The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment (2 page)

So, per your desire—or that of your loved one—this book will guide you through the most important steps to get you exactly what you want: to be more like me. This is no community college underwater-basket-weaving class, so don’t kid yourself. The learning curve is steep, my thoughts are deep, and like any teacher-cum-celebrity author, I want you to come away from your journey as informed as possible so you don’t end up embarrassing me later when you say, “Chael taught me that.” So, before we really get going, I want you to go grab the following items:

1. A pen.
To make
copious
notes and record your personal reflections when I blow your mind. No pencils. Do you see me printing my books in a medium that I can erase later? No. My word is permanent, and so should what you were thinking
contemporaneously
as you read my brilliant manifesto.

2. A dictionary.
I use many big words that you will not know because our education system has failed you. You
love
watching people cockfight—and sometimes you even compound the joy by guzzling beer and scarfing down nachos that are all saucy trimmings and no nacho—so it’s time to at least be honest with yourself that the little story you tell people about scoring in the ninetieth percentile on the verbal portion of your SATs is about as authentic as Donald Cerrone’s little cowboy bit (more on that later).

3. A map.
You will be following me around the world, and I am
not
there to take your hand and walk you to the nearest payphone if you get lost.

4. Your favorite photo of me
to serve as a reminder of what you will become. No, the book jacket doesn’t count. If you cut up, mangle, or even remove the book jacket from the book, I will consider that vandalism of my personal property. Now you’ve just offended the guy you want to be like. Self-hater. (If you bought the paperback and thus don’t have a book jacket, I hope it’s because you’re a kid with a lousy allowance.)

5. A moderate amount of reasonably
healthy
snacks,
like gorp (don’t pretend you don’t know that gorp is trail mix, you treehugger). I don’t want you running away from the chance of a lifetime just because your stomach rumbles, and I don’t want you to go crying to people later, saying that my book made you fat and useless. I am not, nor have I ever been, to blame for anything that might’ve made you drunk-dial your pals Ben and Jerry. What happens to you on your watch is your own fault. Stock up and strap in.

6. A
Tyrannosaurus rex
flying a fighter jet.
I just want it for my own purposes, so render unto Sonnen that which is Sonnen’s.

7. A beverage that will be suitable for drinking games.
Yes, there will be drinking games. For example, every time I mention Brazil, you take a shot. You will be drinking a lot throughout the book.
^*

That’s about all you’ll need for now. I might remember something else over the course of this book as my brain uncoils, and if I do, run and get it but don’t stop reading. It will teach you how to multitask. If you end up running into a pole or tripping on your plastic toy soldiers, you’ll learn the hard way to be a multitasker. If you run into oncoming traffic, you’re a couple of IQ points below a cactus, but you get points for dedication. So are you ready to go? Let’s start turning you into me.

know you can’t see me, sitting there in your badly lit basement, surrounded by your five cats and a permanent odor that would cause anyone who dared descend into your living space to ask if you recently cooked broccoli, but I wanted to let you know that although I am about to take you on a journey through the professional MMA world, I am not wearing tour-guide attire, nor will I be holding your clammy hand. If you are wondering if I am qualified to be your Sherpa on this little voyage, I can most assuredly say that I am. I have been around this whole crazy ultimate fighting thing for a while now, and my involvement runs deeper than just being the man on the microphone or the Adonis-like warrior slaughtering his enemies in the cage.

You see, I’ve played many roles in the sport, so I have some perspective. For your sake, I am not going to take you to an event where I stacked chairs.
^*

I’m going to take you to the big show, where yours truly is the man of the hour. I’m going to take you to one of my fights. You know, one of those events where I actually hit, get hit, hope to win, possibly lose. You packed? Got everything? Make sure—I don’t want you knocking on my hotel room door the morning of the fight with a dry toothbrush or wet armpits, asking to bum some toothpaste or deodorant. I’m gonna be dealing with my own problems then.

