Starting Over
Reed's Gym
Atlantic City, NJ
February 2018
Weights clang against the floor, even through the mat as Carson Caine releases the bar – 350 pounds hitting the ground from roughly three feet up isn't quiet. He's just finished his set for the day, and steps over the bar, grabs a towel from the bench, and wipes his shaved head free of sweat. Shirtless and in fighter-style shorts, Carson then sits and grabs a water bottle from under the bench. Downing half of it, he hears a familiar voice from behind.
“Hey man, you done?”
Carson turns and sees his trainer Glen Brown approaching from the door. He nods and twists the cap back on the water bottle. “Yeah, just finished. Didn't know you were coming here tonight, what's up?”
Glen walks past Carson and pulls over a folding chair to sit across from him, spinning it around backwards to straddle it. “I wasn't planning on it. But I just got an interesting phone call from out west. I figured it was best if I came down here to talk to you about it face to face. CJ here?”
Carson shakes his head. “Nah man, he's out with some friends cruising the mall. You know teenagers.”
Glen laughs. “Yeah yeah.... I remember all to well being fourteen. More likely cruising for chicks.”
“Probably more accurate. Like father, like son, right?” Carson grins, and Glen shakes his head at the joke. Carson Caine is many things, but a skirt chaser is not one of them.
“Yeah, right. You at fourteen I'm sure was nothing like now.”
“Don't come at me with that logic, man.” Both men laugh. Carson shakes his head and moves his hand in a 'hurry up' motion. “Ok so what about this phone call?”
“Yeah, that. Listen.... I know its been a while since your last fight.”
“I'd say six months is a while.”
“Exactly. So I put some feelers out, outside of the area. Since, well... you've kinda dried this one out.”
Carson scoffs. “You mean kicked everyone's ass.”
“That too. So, okay. I thought maybe we'd expand your horizons, so to speak. I didn't think my feelers woulda stretched the way to Vegas, but here we are.”
“Vegas?” Carson tilts his head with a brow peaked.
“Yeah. Vegas. Some grunt from UFC. Well, not really a grunt. A bit higher up. With authority to toss around contract offers.”
“You shitting me, man? Fucking UFC did not call you to offer me a contract. I'm too old to get started with those boys man. Stop playing.”
“Dead serious bro. Look.” Glen pulls out his phone and taps the screen a few times, then hands it over. Carson looks, and it's an email app. Glen points at the screen, prompting him to read. Carson looks back down and does. It's headed with the UFC logo, and addressed to them both. Still not really believing it, he just skims the words until his eyes find numbers. At that point he busts out laughing and tosses the phone back at Glen.
“Get outta here man, you recording this? You know better than to try to prank me.”
“I told you man, dead serious. I talked to the guy while reading this. According to this guy, Mark something, they've been aware of you for a while, but since you never left the northeast to fight they didn't think you'd be interested. They got word I was looking for something a little farther out for you and bam! Phone call and that email.”
Carson rubs one hand over the top of his shaved head with a heavy breath. “I'll be damned. You're not making shit up. You know I can tell.” Glen just nods. The two friends had a habit of trying to 'get' each other with jokes and pranks, and Glen was pretty bad at it, because he had no poker face to speak of. “So that number there is real? For how long?”
“Their contracts work different, it's not time, its a number of fights. This one is six. You see their scheduling man, that could be four, five, six years. Oh and that number? Per
fight guarantee. That's not counting bonuses.”
“Jesus fucking Christ.”
“That's why they're the big boys. All you gotta do is agree to a few minor terms and scribble your name.”
“Minor terms?” That sounded sketchy to Carson, and the way Glen's demeanor changed at the question told him he probably wasn't off base.
“Well, obviously since you've been on their radar, they know all about your record. It's not often a fighter comes around that's got an almost spotless record over nineteen fights and they haven't promoted him yet. So, they'd basically treat you like the second coming of GSP or some shit.”
Carson scoffs. “Yeah, except I ain't no damn welterweight.”
Glen waves his hand. “Shuddup, you know what I mean. Anyway. So they'd make you a big deal, right? Promote the fuck out of you versus... I don't know, they didn't say yet. Get the whole country questioning where you been hiding all this time, and can their guy beat this nearly undefeated newbie. And then... well, uh... they want, um...”
“Spit it the fuck out man!” Carson hated when Glen stammered like that. One, it was annoying. And two? It usually meant whatever he was about to say was something Carson wouldn't like.
“Okay, well... I'm about to confirm some pretty rampant rumors for you, so you can't say nothing. But they, well... want you to take the dive in the first fight. You'd get this under-the-table bonus and-”
Carson stands up and glares, his hand in the air ready to throw a backhand. “Get the fuck out of here with that shit!” He'd never actually hit Glen when they weren't sparring for training, but sometimes his temper gets the better of him and he comes close. Glen backs away in the chair, flinching. Damn, Carson thinks, he must have come closer to throwing that swing than he thought.
“Hear me out bro, this is a whole fuckton of money! You and CJ would be set for life! For what? Six fights and one fixed loss? What's one L when-”
“What's one L? Are you fuckin' kidding me? They don't want to make some kind of star outta me man! Get the dollar signs out of your eyes and
look at this. You said I been on their radar, right?” Glen nods. “Then they know damn good and well why you're looking out of the northeast for fights, cause no one around here wants to step in the cage with me anymore. No one wants to book a sure loss. Yeah, they'll promote the fuck outta me, find footage of my past fights, build up this huge main event and for what? So their hand-picked guy, the person they
really want to make into their star, can get the drop on me, make me look like a damn fool, and their guy can say they beat a man who ain't lost in ten years! Not no, Glen... but Fuck. No. I ain't signing nothing to be anyone's pawn.”
Glen looks up at Carson while he ranted, and when he's done,Glen takes a deep breath, running his fingers through his shaggy blonde hair. “Damn man. You think so? I never thought of it like that.”
Carson sits back down and leans forward, his anger gone as suddenly as it appeared. “Glen... you and me been doing this for, what... ten, eleven years now? You know I'm thankful every day that you pulled me out of those petty street fights and trained me for real. When it comes to that cage and what people can do inside of it, you're probably the smartest motherfucker I know. But business? People's motivations for money? Willingness to fuck anyone over for an extra dollar? Man, you couldn't see through clean glass. It's fucking obvious man! They think we're reaching out cause we're desperate. That
I'm desperate. If they really wanted to do something with me, they would have called before now, since they've been paying all this attention. Nah man, they're only throwing bait now cause they see an opportunity and they think I'm either desperate or stupid enough to bite. I'm neither one.”
Glen looks down at the floor a bit, taking everything in. He looks at the email on his phone again, reading. Carson can see the comprehension fall over his face just before he nods and locks the phone screen. Looking up, Glen sighs roughly. “So that's a hard no, then?”
“You fucking heard me. Don't ask me again.”
“Alright. I'll call the guy back in the morning.”
“Damn right you will. I don't give a shit that they're fixing fights here and there, but fuck if I'm gonna be a part of it. Did you really think I was gonna go for that shit?”
Glen grins a bit, shaking his head. “Honestly, not really. But I had to throw it at you. It's too much money to not talk about.”
“No amount of money is worth my honor. If I wanted to get into that fixed fight bullshit just for money, I'd have jumped to boxing years ago.”
Glen laughs at that, and Carson shakes his head. He'd always suspected that the larger MMA companies did similar things, fixed certain fights, created “stories” for the media to get more attention on certain fights which in turn drew more PPV buys. He thought all of that was just bullshit and an insult to the sport that dug him out of a pretty deep hole as a teenager and young man. He was a hardass and take-no-shit kinda guy, but he also had a code. No fucking around, straight talker, straight fighter. Games were for boys.
====================
Home
Atlantic City, NJ
April 2018
“Hey Dad, come see this!”
Carson was in the kitchen finishing up dinner, while his son CJ (Carson, Jr) was in the living room watching TV. Carson could hear the TV from in the kitchen, mostly crowd noise, but he couldn't tell what the teen was watching. He dries his hands on a towel and walks out into the living room of their two bedroom apartment.
“What am I looking at?”
“This guy on this wrestling show. He's effin huge and this chick just kicked his ass.”
Carson looks at the screen and sees a woman walking around a wrestling ring, as a man much bigger than her lays prone on the mat. “The hell did she do to him?” Carson was obviously aware wrestling existed, it's a combat sport just like what he does, but it never really held too much of his interest.
“Like... some kind of crazy heel kick or something. Right in the temple and he went down like a sack of bricks. If she can do that to that guy, what you think you'd do to him?”
“In a wrestling ring? Come on man, you know wrestling was never my strong game.”
“Yeah I know Dad, but it could be. Look, none of the fighters around here wanna take you on anymore. I'm fifteen but I ain't dumb. The purse from your last fight isn't gonna last us forever. Do you really want to go back to that shitty construction job you had when I was a kid?”
“That shit sucked and you know it.” There was no accounting for language in the Caine household, clearly. Carson allowed his son to speak mostly freely at home, as long as he knew to keep it clean everywhere else.
“Exactly. I've been watching this stuff a few months now, you can totally do this shit.”
“You think so? And what happens the first time someone who actually went to wrestling school gets me tied up in something I don't know how to evade and beats me?”
“What happens? You get up and fight them again a month later. Losses aren't make or break for these guys. Haven't you ever even thought about it?”
“Not really. Glen kept trying to get me better at some of the technical stuff, but you've seen me. Ground and pound, I ain't a grappler.”
CJ smirks up at his dad. “You're not to ignorant to learn, are you?”
“Did.... did you just quote Coal Miner's Daughter at me?”
“Maybe.”
“That's almost disgusting.” Carson is fighting a smirk though.
“You didn't answer me.”
Carson shrugs. “Never too ignorant or old to learn, I guess. Maybe I just never wanted to before. Got nothing else going for me, right?”
“Exactly! Come watch the rest of this show with me, you'll see. You can totally do this and beat all these bitches asses.”
Carson looks at the TV again, and the show cuts to a commercial as the woman in the ring is having her hand raised in victory. “Alright. Go get your food before it comes back on.”
CJ smiles and jumps up to get dinner. Carson leans his hands on the back of the couch. Sometimes the best ideas come from kids. Maybe it wasn't all that crazy, and he wouldn't have to sell out, agree to a fixed loss, just to make money.