ed Br ute - Chicago Reader · 2009-07-16 · ed Br ute Ultimate F igh tin g co nt ender St ephan Bonnar Jak e A ... But there were flashes of other fighting techniques: Muay Thai,

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Civilized Brute

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Jake Austen

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The Meter

Miss A

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Section ThreeCharlie an

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play at Steppenwolf,

critics’ picks for the Intonation Music Festival, that all-cereal restaurant, and m

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July 15, 2005

Section One Letters 3Columns

Hot Type 4The debate over anonymous sources rages on.

The Straight Dope 5Stuffed Eskimos?

The Works 8The Park District stole our boats!

Chicago Antisocial 10Get in the limo.

Our Town 12The creator of Chic-a-Go-Go on the creator of Kiddie a-Go-Go

ReviewsMovies 22Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Theater 26The Pain and the Itch at Steppenwolf

Ink Well This week’s crossword: New Numbers

N ear the end of the first round, Stephan Bonnar landed afurious blow that made a clean, surgical cut across thebridge of Forrest Griffin’s nose. Griffin, a rising star in

the world of mixed martial arts, had a 9-2 record and a fear-some reputation: in a 2003 bout he knocked out an opponentwith his one good arm after having broken the other momentsearlier. Now the blood poured out, rendering his face a lateJackson Pollock. It’s the kind of cut that ends most MMAbouts, but Griffin just smiled as a doctor wiped the woundclean, then jumped right back into the action.

It had been a brutal fight from the start. The two light-heavyweights are about the same size: Griffin is 6'3", Bonnar6'4"; each weighs about 205 pounds. By the second round,both were covered with blood. Bonnar’s girlfriend, AndreaBrown, watching from the stands, began to cry.

To the uninitiated the fight looked a lot like a normal boxingmatch, with padded gloves and standing punches (or“standup,” in the vernacular) accounting for most of the action.But there were flashes of other fighting techniques: MuayThai, Brazilian jujitsu, Greco-Roman wrestling. MMA incor-porates dozens of fighting techniques, and every competitorhas at least a couple of specialties.

MMA has been a fringe sport since its invention in the early90s in Brazil by the Gracie family, experts at Brazilian jujitsu.In 1993 Rorion Gracie, the first of several Gracies to move tothe U.S., organized a no-holds-barred tournament in Denverthat was televised on pay-per-view and called the UltimateFighting Championship. The first champion was Rorion’sbrother Royce.

The UFC is now the world’s biggest MMA association. Itsfights still air on pay-per-view, where they draw hundreds ofthousands of viewers. But recently the sport has entered themainstream media with its own reality series, The UltimateFighter, on the cable channel Spike TV. The first 13 episodesran from January to April. By the end of the season it wasattracting two million viewers per week. The show’s secondseason begins Monday, August 22. Bonnar, in training and in the bloody match that won him a contract with the UFC

ON THE COVER: DIANE ALEXANDER WHITE (METER)

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The CivilizedBruteWhat’s a nice guy likeStephan Bonnar doingin a sport once decriedas human cockfighting?

By Chris Van Nostrand

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14 CHICAGO READER | JULY 15, 2005 | SECTION ONE

CHICAGO READER | JULY 15, 2005 | SECTION ONE 15


Season one featured 16 amateurfighters living and training togeth-er in Las Vegas, with a face-off atthe end of each episode, afterwhich the loser had to go home.At the end of the season, two mid-dleweights and two heavyweightsbattled in the Cox Pavilion on thecampus of the University ofNevada in Las Vegas; the fightsaired live on Spike.

The winner got a three-fightcontract with the UFC that couldbe worth over $100,000, plus aToyota Scion and a wristwatch,while the loser was left to contin-ue in the regional amateur cir-cuit, akin to the minor leagues.

The bout between Bonnar andGriffin was the show’s finale, onApril 9. The second and thirdrounds were as bloody as thefirst. The fighters could barelystand, but they refused to hit thecanvas. Bonnar remembers whathe was thinking: “You’ve beenmore tired than this, you’re notabout to throw up. You’veworked until you’ve thrown up,and this ain’t that bad.”

