Journey to the center of the ring

By Mike Trask

Sunday, Dec. 30, 2007 | 2 a.m.

R.J. Richter steps out of the ring, physically spent, slick with a wet blend of his sweat and that of the other guy, whose name R.J. still doesn't know. He stares into the crowd of ruffians, wishing he could see his wife, the woman who loves him enough to allow him to risk losing his teeth or having his elbow snapped.

Blood running down his face tickles the tip of his nose. It does not dry in the dank warehouse, which on this cold autumn night has been converted into a miniature arena. The tangy stink of a locker room hovers, like a paper mill stench, pungent proof of work. His shoulders are stiff, his face is tender and his body is clinging to the last particles of energy left after nine minutes of brawling.

At least he is walking, bare feet sliding on the filthy, slimy concrete. If only his wife were there beside him, she would see that slow movement as a good sign, even if he looks like he fell face first onto a prickly pear cactus.

R.J. is certain when the urge began: June 6, 2003. He was one of 5,517 people at the Thomas & Mack Center for a Randy Couture vs. Chuck Liddell championship fight in mixed martial arts, an especially brutal form of combat. Fighters use fists, feet, knees, elbows and a variety of submission holds.

“It was just electrifying,” R.J. recalled. “There was just so much energy.”

For three years R.J. thought about that battle. He loved it. Eventually he concluded that he could go into training and work hard enough to win a fight.

By then, he also knew that a bigger obstacle stood in his way: a 5-foot-2 blonde with a bubbly personality, wide smile and fierce resolve -- his wife, Sherrelle.

R.J. knew she would ask what most sane people would ask, and ask it she did: “Why would you want to do that?”

Sherrelle Richter didn't like this getting beaten up thing, which is what might be expected of a wife just starting out, forming plans for a big family.

She saw fighting the way its harshest critics see the sport, as a barbaric street fight, one with graphic images of broken noses and unconscious losers. She didn't want R.J. getting punched in the face. She didn't want to see him embarrassed with a loss. She didn't want to see his forearm snapped with an armbar or see him choked with a Brazilian jujitsu hold until he blacked out.

Plus, she knew the family budget and weighed it against the odds R.J. would face. Becoming an MMA fighter is not cheap or easy.

So when, in the days following their July 29, 2006, wedding, he asked if she would let him train for a fight, she simply ignored him.

Roderick Joseph Richter, 25, is one of millions of men attracted to mixed martial arts, a suddenly mainstream sport that until just seven years ago was banned in several states. Today, it stuffs arenas in Las Vegas and across the United States. More than a half-million people pay $39.95 to see the fights on pay-per-view.

R.J. has seen dozens of events. “Anything with the word ‘fighting' in it is on my DVR,” he says.

Leading the way is the Vegas-based Ultimate Fighting Championship, purchased in 2001 by Station Casinos owners Lorenzo and Frank Fertitta, along with Dana White, who developed a reality television show and a slick marketing scheme that capitalized on the prized young male demographic's fascination with violence. The Nevada State Athletic Commission has given credibility to the sport by creating unified rules.

UFC events combine brutal competition with rock concert noise and pyrotechnics. As the sport's loyal fan base loves to point out, more people in the 18-to-34 demographic watched the episodes of “The Ultimate Fighter” reality show in 2006 than tuned in to World Series games. The UFC now rivals boxing as Las Vegas' top spectator sport.

It also has trickled down to the streets. At least a half-dozen gyms devoted to teaching mixed martial arts have sprung up in Las Vegas. Hundreds of young men -- and some women -- train in these gyms, following a regimen that combines boxing, wresting, martial arts and kickboxing.

The sport is so new that it has not yet developed a farm system of talent. Walking off the street and trying to become an NFL player would be impossible. Trying to become an MMA fighter may be stupid or crazy, but it's not entirely unrealistic. There is no UFC Little League.

So, wide-eyed, athletic young men are going to the gyms for the long-shot chance that they can become somebody like Rich Franklin, a one-time math teacher who became UFC middleweight champion and one of the most recognizable faces in the sport.

