Free A Fighter's Heart: One Man's Journey Through the World of Fighting by Sam Sheridan Page B

come in to spar, and everyone lined up to beat their asses. People just got pounded; it was a rough place and you didn’t just walk in there and start sparring because those guys would slaughter you.
    A few days into it, I met a guy named Marshall Blevins, a manufacturing engineer about my age who’d been with Pat for two and a half years. Marshall fought amateur kickboxing and has won regional, national, and North American titles, but he joked that he still got nervous before a Wednesday night. He was an easygoing guy with a laconic manner, and very helpful, giving me some pointers. “It doesn’t take long to get pounded out of a Wednesday class if you don’t want to be there,” he said.
    “I remember sparring with Jens [Pulver] for the first time; he knocked me out with a head kick. A lot of these guys you don’t want to show them you’re hurt, but you get booted in the head, hit the wall, and slide down…. Well, you shake it off and bite down on your mouthpiece and start swinging again. Most of these guys are like that—you hurt them, they’ll come back twice as hard.” He smiled and laughed.
    Though I think they went easy on me mostly because Pat introduced me as a writer, it still was pretty rough. I got hit particularly hard one night and could feel blood running in a thin stream out of my nose. The next day my whole face was swollen. Pat looked at me and laughed. “Did you break your nose?”
    “No, no, it’s just bruised,” I assured him. I didn’t break it. No way.
    Pat looked doubtful.
    I have heard critiques of Pat’s gym, that the sparring is too hard, that people get hurt and don’t learn enough. It is a hard place to learn, and you become averse to taking risks and trying new things when you’re getting beaten on. However, MMA is a rough, rough sport; toughness is critical. You need to be tough, to have overall body toughness to succeed. That night my face in the mirror looked deformed, a tremendous swollen bulge over my nose and between my eyes; the blood settled in a few days to give me two black eyes, like makeup under the skin.
    Because I didn’t know any better, I kept at it. I continued to get pounded and thrown around by Tim, by the other heavyweights. I ended up on my ass all the time, but once, halfway through the week, as we were all leaving and I was dazedly collecting myself from the floor, Pat remarked with a laugh, “Sam, you’re going to be tough as hell in two months,” and my heart swelled. I knew he was just trying to keep my spirits up, but it worked.
     
     
    Team Miletich, or Team MFS (Miletich Fighting Systems), is Pat’s stable of fighters, one for each weight class in the UFC. His team reads like a who’s who in mixed martial arts. Jens Pulver, “Little Evil,” at 155 pounds, is a five-time world champion. Matt Hughes was and still is the dominant 170-pound fighter after Pat vacated the slot, winning six titles; Jack Black and “Ruthless” Robbie Lawler also fight at 170, and with Matt they’re three of the top ten welterweights in the world. Tony “the Freak” Fryklund was a badly underrated 185-pounder, and Jeremy Horn is one of the best in the world at 185 or 205. Of course, Tim Sylvia, the former champ, is still a serious heavyweight (under 265) contender. There’s a second tier, under those guys, of about ten or fifteen pro fighters who are all up and coming, guys like Spencer Fisher, Rory Markham, and Sam Hoger, with impressive records and lesser titles. Of course, the team is a revolving concept, with players changing as their standings go up and down—this was all in the early part of 2004.
    It’s a little like walking into a boxing gym where Trinidad, De La Hoya, Roy Jones Jr., and Lennox Lewis all train together with ten of their friends. It’s intimidating; the guy you’re going to be sparring with is on a poster on the wall. And the second-tier guys are so good, it’s like Tony says, “You can’t get a break,” because anybody in there