Well, $1,500 ain’t bad for 21 seconds of work.
That’s how long it took Eric Gerber to knock out Mike Barreras at last Saturday’s King of Kombat 4 cage-fighting event.
Before the bout, Barreras seemed by far the more fearsome fighter. Backstage at the Crockett Center, Gerber had come over to chat – you know, just a couple of pals about to beat the crap out of each other. Barreras said “hey” – there’s not a lot of tricked-up enmity in mixed-martial-arts fighting – but that was it. The four-time Division II wrestler from Albuquerque, N.M., wasn’t about to get friendly with a guy whose ass he was looking to kick. “We’re both trying to be the alpha male,” he said, retreating into menacing reticence.
For his part, Gerber seemed so mystically dreamy that you had to worry for his safety. While the other fighters on the card were psyching themselves up by throwing violent punches at the air, the Leander High School grad was talking about finding his center, about balancing himself, about being both the marble and the sculptor (not the sort of thing you should be trying at home). “I don’t want to inflict pain on anyone,” he explained, “but if I don’t fight, I don’t feel whole. I know that sounds lame, but it really just comes down to being the kind of man I want to be, and this is a responsible way to achieve that.”
In other words, whether you’re delivering or receiving one, a spinning back fist to the temple can be wonderfully therapeutic. Not that the Barreras-Gerber fight came to that. Before I even found my seat, it was over. If Barreras didn’t know what hit him, Gerber was equally surprised. “I was expecting a war,” he said. Instead, he didn’t break a sweat, bringing a stunned Barreras almost instantly to his knees. Gerber wasn’t complaining, though. “Hitting someone like that, it’s strangely satisfying. It just validates everything you’re doing with your life. You feel like you’ve hit a home run at life.”
The interesting thing is, even guys taking the hits and losing fights seem to share Gerber’s sentiments. Well, perhaps not Barreras. But Rocky Long was almost incoherent with pride despite taking a relentless beating from Johnny Bedford two fights later.
“You’re a fucking warrior, Rocky!” Bedford and his boys were telling Long after the decision. “You’re a tough motherfucker!”
Long had to agree. “No shame, no shame!” he exulted, his white trunks now pink with blotches of blood – his blood. “The whole time, I was like: ‘Man! That son of a bitch hit me again!’ But I hung in there. He wasn’t going to knock me out.”
I think Long and Gerber are on to something here. In a culture that leaves men fewer and fewer ways to affirm their manhood beyond driving ridiculously large trucks and sporting increasingly baroque hairdos, maybe we just need to get our clocks cleaned every now and again.
You might even make a cool $1,500 in the bargain.
This article appears in August 1 • 2008.