The Laws of the Ring by Tim Keown, Urijah Faber Page A

somehow managed to get himself another fight, and of course, he got his ass kicked again before deciding to hang it up for good. He fought twice and lost twice, simple as that, but I guarantee you he got a lot of mileage out of the stories in the bars in Lincoln. Who knows what happened in those stories. I’m guessing they bore little resemblance to the fight I watched.
    I got my backyard done, though.

The 10th Law of Power
    Use Your Head . . . Whatever Way You Can
    A mong the many things you could do to your opponent in the old, Wild West days of MMA: head-butt, kick a guy in the head when he was down, elbow from any position. Professional fighting was a slightly more refined version of Senator McCain’s “human cockfighting” by the time I arrived in 2003. You couldn’t head-butt or eye-gouge, but the sport still had a ways to go before it became what you see today. I entered an ever-so-slightly modified version of those days: mean, somewhat vicious, borderline sadistic, with just a few more rules than a bar brawl. There was great demand to see these early fights, since there weren’t many places to see them and there was never a scarcity of bloodthirsty, beer-soaked fans willing to pay for the right. The ticket I bought to see my friend Tyrone Glover that night in the crowded, smelly ballroom in Colusa? It cost seventy-five bucks.
    Tickets that expensive meant fans wanted to be treated to a show they could say justified the cost. That led to one of the most dangerous aspects of the old MMA: referees who allowed fights to last way too long.
    The changes came about for a simple reason: In order to survive, the sport had to adapt. So many organizations jumped in when they recognized the economic potential of the sport, and so many of them lost their asses because they didn’t understand the market or couldn’t maximize its potential. The UFC saved it. People like Dana White and the Fertitta brothers (Frank and Lorenzo) stepped in to usher it toward a more fan-friendly, mainstream sport. MMA was either going to change and become more palatable to the general public, or it was going to be a freak show of sadism with the fighters as sacrificial lambs.
    The evolution of the UFC is a broad example of people who got creative with their passion (I’ll describe some of the specifics of those creative beginnings later on). My personal evolution as a competitor is a more specific example. Like many MMA fighters, I came from a college-wrestling background. Despite the number of fighters who have taken that route, it’s not a seamless transition. College wrestling is regimented and regulated, while MMA is a free-flowing combination of many different disciplines. Creativity is key.
    Two legendary fighters in my profession are Randy Couture and Mark Coleman. Couture is renowned for having one of the most adaptive and creative minds in mixed martial arts. He spanned different generations and rules, and in the process, not only defied Father Time, but thrived until the very end of his career. Coleman, on the other hand, while a legend of the sport whose brash personality and gritty toughness likewise kept him in the sport into his late forties, didn’t fare as well with the changing tide in MMA. This was evident when they met in the twilights of their careers in a historic UFC bout.
    Coleman started fighting in 1996, when the sport was truly anything goes. His nickname was “The Hammer” and his tool of choice was his head. His signature move was a heat butt, which became illegal about the time Coleman hit his prime. But his career dropped off considerably when the rules changed, and by 2004, he started losing close to as many fights as he won.
    I once hung out with Coleman in a Las Vegas club, long after his best days in the game were behind him. He had a group of buddies around him, and these buddies were some of his loyal friends. They were proud of him, boosting him up, doing