The Voice of Reason: A V.I.P. Pass to Enlightenment Read online

  First Published in 2012 by Victory Belt Publishing Inc.

  Copyright © 2012 Chael Sonnen

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

  ISBN 13: 978-1-936608-54-6

  This book is for entertainment purposes. The publisher and author of this book are not responsible in any manner whatsoever for any adverse effects arising directly or indirectly as a result of the information provided in this book.

  Table of Contents

  Foreword

  I Want to Be Just Like Chael Sonnen

  A Ride Along with Uncle Chael

  The Mean Streets of West Linn, Oregon

  Richard Nixon: Still My President—and Here’s Why

  It’s Not About Left And Right—It’s About Respect

  Greatness

  My Latest Invention

  Social Media

  Why, Exactly, Are We Keeping the White Rhinos Around?

  Don’t Become a Fighter to Make Page 6

  BFFs

  Ancient Knowledge

  On Today’s Menu: Sacred Cow

  Occupy And The Turkey Corollary

  Do Not Pass Go, Do Not Collect $200

  Walk This Way, But Never to That Song

  Don’t Get “Testy” with Me;

  or:

  How I Beat Anderson Silva

  Worse Than Any Man Has Ever

  Been Beaten but Lost to a

  Lab-Coat-Wearing Guy I Never Even Met

  New Does Not Always Mean Better

  Say What You Mean

  Don’t Trust Professional Athletes

  History of Wrestling and The Martial Arts

  A Moment to Laugh at Me

  Victimhood and Other Nonsense

  My Father

  A False Sense of Security

  Santa

  No Special Treatment for Terrorists

  We’ve Come This Far

  s you might imagine, I get contacted quite often by people requesting things, and the requests range from the mundane to the outlandish. I tend not to respond too frequently; when I do, I try to make my interest and involvement not only utilitarian but also as opaque as possible to avoid inviting even more requests, which my schedule would render impossible to address. Think Santa Claus has it tough? Imagine adding to his list of demanding customers the Jehovah’s Witnesses and pretty much anyone else with any religious affiliation who’s about to die and wants to be sure all his bases are covered.

  I do my best to keep you informed by placing learned men like Galileo, Copernicus, and Kepler among you, but quite honestly, there seems to be no way to disabuse you of the collective notion that you are the center of the universe, and therefore worthy of my constant attention and intervention. Knowing what I know, I feel I can be blunt about this: You are not the center of the universe. There are momentary exceptions, of course—Ben Hogan in 1953, Jim Morrison in 1968, Sia Furler singing “Destiny”—but overall, you guys, and your needs and problems, are not the first thing I think about when I get up in the morning. Don’t feel bad or get insulted—no reason to get all butt-hurt here. Although you are not the closest thing to my mind, you’re not the furthest, either. You’re just one of the many things I’ve got to handle from day to day.

  Being the Son of God, I’m needed in a hundred places at once, and it’s impossible to hold on to a decent assistant. The cell never stops ringing, but when I try to answer, it always seems that I’m in a place with really awful reception. Plus, my dad’s getting older—he’s stubborn as can be, still wants to do everything himself. He shouldn’t be driving at night anymore, but you can’t tell him a thing; he’s probably a lot like some of your fathers down there, calling to see how you’re doing but also wondering if you might be able to tell him how to recover a deleted email or use “the Google.”

  With that said, when Chael asked me to write the foreword to his book, I couldn’t say no. He’s one of my favorite people; he’s as sharp as a brand-new tack, funny, clever, and loyal. I stand behind whatever he says in this book, even when he contradicts himself completely and reverses his philosophical opinion over the course of five pages. I support whatever he says and the reasoning behind it, however elusive that may be to the normal, rational mind. After all, Chael has been a good friend and leaves me to my duties most of the time. And since it’s a little difficult to find good workout partners during my travels, it’s nice to know I can always drop in on him in Portland, throw on the ol’ singlet, and get a good workout with someone who trains hard, isn’t afraid to be honest with me, makes me laugh, and keeps my secrets. I love hanging out with him, and although he doesn’t know it yet, there’s a good chance that I’ll be spending a lot more time with him in the very near future.

  This is a really good book. I want to say the best book, but of course I can’t put it before that other great text. (I truly hope you all know which one I’m referring to here.) Chael’s manuscript is smart, funny, and most important, should help you make your own decisions and solve your own problems in my absence.

  XXOO

  (Chael, please edit out the hugs and kisses I gave at the end of my foreword. Realizing that some of your readers most likely won’t be walking through the Pearly Gates, I don’t feel it is an appropriate gesture. Oh, and make sure not to print this last part—Jesus.)

  “I want to be just like Chael Sonnen.”

  hat’s what all of you reading this are really thinking, even if you don’t yet have the self-awareness you’ll have by the end of this book. I mean, let’s be clear: you wouldn’t pick up a book by Chael Sonnen and shadily park yourself in the café of your local bookstore (don’t get me started on cafés in bookstores) to peruse the opening pages over your fat man’s latte, let alone buy this book, if you weren’t in some way interested in making your own thought patterns a little more like mine. Not that I blame you. I’m very pleased with the way I think.

  What if you were given this book as a gift? That’s simple. It means that someone very close to you wishes you were more like me, and that he or she found a perfect way to both give you a present and send you a message.

  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 an
d 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.

  Below is a list of some of the “other” jobs I’ve had in this wonderful sport:

  Cornerman

  Entourageur

  Unwitting bagman

  Uncompensated assistant

  Exploited, well-intentioned doofus

  Wearer of contracted T-shirts

  Brandisher of sponsors’ banners

  Stacker of chairs

  Deluded patsy

  Keen-eyed observer

  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.

  TRAVEL

  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.

  AIRPORT

  “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.

  I might sound a tad harsh, but in the fight game, having a properly fitted mouthpiece is a big deal. When this small bit of protective gear was forgotten before, I watched my guys in mute horror as they marshaled their feeble mental faculties and bumbled around desperately, searching for a dodgy sporting-goods store. The end result
? A five dollar boil-and-bite mouthpiece, like the one I had in Pop Warner Football, made out of cheap, hard plastic. A week-old orange rind would have fit in my mouth better, and it made me look like an amateur in his first Toughman fight. If there is a repeat of the missing-mouthpiece debacle this weekend, and I have to use another boil-and-bite, it will most likely fall out in the first round, and Joe Rogan, who misses nothing, will clown me about it to the vast PPV audience, which hangs on his every word. In addition, I will walk away from Saturday night with roasted gums.

  There is one thing I am absolutely certain they have not forgotten: focus mitts. If I can’t knock out a ninety-year-old narcoleptic with my Sunday-best sucker-punch, why am I going to warm up by punching mitts? Instead, I should warm up by practicing ducking underneath punches. Unlike me, my opponent can punch, and pretty damn well. I should focus on fine-tuning my specialty, which is grabbing guys, dumping them on their head, and then smothering them. So what’s up with all the focus mitts? I have really begun to suspect that my guys (in fact, every fighter’s “guys”) bring focus mitts because they like walking around backstage wearing them. It gives them a sense of worth, a feeling of belonging. But if they are wearing them, they will undoubtedly be yelling at me to hit them. They’ll shout out arcane numerical instructions, which are supposed to represent cryptic punching combinations known only by our little secret society of pugilistic initiates. My guys delusionally believe that these numbers will deceive my opponent, his entourage, or any intrigued backstage observer into believing: