27.02.2008 Big Stick Diplomacy...... And the philosophy hiding behind the dust and attitudes of Renzo, the MMA fight record holder of the Gracie family
Written by Luca Atalla (first published feb 2007)
Renzo doesn’t stop. He went to bed late, but, at 9am, he is already at his post in the basement of his house, arms outstretched and fists clenched, inviting: “How about a workout?” Two days later, he would have his 20th professional MMA fight, against Carlos Newton. His uncle Carlson has 19 fights officially recorded. Even if he’s done, without realizing it, Renzo broke Carlson’s record among fighters of the Gracie family.
People’s lives are defined by a series of choices. Renzo, for one, always had the privilege of opting for alternatives that contrast greatly with one another. Less than three months from turning 40 years old, he could have already retired, and spent the beginning of this northern-hemisphere winter surfing, in Rio de Janeiro. Or he could have taken his family around the archipelago in the part of Maine where live the parents of his daughter’s boyfriend – as well as the writer Stephen King (oops, now King has moved to Florida!).
Or he could have chosen from hundreds of other pleasurable options. However, at no point in Renzo’s career has he been more active than in the beginning of last year. In September of 2006, he faced Pat Miletich. On the 29th of December, he got Carlos Newton back for the split decision loss imposed on Renzo in 2003. And, by the time readers will be reading this piece (that was first published in Feb of 2007), the black belt will already have fought Frank Shamrock, on the 10th of February, 2007.
Renzo could also train in the ample installations at his gym on the island of Manhattan, finding inspiration in being but two blocks from Madison Square Garden, where great fights have taken place. Or he could go to the modern Parisi School, with Martin Rooney. But, ever since he started preparing to face Miletich, he chose to spill most of his sweat at the police boxing school of a city neighboring his – the Middletown PAL.
The old floor of worn out wood, warped from the passage of time, creaks as Matt Krieger, one of Rooney’s disciples, simulates a fight with Marcelo “Mineiro.” Renzo is already warmed up. Due to the proximity of the fight, today’s training session will be light, and he chooses to let his student Mineiro carry out his lifting session first. In the meantime, he circulates around the gym brimming with energy, followed by the camera of the Englishman Getting, who has been following the Brazilian around for a documentary since 2002.
How much philosophy is there on the walls of a boxing school? That depends on the selection criteria for the self-help phrases, names of champions and posters from memorable fights that decorate it. In that one in Middletown, there is a lot, you just need to look. Renzo looks past a gem: on a reproduction of a Ringside advertisement, an encouragement to study. He prefers to set his sights on another, a tran-scri-pt of a speech Theodore Roosevelt, president of the United States at the beginning of the 20th century, made at Sorbonne University, in 1910. A lover of the fighting arts, despite having won the Nobel Peace prize, Roosevelt practiced Jiu-Jitsu, and it was during his term as president that Mitsuo “Count Koma” Maeda arrived in America.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
Preachers often open the Bible to random pages, and let divine providence decide which passage is appropriate for the sermon of the day. Seasoned travelers spin the globe and, blindfolded, they stop it with their index finger, to that way decide their next destination. Renzo found on the walls the appropriate answer to the question his friends, students, fans and family members are always asking him: why keep fighting?
Although he is bombarded with the question on a daily basis, Renzo doesn’t like wasting time answering. Therefore, when he reads the text out loud, spontaneously, any mediocre interpreter of literature would immediately find the answer to the question that is always left lingering in the air.
* * *
Not even in moments of crisis does Renzo lack sympathy. He could break someone’s teeth and then pay the dentist bill. Once, he was signed up for an eliminatory MMA tournament that an ex-student, and still friend, was also signed up for. He did not blink: “It’s simple, nothing to it. We go out there and beat the hell out of each other, then we shake hands.” The battle ended up not taking place. This behavior brings up one more point of convergence between Renzo and the 26th president of the USA: Roosevelt’s Monroe Doctrine considered his country to be the police of the west, and, for that reason, the statesman wished it to speak softly – so long as it carried a big stick.
Armed only with a wet rag, a creative artist could paint, in dust, the whole boxing gym, like artist Alexandre Órion in a tunnel in São Paulo. Someone with allergies would not pass the door. Renzo was taken with the place. “Yeah, the last time they cleaned this place must have been last century. But I need to develop some antibodies. Could you ask for a better place than this?” he snorts. And each whack at the punching bag, each toss of the medicine ball lets off a cloud of dust. Sweat and dust already cover the fighter’s face, as he reaches the end of the three rounds.
For someone more concerned with health, the next activity would be to work the jawbone and digestive tract. But Renzo is in no hurry to eat. Ricardo Cahorrão calls. He wants to know when they will take off for Connecticut, the event’s location. “When the traffic is gone,” he replies. However, it was only just afternoon. For the traffic to be gone would mean nighttime. And it is a three-hour trip to the Mohegan Sun Indian reserve.
The notion of time is something very peculiar in Renzo’s value system. To him, a period of time, no matter how short, is enough for a great number of different endeavors, no matter how big. And everything is done without hurry. For the rest of the day, minus the long stretches for telling stories, Renzo managed to: Stop by the supplement store of some Muslim friends of his, to get some of his favorite isotonic – Marcelo paid the bill, which included Mineiro’s seven guava popsicles; insured his car – through an error on the part of the dealership, the Jeep-looking Mercedes had gone uninsured for over a month; had lunch at a Chinese restaurant – where his shellfish were fried on a greasy hotplate covered in soy sauce; went to a pet shop – where, to the joy of surgeon José Alfredo, Renzo bought some crickets to feed his daughter Cora’s iguanas; stopped by Starbucks – to take his wife, Cristina, her favorite mocha coffee; read for an hour and a half – while soaking in the Jacuzzi; took his car to the car wash – paid for the most complete service available; and also threw out the trash, packed his bag, watched, alongside Zé Alfredo, the cricket-eating reptile show, returned a dozen films to Blockbuster, and checked another dozen out.
After this list, and one mess-up (”This GPS is always screwing up!” he curses), the day’s goal is fulfilled: the caravan reaches the Mystic Marriott hotel, in Groton, where the IFL fighters are being put up for the event on the last Friday of 2006.
* * *
To find out what Renzo’s clock says it is at this point, journalism will not do. One needs greater powers of deduction and knowledge of quantum physics than Albert Einstein had. That is something about as far from what we aim to accomplish as possible. Let it be recorded that, on the clocks of the mere mortals that accompany him, the small hand is pointing to past four in the morning. Thus, a little less than two days remain before his decision victory and his trip to the emergency room of the local hospital, where five stitches (without anesthesia) would stop the flow of blood from a shallow cut on Renzo’s nose.
Then, the critics will have already started pointing out the errors: how he could have finished, the different ways he could have avoided being taken down, what he could have done to reach the end of the fight without tiring, the formula for guarding against that timid cut, how he could have done that, what he could have done about this… With swollen hands, possibly broken from yet another hard day’s work, the dust, the sweat and, now, the blood that is dried and caked on his face, Renzo won’t have slept the same sleep as those timid souls. He preferred to stay up and – with a smile on his face and a stick in his hand – break a record.
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