There are three ways to end aUFC fight: a knockout, a decisionfrom the judges, or a tapout,

when one fighter, stuck helplesslyin his opponent’s grip, taps theground (or anything he can reach)to indicate surrender. The maxi-mum duration for most fights is15 minutes—three 5-minuterounds (title fights include afourth round). At the end of thethird round it’s up to the judges todecide whose performance wasbetter—who landed the mostdirect hits, who was more aggres-sive, and whose hits, kicks, jabs,and takedowns were most effec-tive, among other criteria.

As Bonnar and Griffin pound-ed away, the announcer told the2.6 million viewers that this wasthe greatest UFC bout ever. Asthe first UFC event to air on reg-ular cable TV, it also turned outto be the most watched fight inthe history of the sport.

When the judges voted unani-mously in Griffin’s favor, Bonnar

fell to his knees. “I thought Iwon. . . . I just didn’t know whatelse to do,” he says. Half the fansbooed; half cheered. Then, in afinal dramatic turn, league exec-utives decided to award Bonnara three-fight contract as well,though he lost out on the carand the watch.

When Bonnar righted himselffor the postfight interview, awound above his left eye wasdripping with blood, sweat mat-ted his short brown hair, and hisnose, already crooked from ablow in an earlier match, wasstarting to swell. But he smiledwhen the announcers asked forhis impression of the fight. “Thattough son of a bitch just wouldn’tdrop,” he said.

There are only 95 UFC fight-ers in the world, and so far

the sport hasn’t created any

celebrities, unless you countTank Abbott, a nasty fighter whohad a guest spot on Friends in1997. But Andrea Brown, withwhom Bonnar’s been house-hunting in and around Chicago,says lately people have beenstopping Bonnar on the street tocongratulate him.

In such a small world, oppo-nents in any fight are likely toknow each other; many haveeven trained together. When thefinal bell rang on Bonnar andGriffin’s match, the fightersembraced. After the judgesannounced their decision, theyembraced. After the awards werepresented, they embraced. Andat the end of the night theyshared an ambulance to theemergency room. “We’d beenthrough an ordeal together,” saysGriffin, “and that does help youbuild a little bit of a bond.”

When he’s not pummeling andbeing pummeled by his friends,Bonnar leads a fairly normal life.His day job is at the Gold CoastMultiplex at Clark and Oak,where he’s a personal trainer. Hejust finished a year’s worth ofgraduate courses in MuscleActivation Therapy (a holisticform of physical therapy) in BurrRidge. “I’ve always been fascinat-ed with the body and how itworks,” he says.

He spent his childhood inMunster, Indiana, obsessed withkung fu movies. “To me, martialarts and all that hand-to-handcombat, I was just fascinated by itfor as long as I can remember,” hesays. He started wrestling com-petitively when he was nine andcontinued through high school.He took up tae kwon do at the ageof 12 and earned a black beltwhen he was 15. At PurdueUniversity he majored in exercisephysiology and health promotion.He was going to try out for theschool’s wrestling team, but therewas an incident. “I actually got ina fight with one of the wrestlers,”he says, “and that sort of turnedme off to the team.”

Bonnar

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The fighters could barely stand, but theyrefused to hit the canvas. Bonnar remembersthinking “You’ve worked until you’ve thrown up, and this ain’t that bad.”



Bonnar had just started datinga girl whose ex-boyfriend’s dormroom was right across the hallfrom his own. One day Bonnarwas walking home from classwhen he saw the girl and her ex,the wrestler, through a window,sitting on the couch in the guy’sroom. “They were, like, cuddling,”Bonnar says. He became enraged:“I ended up kicking his door inand giving him a good old beat-ing. I was arrested and kicked outof the apartments, and that wasjust the first week of school.

“I was confused and young,” hesays, “and I really liked the girl. Iwas hurt. I thought that was theright thing to do—that if youreally like someone you shouldbeat the guy up. . . . If it happenednow, I’d just say, ‘That’s yourchoice, that’s fine, make yourchoices, but I can’t be affected byit.’” That was the last time he beatsomeone up outside the ring.

