Chapter 19

George packed the rest of his bags and slumped onto his bed. He stared at the wall, trying to believe what had already happened to him. He felt like he needed to say it all out loud for it to be real, but there was no one in the room with him. He looked at the cage at the foot of his bed, and spied his sugar gliders snuggled together in their bauble-like nest. Though Shuriken was out of sight, George could see Shinobi’s tail hanging out the hole, and what was possibly the tip of his nose.

George sighed. These two would have to do.

“Okay, guys, let’s sum it all up. I graduated high school more than a year ago. I got in trouble with my dad for fighting in my friend’s back yard. To keep me out of trouble, he sent me all the way to California to live with my ‘Uncle’, a mixed martial arts hall-of-famer. I trained Jiu-jitsu almost non-stop. I met a new friend, Hector, who got me into secret challenge matches. I got a girlfriend. I fought a bunch of martial arts teachers and won. Then Hector went nuts, and dishonored the academy, and I almost got sent home. Then Ricardo chose me to represent the family in one of the biggest MMA events in history. Then I lost my girlfriend. Now I’m off to fight in front of thousands of spectators and millions of viewers all over the world. Have I left anything out?”

Shinobi said nothing, but seemed to snuffle the air in his sleep. George collapsed back onto his bed, feeling like this was still no more real to him than before he’d said it all out loud. But now wasn’t the time to be unbelieving.

There was a knock at his door and Ricardo stuck his head inside the room. “Are you ready?” he asked.

 

The plane ride to Vegas was short. The cab ride to the hotel even shorter. George shared the cab with Ricardo and Pablo, who stared with him at the bustling strip as it passed by. George was blown away by the sheer vanity of nearly every building and person they passed. Hotels, casinos, and restaurants were bedazzled almost to a ridiculous scale. Some of the people dressed just as conspicuously. Even the billboards seemed over the top as they advertised big wins, buffets, and to George’s surprise, prostitutes. It was an entire city obsessed with cheap fun, expensive image, and trying way too hard to be cool. George immediately decided he didn’t like Las Vegas very much.

George looked at both Pablo and Ricardo, who also seemed unimpressed with what he was seeing.

“If they didn’t have the biggest fights in the world here, I would never come,” Ricardo said. Pablo nodded in agreement.

The taxi dropped the trio off at the main entrance to The Lost City hotel. George had seen pictures of the place in posters and recognized it as a popular scene for movies produced in the city. Now that he saw the imitation ancient Chinese structure for himself, he couldn’t help but notice the plaster and fiberglass only painted to look like the red and gold landmark it was named for.

“This whole place looks a whole lot more impressive at night,” said Pablo, who must’ve noticed the look of disappointment on George’s face. “But I guess that’s the magic of Las Vegas. It’s a city that seems to be able to hide all of its many flaws in the dark while it distracts you with pretty light shows.”

Soon another taxi pulled in, bringing Scott, Roy, and Mo to join them.

“Okay,” Ricardo said to his team. “Let’s check into our hotel rooms. We have a rules meeting tonight at six. I want all of you to be there. Until that time I want you all resting, but keeping loose. No napping, no partying.”

Mo seemed to be the only one bothered by this. The rest of the team members seemed as unexcited about the prospect of partying Las Vegas style as they were about going to a boy band concert. “Fine,” Mo answered. “I guess we’re here on business, after all.”

After checking in at the front desk, George and Scott made their way past glittering casino floors, up a lavish elevator, and down a hallway so richly carpeted George felt guilty for stepping on it. They found the room where they would be rooming together for the next few days and unloaded their things. George looked around the ornate, plush hotel room and finally found something in Vegas to be excited about.

“That is a very big TV,” he said out loud.

“Yep,” Scott agreed. “Did you bring your games?”

“Oh, yeah,” George said as he dug through his luggage to retrieve his video game console with its controllers. “I think the next few hours are going to fly by.”

George and Scott played military shooter games until it was time to go to the rules meeting. It had been especially interesting because Scott frequently gave commentary on how realistic or unrealistic the game was based on his own experience hunting terrorists through the mountains and caves of Afghanistan. George reminded himself at one point to be sure to invite Scott over when the new Call of Duty came out.

The rules meeting, as it turned out, was duller than George had hoped. The team sat together with Ricardo and a Nevada official who discussed with them various rules and answered questions. Scott pointed out another gentleman in the room, a Phil McGary, who was the coach of the other team. His team members, however, had not shown up.

