Why Fighting Became My Life...

I didn't come from the ghetto (even though I spent a lot of time there), but I knew I was a fighter from a very early age.  From fear of getting beat up by locals, wanting to make Godin proud, thriving on being respected by my peers, to having an insatiable need to train and get better.  For so many reasons, martial arts became my life early, and it is still 100% as much my life today, 46 years later.  What a crazy ride.

My pre-teens through 20's  I always felt like I had a fight coming up, even when I didn't, and with that came the knot in my stomach and other mental and physical manifestations of always feeling like I had a fight coming up.  Me going from training martial arts, to actually fighting in the ring was actually Godin's doing.  In the beginning of my martial arts training I liked to throw a lot of high kicks, And I did not like to stand and slug very much in the beginning, even though that's all I did throughout my career.  I was 13 years old and I pulled my hamstring training, and I went to Godin's office one day to tell him about my injury.  He first gave me some joke about how I could cure it by rubbing dog shit on it and then hitting it with a brick, I was only 13 years old, so I gave him a very strange look, And then he started laughing, he had a very peculiar sense of humor, And that is an understatement. His real advice was much more serious, and it actually changed my training, and my life.  His advice to me was to go to a local boxing gym, Palolo Boxing Gym, and work on my boxing, until my hamstring healed.  I went to Palolo Gym, and not only did I stay there until my hamstring healed, I also had many amateur boxing matches, won the state Golden gloves, traveled to California and was runner-up in their golden gloves, won a spot on the All-Army boxing team, then I had a short but exciting professional career.

Godin was always very supportive of my training, and my fights. Even when I was boxing, kickboxing, or even my no holds barred fights, even though Godin had no real experience in sport fighting, I would always go to his gym and train a couple days a week, and I like to have him in my corner.  Having Godin around when I was Training or fighting gave me a sense of security, just like when he would pick me up from school in his pimped out Lincoln Continental, and all my school mates would look with wide eyes. Godin never really trained me for my combat sports fights, but I always considered him my main martial arts mentor.

I remember weighing in for one fight, it happened to be a boxing match on the marine base. At the weigh-in, my opponent told me that he was not only going to beat me, he was going to kill me because I was a fuckin Haole.  Godin was there at the weigh-in and he had some choice words for my opponent, and before the fight in the dressing room Godin told me if I did not knock my opponent out, when I got back to the dressing room he would kick my ass. Lucky for me I knocked my opponent out in the first round, Godin was so happy and proud, he took me out to Hotel Street that night to celebrate, I was 16 years old (for you locals who remember Hotel street in 1976).

The truth is, I never loved fighting like Chuck Liddell did, or most successful pros do.  Most of my fighters actually love getting in the cage or the ring and fighting, I actually hated it, and it's probably one of the reasons I was pretty depressed most of my adult life, in fact some people perceived me as being an asshole.  I fought because that's what I always thought I had to do, ever since I was a young teenager, I always identified myself as " the tough guy", and that I was a fighter. No one ever pushed me to fight, but that internal misguided drive came from me, and feeling that being tough was more important than being happy.  But when I look back, I was always nervous, and depressed because I always had some type of fight coming up, so I could never really relax.  I had a pretty good level of success amateur and professionally, but to be honest I never enjoyed it, it was just where I thought I had to be.