He got a bachelor’s degree in2000; the next year he moved toChicago to take the gig at theMultiplex, where he quickly grewfrustrated with the solipsism of hisworkouts. “I asked myself, Whatthe hell am I doing this for?” hesays. “I felt like something wasmissing.” Soon he was studyingjujitsu with Carlson Gracie, uncleof Rorion and Royce, at theCarlson Gracie Jiu-Jitsu Academyin the Old Town Fitplex, which isowned by the Multiplex.

One summer day in 2001 apromoter stopped by the CarlsonGracie Academy to announce anMMA tournament called theIron Heart Crown scheduled forthat November in Hammond,Indiana. Bonnar signed up onthe spot. “I just entered that fightout of boredom,” he says. “Ialways knew that once you haveto face competition, you get

more serious about training.” He took up boxing to prepare,

training with local coach JoeKaehn. In his first match, inNovember, Bonnar forced twoopponents to tap out in one night,

winning the Iron Heart title. The next year Bonnar decided

to sharpen his boxing skills bysigning up in the novice divisionof the Golden Gloves competi-tion, which is for boxers with

fewer than ten career fights.“Once I went in there, I stoppedmy first opponent in the firstround,” he says. “The next week,it was a big dude. Like 6'8". Iended up stopping him in the

first round. . . . Third week, cameback and fought a tough guy. Itwas probably the hardest I’veever been hit. He hit me with abomb, I went down. I got back

Bonnar



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Recently the sport has entered the mainstream media with its own reality series, The Ultimate Fighter, on the cable channel Spike TV. By the end of the first season it was attracting two million viewers per week.



up and ended up beating him.”He went on to win the finals,becoming the Senior NoviceChicago Golden Gloves SuperHeavyweight Champion. “Isensed I was either pretty goodor pretty lucky,” he says.

In September 2003 Bonnarwent to Brazil for an MMAmatch against Lyoto Machida, anexpert in Muay Thai, a particu-larly tough form of kickboxingthat focuses on elbow jabs andknee kicks. Bonnar was unfamil-iar with the style, and Machidawas the first southpaw he’dfaced. Still, he held his ownbefore Machida caught his eyeand opened a cut. The refstopped the action, givingMachida the win, though Bonnarsays he might have had a chanceif his cornerman hadn’t forgottenthe Vaseline to close the wound.

That fight taught Bonnar animportant lesson: “You’ve got totrain for your opponents.” Afterthat he made a point of learninghis competitors’ strengths andtraining in their specialties, evenif meant traveling to find a suit-able coach (“It’s hard to findsouthpaw Thai boxers with goodskills in Chicago”).

Bonnar won his next three bouts.

B rown, a producer for FoxNews Chicago, met Bonnar

five years ago, when she was hispersonal-training client. “Heused to make me sit and watchthese tapes [of UFC fights],” shesays. “But guys watch football—it

doesn’t mean they’re going toplay it!”

Bonnar spends an average of18 hours a week working out—some days he visits the gymtwice. Running, lifting weights,sparring, and grappling are allparts of his routine, designed tostrip the contemplation from hisfighting. “A lot of MMA is purereaction, so you need to get yourtraining to that point,” he says.“If you take a second to think,you’ll get caught. You don’t havethe time to think.”

A few weeks after Bonnarreturned from Las Vegas, he wasjoined for a training session atthe Fitplex by a brawny blackbelt in Brazilian jujitsu namedGustavo Gussiem. They took tothe floor in shorts and T-shirts,their limbs intertwined in whatlooked like an aggressive game ofTwister. Gussiem pushed Bonnardown and they locked armstightly. Then, quickly, Bonnarturned Gussiem over, gaining thetop position. Long limbs flewexplosively, then it was over, andGussiem was saying, “No, no, doit this way, make sure you dothis.” They returned to the start-

ing position and repeated thewhole sequence 50 or 60 times,for well over an hour, makingtiny changes—though it washard to see any differencebetween one try and the next.Later Bonnar said that therewere a million things he wasdoing wrong. “Maybe I wasn’tclamping his arm down enough,or maybe I didn’t have one hookhigh enough in the grip of hisknee, or maybe I didn’t have onefoot far off enough,” he said.“Maybe I was making it like aone-two-three-step processinstead of just doing everythingall at once. Whenever you learn anew technique you have torepeat it 100 times or so untilyou get it right.”