R.J. didn't take Sherrelle's silence as an answer. They went on their honeymoon to Hawaii. Afterward, R.J. asked her at least once a week about joining a fight gym.

But Sherrelle worried how beating up people would fit in with their Mormon faith and the rest of their lives.

R.J., who was raised in Seattle, is a superintendent for residential concrete projects in the Las Vegas area. Sherrelle is a 25-year-old UNLV graduate and Las Vegas native who works as a human resources generalist.

They attend church and a family dinner every Sunday. The main art in their living room is a depiction of Psalm 61:2: “Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.” Each Wednesday night R.J. helps lead a Boy Scout troop. He keeps his dark hair cropped tight, owns a friendly Golden Retriever and does not smoke or drink alcohol or coffee.

R.J. saw no conflict between his faith and fighting. “It's a sport. I'm not out there trying to hurt people. If I were going around being malicious, being that tough guy trying to hurt people, then I wouldn't be doing what God would want me to do. I don't feel like I'm doing anything that he wouldn't want me to do.”

No, the problem wasn't God.

He kept pleading. “I was going to keep asking until she would be like, ‘Shut up. Go fight. Maybe you'll get your ass kicked. Just leave me alone.'”

Then one day last year, she quit ignoring him. Instead, she gave him an emphatic no.

He took it as a breakthrough. At least she was speaking. “I knew I would get to her,” he said.

Eventually he did. They cut a deal. He could go to the gym as long as he used bonuses from work to pay the $100 monthly gym fees. Regular income still went into the family pot.

But to be clear: She agreed only that he could go into training. She did not say he could go on to a real fight.

R.J. had a partial victory.

He chose Excel Defense Studio on Craig Road because it's only 10 minutes from home. He walked in for the first time at the end of November 2006.

The walls were decorated with UFC posters -- and a poster for the movie “Fight Club.” “What do you really know about yourself if you've never been in a fight?” it read. Three plasma screens showed a never-ending rotation of fights, accompanied by heavy metal music from overhead speakers.

In the back corner were the heavy bags fighters pound with gloved fists, working on jabs, uppercuts, crosses and front kicks. When a few guys wail away at once, the steel contraption holding the half-dozen black sacks shakes violently against the wall.

In this charged atmosphere, R.J. stood out as a rookie.

His background as a high school wrestler helped a tad, but his hands were slow and his kicks were weak, pathetic compared to the thunderous sound of a professional shin connecting with precision on the thick pads.

The gym had its own language. R.J. knew the names of the jujitsu moves: the kimura and the triangle. He also knew the MMA slang, words like “caught.” Getting caught is the worst thing that can happen to a fighter. Getting caught means you got knocked out or were forced to tap out, a simple tap of a hand, signaling that you submit before you get hurt badly.

R.J. loved the boxing most. “When you're hitting someone, you know you're doing some damage if you're landing good, clean shots. It's like, ‘I'm whooping this guy's ass' or ‘OK, I need to take this guy down 'cause he's punching me in the face and I don't like it any more.'”

R.J. spent two hours at the gym every night after work. Then he went home to cook dinner for his wife.

And soon, after a few months, he began to plot against her. He wanted a real fight.

Some guys jump out of airplanes or climb mountains to measure themselves. R.J. wanted to fight another human being to see who was tougher, stronger, more skilled, faster, meaner. “You have to dig down,” he said. “Are you tough enough? Are you going to perform or fold under pressure? Your body can take a lot more than your mind is telling you.”

He had the same feelings when he wrestled, but nothing since had translated. He certainly couldn't satisfy those urges in “these intramural sports you can play down at 24 Hour Fitness or down at the park.”

Fighting, that translated.

But not for Sherrelle. She found countless welts on his body. She saw the split lips, swollen knees and jammed shoulders. Twice he had staph infections in a leg.

By the end of January 2007, trainers and sparring partners who fight professionally were telling R.J. he had the stuff to become a fighter. They started mentioning opportunities. Maybe he could fight at a coming event at an off-Strip casino, or one out in Kansas, or another in Utah.

