and knocking him out in record time. As always, I thanked God that he had blessed me with a gift that I clearly did not deserve, and I walked off, knowing that no matter what, I had my saviour, my wife and my son in my corner, no matter what happened.