The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment Read Online Free PDF Page B

practice and his hot date is walking out the door. At the time, I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t like Coach Pittman was leaving us high and dry—he had an Olympian overseeing practice, but he still couldn’t step away from the team for even one night.
    Coach Pittman’s commitment to the team was insane. At one point, he was invited to go on The Oprah Winfrey Show to discuss how his wrestling program was changing the lives of kids who’d had a rough go, and he agreed to appear. But when he found out that he couldn’t tape the show on a Saturday or Sunday, that he would have to show up at the studio during the week and miss wrestling practice, he canceled. Yes, Coach Pittman gave up a chance to be on Oprah to ensure that we snotty kids got the attention he felt we deserved.

     
    Another time after practice he held up two front-row center tickets to the Bulls–Trail Blazers game. The Bulls had Scotty Pippen and Michael Jordan then. With Nike’s headquarters in Portland, the only place Jordan was more popular was Illinois. So Coach Pittman holds up these tickets and asks which one of us wanted to go. Every last one of us held up a hand. Then he said, “The game is on Friday night at seven, the same time we have practice. Who still wants to go?” Every one of us kept his hand raised. And you know what he did? He ripped those tickets to shreds and vehemently threw the scraps to the ground.
    “Do you know why you won’t go watch Michael Jordan?” he asked. No one said a word. “Because when you are competing on Saturday, he will be at practice. And that is exactly where you will be when he is performing on Friday.” With that said, he made us all do twenty-five pushups.
    Excuses did not exist in Coach Pittman’s world, so he didn’t allow them to exist in ours. There were days when we could hear gunshots outside, and there were days when the windows high above us would shatter, either from bullets or rocks. We never knew the cause because we weren’t allowed to stop wrestling, not even for a moment. When sirens started howling outside, Coach Pittman would simply get up and lock the doors. He would say to us, “You can’t lose focus, not even for half a second. If you suckas think half a second isn’t a long time, then I want you to go home and turn on the burner on your stove. I want you wait until it is glowing hot, and then I want you to set your palm on that burner for a half a second. Then I want you to come back here and tell me half a second isn’t a long time.”
    I can truly see the wisdom behind his words now. A half a second of lost focus can be an eternity, and it can also shatter a man’s hopes and dreams. Need an example? Look no further than my fight with Anderson Silva.
    There were many such lessons Coach Pittman taught us, but perhaps the most important one was that you take your responsibilities seriously. It’s not about how you feel. There were dozens of times when the last thing I wanted to do was show up for practice, but I did because I had made a commitment. It’s the same now. When I make a commitment to fight, I fight. It doesn’t matter if I’m not feeling well or have a nagging injury. In the fight business, everyone feels sick before a bout and everyone has nagging injuries. That is why it upsets me so terribly when a fighter signs a contract to do battle on a certain night and calls in sick. And most of the time the reasons for backing out are pathetic. I’ve heard about guys calling in sick for staph infections. I’ve heard about guys calling in sick because they pulled their hamstring or hurt their hand. I have never missed a competition in my life because of illness or injury, and it’s not because I haven’t been hurt or haven’t been sick. If you say you are going to be somewhere, you suck up whatever pain or misery you may be experiencing and you show up.
    If it were up to me, I would write a forfeiture clause into the sport of MMA. Every other sport has it. If