It made him tense. He needed to talk to Sherrelle. He ran through scenarios.

He thought he might slip it in casually: “Let's have dinner with your family on Sunday. Did you take the dog for a walk? Have you seen my keys? I think I want to fight.”

Sherrelle said she knew it was coming. “Training was only going to take him so far without him wanting to do more. Who wants to go to football practice and doesn't want to play in the game?”

Finally, he mustered the nerve to ask.

She refused.

He kept at it. Their talks were seconds short and hours long.

They would be doing chores or watching television from the couch in their second-floor condo, the kind with a garage on the first floor and a big patio. He would mention it.

“We had so many conversations about it that I can't keep them straight,” R.J. said. “Some of them got pretty heated.”

Some ended with her simply walking away. Some ended with her cutting him off. They all yielded the same conclusion: He was not fighting.

“You don't want to get hurt,” Sherrelle would say. “This is not what we do.”

Near lunchtime one day in February, R.J. was making his daily rounds to constructions sites in his gold Nissan Frontier. He was listening to sports radio and navigating the busy Las Vegas streets.

His cell phone rang. He saw her name on the caller ID and answered.

“Hey, babe.”

“Hey, I've been thinking about it and you can fight.”

“OK, I love you.”

Just like that.

She was tired of the conversations, and after thinking about it, really thinking, she gave in. She saw how much it meant to him.

He hung up and started calling his five brothers and his friends.

“It was my persistence,” he said. “It was my persistence going to the gym and my persistence talking to her about it.”

But her permission came with a stipulation. She allowed one fight. Just one.

And she wouldn't necessarily want to see it.

R.J.'s eyes roll back in his head as his trainer unleashes a cruel right hook. He is in the midst of another two-hour session at the gym. It is May 24, 2007. His fight is still months away.

R.J. is in shape: 185 pounds, 6-foot-1 and muscular. But as he is learning on this day, staying in shape is one thing, getting into a cage for combat is another.

The trainer's shots keep coming and R.J.'s only defense is to keep his hands glued to the sides of his square-jawed face. Yet he stays on his feet, keeps moving forward. When his tormentor takes a step back to explore other spots to strike, R.J. gets off one or two punches. Then he eats another flurry until finally the beating stops.

R.J. wobbles off the mat, blood pooling in the corners of his mouth. He slumps down on a bench.

“Even going light, he hits hard,” R.J. says. “He's just so much better than me.”

He is Tony “The Freak” Fryklund, a UFC veteran who looks like he jumped off the pages of a comic book, all muscle with a dyed blond Mohawk and a dragon tattoo on his chest. He sees wannabe fighters roll into Excel often.

They wear fancy fighting clothes, $50 shorts and $30 T-shirts with brand names like Tapout and Affliction. Then they fight like girls. If they have a future in the sport of combat Tony can usually see it in their eyes after a tough training session, one where Tony beats 'em down.

Some come back. Others disappear to a bar where people might listen to their would-have-been stories and questionable boasts.

“A lot of guys come in here and are like, ‘I'm not motivated unless I have a fight coming up,'” Tony says one day while he coats his body with muscle-soothing cream. “That's backwards. And once they get punched in the face, it's a different story.”

R.J. kept coming back. He trained for more than 600 hours. He also spent $1,510 on gym fees, fight gloves and other gear, from shorts to mouth guards.

By September R.J. is ready to fight. Tony arranges an amateur bout in Newbury Park, Calif., northwest of Los Angeles.

R.J. is to wear only a flimsy pair of 4-ounce gloves, a pair of shorts and a mouth guard. He can kick, be kicked; punch, be punched; use arm bars, leg locks and choke holds.

No excuses for losing. It will be just him and another man, trained to make each other submit in a very public way.

On fight day, Oct. 27, 2007, R.J. reports to a warehouse in a strip of industrial buildings. It's a long way from the UFC scene, one step above bar basement fights, but it's a first step for hopeful fighters.

The main entrance is a rolled-up metal garage door. R.J. finds no locker rooms and one toilet, shared by the 20 fighters and 200 spectators.

