Free Pain Don't Hurt by Mark Miller Page B

a father for the first time. Amy, my wife, was a nurse in a ward that dealt primarily with small intestine surgeries and transplants. She dealt with a lot of very sick children on a daily basis. Despite our problems as a married couple—and there were many from the beginning—I knew she would be a good mother, so I had no problem going ahead with planning for a child. At least, not until he was here. Then I was scared to death. This changes any and every human being who is fortuitous enough to be blessed by parenthood. Some for good, some for bad. It shifted my insides around and put a new kind of love, and a new kind of fear, in me that I had no idea I could feel. I was simultaneously more in love with my tiny son, Ben, than I had ever been with anyone or anything ever, and scared of him. The entire reason I fucking existed suddenly was there, in his eyes. I was also petrified of screwing it all up. I was afraid of being a bad father, afraid that somehow I would inadvertently repeat or reuse my father’s “parenting techniques.” The mixing of this incredibly deep love with this horrible crippling fear and desperate need to protect him made me feel so lonely and sad. I became convinced I wasn’t good enough for him. It was as though I had been handed the greatest gift on earth, and yet I knew if I touched it I would break it. The day of his birth I received a call while I was in the hospital. I was offered a fight against Kakuda, a Japanese fighter. I had accepted right away since I just wanted to get away to think, to feel safe in how much I loved my newborn son. That fight was pulled, just like the last Japanese fight I had been offered, and replaced with the offer to fight Glanville again. With the opportunity to train again with Mo, who was already a father, and hopefully glean some sage wisdom on how to do this dad thing, I jumped at the chance to leave, even though it killed me.
    Because of these things, I went to dark places for this camp. I used to sit during drills and visualize the crowd booing me as I walked out, throwing things at me, hating me as I entered, loving Tommy and his comical bravado. I visualized them shouting at me, and all of that irascible moxie would just fuel me, make me want that much more to tear him down in front of all of them. As I would push further into these bitter thoughts, Mo would suddenly quip, “Hey, man, focus!” Or something similar. Then he would make the “So what?” face. That would yank me right out of my anger pothole and back to reality. Vengeance is one of the roads one walks to avoid focusing on the immediate moment, and Mo, armed with his halcyon strength, was committed to bringing me back to that focus. He did his best to force me to abandon my pursuit of retribution, which was as much if not more aimed at myself and my failure than it was at Tommy. Obsessiveness is one of the less dazzling traits you’ll find in most athletes. This is doubly true for me.
    Mo was facing possibly fighting Duke Roufus (Rick Roufus’s brother), Paul Lalonde, Pedro Fernandez, Tomasz Kucharzewski, Michael McDonald, Jean-Claude Leuyer, and Gunter Singer. Mo wasn’t worried, as Mo doesn’t get worried about fights ever. But the greatest concern for us as his teammates was Duke. Duke wasn’t at the level of his brother Rick, but he was still a talent. So we worked to prepare Mo for all possible matchups and focused on what might be the most difficult, imitating their styles as we went along.
    I had elected my friend Jason Johnston to be my cornerman. Jason is exactly the kind of man you want in your corner, literally and figuratively, and this could be plugged into really any circumstance in life. He is the ultimate in backup. Jason was a recon marine before he went into kickboxing. He dabbled in Ironman competitions and fitness figure modeling, alongside being a talented heavyweight kickboxer. Jason had an absurdly sunny disposition, and