“He’s probably hoping we’ll be caught off guard when we meet our opponents tomorrow. He wants us to have less time to prepare.”

George nodded and smiled. He appreciated the forethought his team had to figure out likely opponents for each of them before arriving. Since neither team was required to reveal its chosen fighters until the day of weigh-ins, it made it an extra challenge to prepare for the fight. Each fighter had to hope they were as well-rounded as possible so they could easily change strategies to deal with their mystery opponent. George realized the situation must be most frustrating to Mr. Mcgary, who, having laid eyes on the members of Ricardo’s team, would still have no idea who they were since none of them had professional fighting experience in this country.

“There will be no knees thrown to the head while one or both of the fighters are on the ground,” the official droned on. “But you may throw them while both fighters are standing.”

George knew these rules already, since they were the same as those used for Elite. So did everyone else in the room, George guessed, since neither coach and none of the fighters had any questions about anything the official had said thus far.

It wasn’t until the official began to explain how points were awarded to teams that people began to speak up and question. This was something that had never been done in MMA before. As George understood it, a team was awarded one point for a split decision victory, three for a unanimous decision, and five points for a “stopped” fight, or one that ended in a submission, knockout, or any other reason that would prevent the fight from finishing its third round.

Ricardo raised his hand at this point. “Okay, so let’s assume one team pulls so far ahead by the fourth fight that there’s no possibility of the losing team to win. Are they allowed to just forfeit the rest of the match? Because it seems to me that there’s not much incentive for the losing team to continue risking the health of their fighters for something that can’t be won.”

Phil McGary chuckled. “You planning on losing already, Mr. Gracia? Because if you feel like your team isn’t ready for this level of competition, you might want to pull out now.”

George heard Scott quietly call McGary a name so vulgar he assumed Scott must’ve learned it during his days in the Navy.

“No,” Ricardo answered politely, “I just want to know how the owners planned on keeping things interesting after you try to prove you’re better than a hall-of-famer and fail.”

McGary looked taken aback by Ricardo’s answer, and looked as though he was working up to some kind of retort when the official chimed in.

“To answer your question, Ricardo, there are two incentives to continue fighting after victory for one team becomes improbable. First, total points earned by teams are added up at the end of the season six months from now and a sort of post-season tournament will begin to decide the winning team. Invitation to the tournament will be based on these point totals, even the ones earned in lost matches. Second, your team will be awarded prize money proportional to your total points earned in the match.”

Ricardo nodded, satisfied by the answer, but McGary still looked flustered, probably just as much by his inability to fire an insult back as by the insult itself.

The rules meeting soon ended, and George and Scott got themselves a light dinner before turning in for the night.

 

The day of weigh-ins arrived quickly and passed at a snail’s pace for George. Scott woke him up at seven and ran him through a light exercise of target drills and clinch transitions that were meant to just bring him up to a light sweat and loosen up his joints. George couldn’t help but feel strange doing all this, and wondered how many other young men his age were striking target mitts held by a former Navy SEAL in a Las Vegas hotel room. Not many, he guessed.

After a shower, a slim breakfast, and a morning of uninteresting television, George began a habit of peeking at the clock and being disappointed.

“You waiting for something?” Scott commented after observing George’s quarter-hourly ritual. “You seem nervous.”

“I just want to weigh in already. I want a real meal. And I want to see who my opponent is.”
            Scott nodded and seemed to understand. “You’re probably fighting Gomez. But you’re right to speculate. McGary could have picked someone else. I would have.”

“Why?” George asked.

“Because Gomez is a headstrong fighter with mediocre skills at best. He’s physically strong, but not fast. He hits hard, but he telegraphs and has bad footwork. He’s faked injuries at least twice to get out of matches where he was losing badly. He’s a quitter.” Scott turned from the TV to look at George. “I don’t think you’d have a problem with him.”

George smiled. That did make him feel better.

It wasn’t long before Mo came knocking on their door trying to convince the team to spend the day enjoying at least a little of what Vegas had to offer. After the team congregated in Ricardo’s room and argued for a half an hour, they all agreed to see a Cirque du Soleil production. After a brief reminder of their weigh-in schedule later that afternoon, the team herded down the elevator and out onto the strip.