Fighters warm up outside in the dark parking lot. It is raining.

The building has no air conditioning and the crowd heats up, stuffed shoulder to shoulder on cheap plastic chairs and standing against the walls. Concessions consist of water, Gatorade or Monster, an energy drink that makes dark roast coffee seem decaffeinated. Tickets cost $35 and profits supposedly go to charity.

R.J.'s brother has come along and paces around the parking lot, gabbing on his phone nonstop, describing the scene to friends and family members who could not make the 300-mile drive.

Tony and a rival trainer have a disagreement over the use of the one matted warm-up area, a roughly 25-sqaure-foot section of padding under a tiny blue tent. Someone was wearing shoes on the mat.

“My guys have white shorts on,” Tony complains. “I don't care if they get blood on them. But I don't want 'em dirty before they get in.”

Tony gets mad. The two men start shoving and in seconds, Tony throws his rival through one of the tent walls, rendering the area useless.

R.J. draws the eighth bout of the night, forcing him to wait and watch the matches, some brutal, some boring. He shadow boxes, eyes narrowed, trancelike, sweating. He listens to hard, angry rap in his headphones.

Standing in a corner outside the bathroom door, he occasionally steps out of the way as a fan or fighter enters or exits.

It's at this moment that reality arrives. He is getting his one chance. He knows he will be hit, probably hard, in the face. He still hasn't seen his opponent.

Then his number is up. At 8:47 p.m., he pushes through the crowd and into the ring. Here's how R.J. remembers the next 15 minutes:

The other guy will not make eye contact, which R.J. takes as a sign of weakness. R.J. sees that he's soft. Where R.J. has chiseled muscle, this guy has a small section of flab over his waistline. R.J. knows he will win.

He feels nothing when the guy comes out with wild right hands, one of which grazes the side of his head. His plan is to take the other fighter to the ground, to use his strength and wrestling background. Stay away from that right hand, he thinks. That's what he wants to use.

He can't distinguish the voices in the crowd.

R.J. tackles the guy, not with a technical move; he just powers him to the ground and starts punching him in the face. Tony tells him to “posture up,” to sit atop the other guy and pummel. The crowd gets louder as his fists fly down; he can feel the energy. The only other voice he can make out is a woman saying, “Don't worry, he won't keep you down. He's nothing.”

R.J. keeps hitting.

He's going on instinct, as if everything else has disappeared. He's just brawling. When he feels his opponent's leg go over his shoulder, he pulls the guy off the mat and drops back down, breaking the hold. R.J. hits him some more.

The guy gasps. He's especially wheezy when R.J. lands punches to the ribs.

In round two, R.J. doesn't feel the punch, just the blood as it rolls down his nose. He can see it in his left eye. He's angry. He is bleeding but he hasn't yet made this soft man bleed. He chalks it up to luck and keeps fighting.

By the final round, it's obvious to R.J. and everybody else in the building that he is dominating. Just keep away from those right-hand haymakers. Don't get cut again. Don't get caught. The blood still rolls down his face. He circles to the right. Keep circling.

The final bell dings. The judges declare R.J. the winner. He stands triumphantly, arms raised.

A bedraggled ring girl in tight shorts hands him a small plastic trophy.

R.J. retreats back to the corner of the warehouse and scans the crowd, wishing he could find his wife. She had overcome her trepidation and decided to attend.

Then he spots her. She is weaving through the mass of angry men who had howled gleefully at every shot to his head. During the fight, her fears were replaced by aggression. “Get him, baby!” she screamed. “Take him down!”

Now he sees her teeth glow amidst the sea of black hooded sweatshirts. Despite the smile, he knows she is worried.

They meet by the bathroom, where fighters disappear to check their wounds in a tiny mirror and glance at posters of men who have made a living with their fists, men they dream of becoming, once they pass this test.

“I'm OK,” he tells her. “I love you.”

He leans down and they share a gentle kiss. She steps back and wipes his blood off her cheek.

Note: Sherrelle later agreed to let R.J. fight again. He continues to train and hopes to make his professional debut in 2008.