Fighter's Mind, A by Sam Sheridan Read Free Book Online Page A

win.

THE TENTH WEAPON OF MUAY THAI
     

    Mark DellaGrotte making weight in Thailand. (Courtesy: Mark DellaGrotte)

    I dutifully followed my annoying, oblivious GPS through the ice-black back streets of Cambridge, Massachusetts, into Somerville. Somehow that little box knew what it was doing and I ended up where I was supposed to be, on the broad street of Broadway. The gym nestled underneath a lawyer’s office, on a street littered with dive bars, dry cleaners, and lawyers. I walked to the small, nearly hidden side door, and as I pulled it open a wave of humidity roiled out into the cold winter air.
    I had been to Sityodtong Academy before, to shoot an interview for the Boston Globe, but the place had been empty. Now it was packed. Sityodtong Boston (the other is in Pattaya, Thailand) is a tiny gym with astoundingly low ceilings—just when you think they couldn’t get lower there’s a beam that is even closer to your head. There are several places where if I bounced too hard I might ding the top of my skull. There was a dense crush of humanity—all men, almost all young, nearly all Massholes, and the air was swampy with their breath. There were three different levels of muay Thai going, and there were probably a hundred guys training in a gym that was crowded when it had thirty guys in it. It felt like a slave-ship hold, or a submarine. If there was a fire about five people would make it out and the rest would burn or suffocate, bodies stacking up, jamming the door . . .
    Mark DellaGrotte came out and shook my hand, and he was warm and welcoming in that Boston way. He laughed and said with his heavy accent, “I feel like we know each other although we never met,” which was true because I had seen him fight and watched him coach on TV, and he’d read my book.
    Mark is a young, pleasant-looking guy with dark hair and an easy smile, an obvious Italian background. His eyes are bright and watchful, often underneath a Kangol cap, a little old-school Boston street. Mark’s been extremely successful with adapting muay Thai for MMA; he’s become known as one of the best pure striking coaches in the game and a great tactician. The fighters he coaches were on a vicious winning streak in the UFC, something like 9-0 when I showed up. He’s doing something right.
    He set me up with one of his coaches, a guy who was smaller than me and “with great control,” just to mess around, and we had a good time, just playing. I thought of how things had changed since MFS, when Pat had thrown me in with Tim Sylvia. Of course, every now and then someone might land a clean leg kick, which would garner a harder kick in return, but we kept it pretty civil. Mark wanted me to have fun and be happy—but he also wanted me to be out of the way, not to get mashed by his top guys or spazz out and hurt someone with fights coming. He was everywhere at once, listening to complaints, hollering advice, keeping time. I was a little amazed about how extended he was, doing everything himself, but he seemed to thrive on it.
     
    Over the next couple of weeks I hung around and talked to Mark when I could, and I got to know him a little. His gym is in the basement of his father’s law office, and he grew up right in the area. He talks about his youth with a little reservation. “I grew up with a bunch of rough kids. A lot of them are either dead or in jail, and I was on both sides of the fence. I had friends who were troubled, but we weren’t broke and we were raised well. Every time one of my friends got into trouble, I’d go hide in the gym.”
    Mark credits traditional martial arts with keeping him straight, “on the right path.” Mark met guru Guy Chase and studied the “Inosanto curriculum.” Dan Inosanto was Bruce Lee’s greatest student, and his curriculum is a combination of many arts: jeet kune do (Bruce Lee’s hybrid fighting style, which combines a dozen traditional arts with Western boxing), pencak silat (an Indonesian hybrid martial