Today’s UFC looks very differ-ent from the scrappy league

that formed a decade ago. Theold fights were free-for-alls, withprohibitions only against eyegouging, biting, and strangling.There were no weight classes.The slogan of the UFC back thenwas “Two men enter, one leaves.”The violence was often intense,though there has been only one

reported MMA-related death, inKiev in 1998. Still, the sportcaught the unwanted attentionof Senator John McCain, whowas sent a video of a fight in1996. The senator wrote lettersto 50 governors calling ultimatefighting “human cockfighting”and urging them to ban it intheir states. Most of them did,and the bouts moved to smalllocal venues, primarily inAlabama, Colorado, Kansas,South Dakota, and Wyoming—none of which had state boxingcommissions at the time. DavidPlotz wrote in a 1999 Slate pieceof attending a match “in theparking lot of a small Mississippicasino.” In 1997 McCain, thenthe chairman of the SenateCommerce Committee, whichoversees the cable TV industry,pressured pay-per-view carriersto drop MMA events, driving thesport even deeper underground,where it grew less regulated andmore violent.

Then in 2001, Lorenzo andFrank Fertitta, executives atStation Casinos in Las Vegas,bought the dying league andattempted a radical turnaround

of the sport. Dana White, a for-mer boxer, trainer, and sportsagent who’s now the UFC presi-dent, also bought a share. Thenew owners instituted rules andgovernance. A long list of pro-hibited moves was developed,including head butting and groinkicking. Formal weight classeswere instituted.

The Ultimate Fighter broughtthe UFC to a general audience.Bonnar, with his boyish looksand air of normalcy, was cast assoon as the producers took a lookat his tape, which featured high-lights from his fights and aninterview conducted by Brown.“I had a feeling I had some cast-ing potential,” Bonnar says. “Iknew they weren’t looking forthe stereotypical hard, toughguy. . . . I knew that looking atme, they’d say, ‘You don’t looklike a fighter, but you can fight.’”

Next to his castmates—hot-head Chris Leben, egomaniacJosh Koscheck, disgruntledBobby Southworth, unhingedDiego Sanchez—the clean-cut,friendly Bonnar came off like aBoy Scout. “He’s such an even-tempered, mild-mannered guy,”says Brown. “The first thing any-one says when they meet him, itdoesn’t matter if it’s a guy or it’s agirl, they will say, ‘That guy is afighter? He’s so nice.’”

In his quest to learn as manyfighting styles as possible,

Bonnar has bought a minivan forcross-country travel so he cantrain with various experts. This

Bonnar


In such a small world, opponents are likely to know each other: when the final bell rangBonnar and Griffin embraced. At the end of the night they shared an ambulance to the emergency room.


week he’s in Boston, studyingMuay Thai. The trip will also sat-isfy Bonnar’s wanderlust, inspiredby John Steinbeck’s Travels WithCharlie, which he read five yearsago. “He just turned his truckinto a little apartment and trav-eled the country and met peopleand saw different cultures andsaw everything that America hadto offer,” says Bonnar. “It’s whatfreedom’s all about.”

Bonnar’s next televised boutwill be on August 6, in Las Vegas,broadcast on Spike TV’s UltimateFight Night Live. His opponentwill be one of his UltimateFighter castmates, Sam Hoger.“I’m going to give him a beating,”

Bonnar says. “I’ve got a strategy.He’s got pretty good standup andhis jujitsu’s good on the ground,but he’s not the best with histakedowns and his clench.”

The longest MMA careers lasttill a fighter is in his 40s. Bonnaris 28. He thinks he might have afuture in Muscle ActivationTherapy and might teach martialarts on the side. Fighting, hesays, “is a big part of my life rightnow, but it’s not something I canhang on to and identify myselfas . . . because you can’t do it for-ever. Eventually your skills aregonna go and you’ll get old, andthere just has to be more to youthan that.” v

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ed Br ute - Chicago Reader · 2009-07-16 · ed Br ute Ultimate F igh tin g co nt ender St ephan Bonnar Jak e A ... But there were flashes of other fighting techniques: Muay Thai,