So get in the truck. Sit in the back and leave me alone. Oh, and make sure to put on your seatbelt. The last thing I need is some trooper pulling me over on the way to the airport because you are bouncing around in the back like my five-year-old nephew.

When I hear some windbag game-show contestant list “traveling” as one of his favorite things in his twelve-second mini-bio, I want to slap him because it is glaringly obvious he doesn’t travel much. Traveling pretty much sucks in every fashion. But if you want to fight for a living, you’ve got to travel. A fellow UFC fighter isn’t going to come to your hometown, barge through your front door, and start swinging while you’re standing in the kitchen in your footie pajamas, enjoying a cup of hot cocoa. And Dana White certainly isn’t going to hand you a big check afterward (unless you fellas have an “arrangement” that I don’t want to know about). You have to go where the action is, and that’s always somewhere other than home. So come on, we’re already running late.

“Long-term” (a.k.a. “cheap”) parking is so far away from the terminal that I might as well walk to the airport from my house. So we troll the “short-term” (a.k.a. “expensive”) lot, desperately looking for somewhere to ditch the truck. My cornermen, or “support team,” are all with me. But being too cheap/lazy/entitled to drive themselves to the airport, they expect me to be their door-to-door limo driver, and I, a willing accomplice in my own destruction, have obliged them. I picked up one deadbeat in front of his trailer, another from his ex-wife’s house (don’t ask), and one at our gym. I’m starving, tired, late, and annoyed and can’t find a parking spot.

There’s one! Finally! Wait …

Compact Cars Only

Hmmmm. … While I am out of town getting beat up, is there any way the parking police will look at my dual-rear-axle crew-cab pickup truck and think to themselves, “I know it is not exactly a compact car, but it is compact compared to what Chael P. Sonnen
should
be driving, which is one of those bright yellow monster tractor-trucks you see crawling down the sides of diamond mines. I think we’ll let it slide”?

It’s a gamble, and the last thing I want is to come back to an empty parking space and a big towing bill to go along with my black eyes and split lip. I drive past the open space and then streak along, like a mindless comet hurtling to the outer reaches of the galaxy, my rearview an endless sea of compacts assembled in Asia. The terminal is now so far away, it is but a distant memory.

Finally we spot an open parking space—a garbage-strewn square lacking even the dignity of painted stripes—alongside an overflowing Dumpster. I park on top of Dixie cups, aluminum cans, and a small, white mound that is unquestionably a half-deteriorated diaper (or sumo attire … No, we’re in America, it’s a diaper). My loyal companions and I get out and begin shambling toward the terminal. I can’t help noticing that on the other side of a small fence, not more than five feet away, there are a bunch of empty spaces in the long-term lot, which we have now traveled far enough to reach and would have cost me thirty dollars less per day.

As we trudge along from a lot too far for even the airport shuttle bus to patrol, I balefully wonder what my guys managed to forget this time. Two hours before the fight will I see that desperate, glazed look in their eyes as it dawns on them that they’ve forgotten my mouthpiece? It’s happened. I can see my mouthpiece now in my mind’s eye—fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of custom-made tooth protection that required numerous appointments and multiple fittings—sitting forlornly, neglected and forgotten, on the desk at our gym, next to some idiot’s spit-cup of tobacco juice. That particular idiot, who forgot my mouthpiece the last time, is ambling next to me now, lost in his usual incognizant haze. I can only hope he’s remembered my mouthpiece this time. The only thing I know for sure is that he’s remembered to bring his supply of chewin’ tobacco. I can see it, stored in his back pocket for easy access. He’s also got a wad of it stuffed into his bottom lip. He’s leaving a brown saliva trail as we walk (possibly useful for finding my truck when we fly back, but terribly disgusting). Although I may lose my teeth this weekend, I am comforted by the knowledge that soon enough he will most certainly lose his teeth as well, without anyone even having to hit him.