Konan
12-29-2012, 08:38 AM
The return of Chris Leben at UFC 155 this weekend seems like as good a reason as any to reflect on the nature of sin and forgiveness in the world's biggest mixed martial arts promotion. Because Leben? Oh yes, he hath sinned. Several times, in fact.
Each time he is forgiven, washed clean by the passage of time and the loss of money and/or career opportunities, then eagerly welcomed back into the fold once his penance is complete. His crimes aren't forgotten, exactly, but neither are they used against him. He's been bad and he knows it. He's suffered just enough to deter him from repeating the same mistake. Maybe. Hopefully. We'll see.
It seems fairly obvious that if Leben were almost anyone else, he'd have been fired by now. If he acted like Leben outside the cage but fought like just another wall-and-stall point fighter inside it, the DUIs and the failed drug tests would have gotten him bounced out of the UFC a long time ago.
The good (and the bad) news is that he's never been a part-time Leben. He's an all-in kind of dude, fighting with a reckless disregard for health and safety that seems like it can't help but bleed into his personal life. He wades into punches like a man who is incapable of considering how he's going to feel in the morning. Should we be surprised that he sometimes takes the same approach to drugs and alcohol?
When I spoke to Leben for an article that's forthcoming in the UFC 155 pullout section in USA TODAY this week, he said he knew when he popped those oxycontin before his fight with Mark Munoz last November that he was probably dooming himself to a failed drug test. He understood that he was screwing up before he did it – even while he was doing it – and then he did it anyway. As he put it, "I was sick."
Or, to put it another way, he was an addict. He was using prescription painkillers "for physical and emotional pain," he said. He could tell how well things were going in his personal life by how many pills he was popping. Right around the time of the Munoz fight, things were not so great.
It's a good thing the UFC didn't cut him then. If he'd lost his job after all that, who knows what kind of spiral of despair Leben may have fallen into. Instead, according to Leben, the UFC paid to send him to a 30-day in-patient treatment program right after it suspended him for a year. He's been doing outpatient treatment ever since, he said, and he at least appears to have a better handle on the pattern of abuse and self-destruction that's been knocking him around like a tennis ball in the spin cycle for most of his career. For the moment, anyway.
But the thing is, now he has to find a way to be a part-time Leben. He has to keep being that reckless guy in the cage, but without being the same way outside of it, which might be tougher than any of us realize. It might even be tougher than Leben realizes, because to fight the way he does you have to be willing to walk hand-in-hand with disaster. You have to risk defeat, unconsciousness, total physical and emotional destruction – all of that. Then, once it's over, you have to find a way to deal with the ensuing depression without the comfort of pills and booze. Leben just wouldn't be Leben if he played it safe in his fights. And if he wasn't Leben in his fights, no way would the UFC have tolerated all this Leben-ness between them.
That's a tough spot to be in, though at least Leben seems to appreciate it for what it is. When he first started fighting, he said, it was with a lot of anger. He wanted to prove he was "worth something," since the default assumption in his life up to that point had always leaned the other direction. It's not an uncommon story in this sport. Not surprisingly, a lot of people who choose to beat people up for a living have come from some pretty dark emotional places to get here. As Leben likes to say, "Fighters are like strippers: we're not working our way through college."
Most haven't struggled with substance abuse the way Leben has. Then again, very few fight the way he does, with that raw, wide-open aggression, gobbling up pain as if it only gives him more ammunition to fire back at the man who gave it to him. He sins big, but he also atones big. His mistakes are rarely malicious ones. It's just that he's sometimes a little too Leben for his own good, which is what makes him so fun to watch. It's what makes him special. It's also, at least in part, what convinces the UFC that he's worth all the trouble.
Finding a way to keep one Leben and get rid of the other isn't going to be easy, but it's probably not supposed to be. It is, however, completely necessary. At 32, even the best-case scenario would only allow him to keep making a living as a fighter for the next, what, seven or eight years? It's the other Leben – the one who exists outside the cage – that he'll have to live with for the rest of his life.
Each time he is forgiven, washed clean by the passage of time and the loss of money and/or career opportunities, then eagerly welcomed back into the fold once his penance is complete. His crimes aren't forgotten, exactly, but neither are they used against him. He's been bad and he knows it. He's suffered just enough to deter him from repeating the same mistake. Maybe. Hopefully. We'll see.
It seems fairly obvious that if Leben were almost anyone else, he'd have been fired by now. If he acted like Leben outside the cage but fought like just another wall-and-stall point fighter inside it, the DUIs and the failed drug tests would have gotten him bounced out of the UFC a long time ago.
The good (and the bad) news is that he's never been a part-time Leben. He's an all-in kind of dude, fighting with a reckless disregard for health and safety that seems like it can't help but bleed into his personal life. He wades into punches like a man who is incapable of considering how he's going to feel in the morning. Should we be surprised that he sometimes takes the same approach to drugs and alcohol?
When I spoke to Leben for an article that's forthcoming in the UFC 155 pullout section in USA TODAY this week, he said he knew when he popped those oxycontin before his fight with Mark Munoz last November that he was probably dooming himself to a failed drug test. He understood that he was screwing up before he did it – even while he was doing it – and then he did it anyway. As he put it, "I was sick."
Or, to put it another way, he was an addict. He was using prescription painkillers "for physical and emotional pain," he said. He could tell how well things were going in his personal life by how many pills he was popping. Right around the time of the Munoz fight, things were not so great.
It's a good thing the UFC didn't cut him then. If he'd lost his job after all that, who knows what kind of spiral of despair Leben may have fallen into. Instead, according to Leben, the UFC paid to send him to a 30-day in-patient treatment program right after it suspended him for a year. He's been doing outpatient treatment ever since, he said, and he at least appears to have a better handle on the pattern of abuse and self-destruction that's been knocking him around like a tennis ball in the spin cycle for most of his career. For the moment, anyway.
But the thing is, now he has to find a way to be a part-time Leben. He has to keep being that reckless guy in the cage, but without being the same way outside of it, which might be tougher than any of us realize. It might even be tougher than Leben realizes, because to fight the way he does you have to be willing to walk hand-in-hand with disaster. You have to risk defeat, unconsciousness, total physical and emotional destruction – all of that. Then, once it's over, you have to find a way to deal with the ensuing depression without the comfort of pills and booze. Leben just wouldn't be Leben if he played it safe in his fights. And if he wasn't Leben in his fights, no way would the UFC have tolerated all this Leben-ness between them.
That's a tough spot to be in, though at least Leben seems to appreciate it for what it is. When he first started fighting, he said, it was with a lot of anger. He wanted to prove he was "worth something," since the default assumption in his life up to that point had always leaned the other direction. It's not an uncommon story in this sport. Not surprisingly, a lot of people who choose to beat people up for a living have come from some pretty dark emotional places to get here. As Leben likes to say, "Fighters are like strippers: we're not working our way through college."
Most haven't struggled with substance abuse the way Leben has. Then again, very few fight the way he does, with that raw, wide-open aggression, gobbling up pain as if it only gives him more ammunition to fire back at the man who gave it to him. He sins big, but he also atones big. His mistakes are rarely malicious ones. It's just that he's sometimes a little too Leben for his own good, which is what makes him so fun to watch. It's what makes him special. It's also, at least in part, what convinces the UFC that he's worth all the trouble.
Finding a way to keep one Leben and get rid of the other isn't going to be easy, but it's probably not supposed to be. It is, however, completely necessary. At 32, even the best-case scenario would only allow him to keep making a living as a fighter for the next, what, seven or eight years? It's the other Leben – the one who exists outside the cage – that he'll have to live with for the rest of his life.