The show, like the hotel room, was a delight to George. Though there was much about Las Vegas that made him feel uncomfortable and disappointed, he had to admit watching brightly-painted acrobats and dancers imitating moves he’d only seen in big-budget kung fu films was not one of them. George found himself gasping and clapping as the performers acted out a martial arts drama on a moving, undulating stage. It was like being inside a Jet Li film.

By the time it was over, the afternoon was in full swing, and George was grateful he didn’t have much longer to wait before he could finally see his opponent. George realized then that this fight, though not so nearly brightly colored or acrobatic, would be just as dramatic to him in his own head as the gravity-defying choreography he’d just seen.

 

George had thought he was ready for the weigh-ins. Thanks to Ricardo’s brilliant coaching, he was in the best shape of his life and was exactly his target weight, according to the scale they’d brought with them to the hotel. He was hungry, but energetic, thanks to months of eating Mrs. Gracia’s cooking. Strategically and technically, George was as ready as he could ever hope to be. But what he wasn’t ready for was the cameras.

As George peaked out of the curtain to what seemed to him a sea of clicking, whirring, and flashing lenses, he gasped.

“Be cool, everyone,” Ricardo said to all of them. Apparently some members of the team were just as ill-at-ease with the media coverage as George. “Just pretend the cameras aren’t even there. We’re not performers. We don’t have to be charming or witty or even handsome. We just have to make weight.”

Roy and Pablo smiled and relaxed. Scott didn’t care and Mo actually seemed to thrive with the idea of so much attention. George, however, felt the blood draining from his face. He wondered if he was turning as white as the gis they were all wearing.

From where he was standing, George couldn’t see the other team. Like his team, they were hidden behind a curtain on the other side of the stage. Any minute now, he would be coming face to face with his opponent. As he thought of this, a large, hard lump rose into his throat.

The buzzing commotion of the large room hushed as a man walked onto the stage. George had seen him before on television. He was Kelly Bairde, the owner of Elite. He was dressed in a suit and carried some papers in one hand and a microphone in the other. He stood beside another man, one of the Nevada officials George had been introduced to earlier, and an electronic scale. Bairde raised the microphone to his lips.

“Good afternoon, fight fans,” he said. “And welcome to the Elite Legacy Weigh-ins! Before we bring the fighters out, I want to say a few words about this competition. We, at Elite, felt like MMA has come a long way since we first held Elite Championship 1 in 1993. Back then, people didn’t know which martial art was the best in the world. We thought we would find out. What we found, during those first few years, was a remarkable group of individuals. We saw athletes eventually rise to the top able to do things we never thought possible. The nature of our competitors began to change, and so did a few of the rules. But what we never found out, with all these fighters, was the answer to the original question: which martial art is the best?”

“Jiu-jitsu,” George heard Pablo whisper.

“Yeah, definitely Jiu-jitsu,” Roy agreed. George tried to stifle a snigger.

“But what makes a martial art?” Bairde continued. “Techniques? Hundreds of different martial arts styles all share many of the same techniques. Individual fighters? We learned early in the history of this sport that exceptional athletes can arise from any martial art. How can you be certain what to credit to the athlete and what to credit to the martial art? You can’t. So how do you judge a martial art?”

George felt he knew the answer before it was said.

“By its dojo. By its gym. By the team of trainers, senseis, and coaches who work just as hard as their fighters to prepare them for their fights. That’s why we’re holding this special event, Elite Legacy. Legacy is all about answering the question we asked back in ’93. Which martial art is best? That which has the best gym, academy, training center or dojo. We will pit the best MMA gyms and martial arts schools against each other in order to find out which one produces the toughest, strongest, most dangerous fighters on the planet. So without further ado, the weigh-ins and match-ups for tomorrow’s event!”

The reporters, fans, and photographers roared with applause. This was a major event in the world of MMA, and had the potential to change a lot about the sport, and all of them knew it. George knew it, wondering how MMA and the Gracia Family would be changed by all this when it was over. He supposed it would depend on how his team performed tomorrow. It would depend on how he performed.

“First, I’ll introduce to you the coaches of our two teams today,” Bairde announced. “Coaching Team Vengeance, the owner of the renown Vengeance MMA gym in Long Beach, California: Phil McGary!”

George saw the same man from the rules meeting the previous day walking out onto the stage. He smiled and waved and stood next to Bairde, where the two men shook hands.

“And now the coach for Brotherhood Jiu-jitsu,” continued Bairde. “He’s an Elite hall-of-famer, and the owner of the Brotherhood Jiu-jitsu Academy in Vacaville, California: Ricardo Gracia!”

Ricardo stepped away from his team and put on a smile as he pushed through the curtain and out onto the stage. He walked to where Bairde and McGary stood on the stage and waved as people cheered. George was happy to see that many people still admired Ricardo, but couldn’t help but notice the few sniggers and taunts in the crowd. Many people didn’t think Ricardo or his family’s Jiu-jitsu had a place in modern MMA. George was eager to prove them wrong.

George listened as Bairde began to call out fighters. He began with the lowest weight class, calling out Scott Brown, followed by Team Vengeance’s fighter, Bobby Valdez. It seemed Ricardo and the others were right to assume he’d be picked for the lightweight spot on McGary’s team. George watched as the two men weighed in and then stood posed in the traditional stare-down as cameras clicked furiously. Scott’s face was as stony and cool as always, despite Valdez’s growling and snarling like an animal.

Next came Mo Al Nahyan and his opponent, David Gordeaux. When the two of them faced off, they both seemed to be smiling. Mo had a wild grin on his face, the look of an adrenaline junkie about to jump out of a plane. Gordeaux, on the other hand, smiled small and mischievously, like someone who had a secret and wanted everyone to know. George wondered if that meant anything, or if it was all for show. Mo’s smile was certainly sincere, and bore all of the excitement and frenzied anticipation George knew his friend actually felt to fight inside the cage.

“And now our Middleweights,” announced Bairde. “From Brotherhood Jiu-jitsu, George Peligro!”

George suddenly felt the urge to stay right where he was. His stomach clenched and he shivered, but he felt Pablo push him forward so he began to stumble through the curtain.

George corrected himself as he immerged in front of the crowd and cameras. He saw the scale ahead, and not far from it were the fighters who’d already weighed in. Ricardo, Scott, and Mo stood together, and smiled as George came forward. George decided to focus on his team mates, and to not even look at the crowd. He knew if he did the stomach-clenching anxiety would return and he’d be likely to freeze up.

When George reached the scale, he began to remove his gi. The gi the team had chosen to wear to the competition was bright and new. The fabric was light, sturdy, and soft. The image on the back was George’s own creation: the Mayan-inspired image of a snake eating itself. It was the symbol they all wore on their gis, a reminder of the renewal of their academy, a new beginning. George couldn’t help but smile when he saw it as he stripped down to his compression shorts.

As Ricardo held his gi and belt, George stepped onto the scale.

“One eighty-five,” called out the official as he read the digital display.

George smiled. He was right on target with his weight. He stepped off the scale and waited by his team mates.

“And now the middleweight fighter for Team Vengeance,” Bairde said into the microphone, “Hector Vargas!”

George watched, wide eyed, as a familiar shape emerged from the curtain. It was a face he’d got to know well over the past year. He’d trained with him, laughed with him, and made plans to make it big with him. He’d taught him wrestling. He’d kept his secrets. He’d cheered for him. It was Hector.

George hadn’t been aware he’d been shaking until Ricardo put a hand on his shoulder.

Hector stepped on the scale, and just like George, made weight perfectly. Then the two of them stood and faced each other with their hands up while cameras went crazy. George looked at Hector’s face and saw anger there, anger that he knew could be focused into a fist or a knee or a choke or an armbar. George realized Hector was the absolute last person on Earth he wanted to fight.

“What are you doing here, Hector,” George whispered as they stood facing one another. When Hector didn’t answer, George tried again. “Why would you do this? We’re your…”

Before George could finish, Hector shoved him hard. George’s world rocked and flew out from under his feet as his naked back crashed into the stage below him. There was shouting, and George saw Phil McGary rush forward to pull Hector back. Suddenly Ricardo and Scott was there too, both of them trying to pull George to his feet while simultaneously standing ready to fend off their volatile ex-student.

Bairde was furious. George watched him stomp over to where McGary was giving Hector a hushed scolding and hiss a rebuke of his own with one hand over the microphone.

“What the hell was that?” George heard Scott say. “This is unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like this in MMA.”

George hadn’t either. He’d seen plenty of Grudge matches, sure. Many MMA fighters were known to have a special dislike for others, which made for sell-out crowds at fights. But this was different.

“What does he think he’s doing here?” asked Ricardo.

“He wants to hurt you,” answered George, “in any way he can. By hurting me.”

And George knew if there was anything Hector was capable of, it was hurting someone. It was just his way.