Uncaged Read online




  Copyright © 2012 by Frank Shamrock and Charles Fleming

  Foreword copyright © 2012 by Mickey Rourke

  All rights reserved

  First edition

  Published by Chicago Review Press, Incorporated

  814 North Franklin Street

  Chicago, Illinois 60610

  ISBN 978-1-61374-465-9

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shamrock, Frank.

  Uncaged : my life as a champion mma fighter / Frank Shamrock and Charles Fleming ; foreword by Mickey Rourke.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-1-61374-465-9 (hardcover)

  1. Shamrock, Frank. 2. Martial artists—United States—Biography. 3. Mixed martial arts—United States. I. Fleming, Charles. II. Title.

  GV1113.S52A3 2012

  796.8092—dc23

  [B]

  2012021340

  Interior design: Jonathan Hahn

  All photographs courtesy of Frank Shamrock, Inc. unless otherwise noted.

  Printed in the United States of America

  5 4 3 2 1

  This book is dedicated to my loving wife, Amy, who stole my heart the day we met and has never once offered to return it.

  And to my amazing children, Frankie and Nicolette: you have taught me so much about living.

  CONTENTS

  FOREWORD BY MICKEY ROURKE

  INTRODUCTION

  1 CHILDHOOD

  2 WARD OF THE COURT

  3 SHAMROCK BOYS RANCH

  4 JAIL

  5 THE LION’S DEN

  6 JAPAN

  7 PANCRASE AND THE ROOTS OF MMA

  8 GOING SOLO

  9 AMERICAN CHAMPION

  10 GOING HOLLYWOOD

  11 FEUDS AND THE FIGHT BUSINESS

  12 FIGHTING BARONI, ORTIZ, AND CUNG LE

  13 FATHERHOOD

  14 RETIREMENT

  15 FIGHT NO MORE

  16 COMING TO TERMS

  17 THE MARTIAL WAY

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  INDEX

  FOREWORD

  Frank Shamrock started out life in a very hard and unfortunate way. He was more interested in reading books and expanding his mind than in hanging out with the other toughs and fighting in the streets. Perhaps those lonely early years molded him into the unique fighting champion he became, understanding that only through hard work, dedication, and a disciplined work ethic could one compete at such a high level. Developing, exploring, and studying the scientific aspects as well as the physical demands of fighting gave him an edge over the others. His brains; his unconditional competitive nature; his outstanding physical attributes, which he honed and developed; his conditioning; and his technique all added up to an arsenal that armed him for his struggle to succeed. I’m speaking of everything from learning how to relax to turning up the gas and finishing off his opponents.

  Watching Frank fight over the years, I’ve noticed that he was so confident and relaxed, you could see him enjoying the moment. His charisma and bravado, although it angered others at times, garnered him millions of fans. To me, Frank is foremost an early legend of the UFC. It’s unfortunate that we weren’t able to see many of his early Pancrase bouts against all of the Japanese legends. Since Frank was a pioneer of the sport, we didn’t get to see him as much as we get to see the fighters we enjoy so much today, now that the sport has expanded so much. But later in his career, his exhilarating fight against the bigger and stronger Tito Ortiz once again put Shamrock on the map, cementing his hall-of-fame status in the UFC. His mesmerizing and overwhelming pummeling of Phil Baroni let us see Shamrock’s offbeat character once again as he mimed to Baroni, “I’m putting you to sleep now.”

  I was at Frank’s last fight in Sacramento, sitting in the dressing room as he was smiling after the rising UFC star Nick Diaz had badly beaten him up. It was very obvious in that fight that age and all the past battles had caught up with him, and Father Time was giving him his walking papers. The reflexes and timing were just not there, and no matter how hard one trains, they don’t come back. It took me back to my boxing career, when my old trainer Bill Slayton said, “We’re all going to fight one last time—we just don’t know when that night is going to be.”

  Frank Shamrock is definitely one of my favorite MMA fighters of all time and will continue to be. Of course, I would rather see him inside the ring than out, with his career and battle scars plastered across that handsome face. Shamrock has definitely given his all to the growth and popularity of the UFC or MMA, however you want to categorize it. I also love the fact that Frank ain’t shy about how to have a good time outside of the ring—sometimes a bit too much of a good time.

  If I ever needed Frank, day or night, wherever he was, he would be there for me in a heartbeat. I love that man like a brother.

  —MICKEY ROURKE

  INTRODUCTION

  Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one.

  —BRUCE LEE

  I grew up in rural California, raised by a single mom with four kids. My dad had left us when I was three, which was OK with me. I didn’t remember him anyway. Truthfully, I could never remember all that much about my early childhood. I do remember being hungry. I was always hungry. Our family survived on state welfare and I was a very active child. I felt like I was starving all the time.

  I also remember being locked in the closet for hours. This was a common punishment administered by my stepdad, Joe. The punishments got more severe as I got older, but as a little boy nothing was scarier than that linen closet. I was a timid child, soft-spoken and shy. I was afraid of the dark. Joe knew this and used it to his advantage, making an example out of me so the rest of the kids would stay in line. I spent countless evenings sobbing quietly in the dark, staring at the tiny light around the door hinges, listening to my family having dinner or watching a movie or sharing a laugh without me. It was a stabbing reminder of all that was wrong with me.

  I was lucky. According to the state shrink, I was really smart and just unchallenged in academics. Yeah, that was my problem—I wasn’t challenged at school. I never told anyone about the punishments; not my shrink, not anyone. We didn’t talk about what happened in our family.

  School was my only escape. I loved learning and reading. Even though I was bullied and teased for being an emotional and intellectual freak, I just could not get enough of school. I would read every schoolbook for every class attended as soon as I got them. Books became my life; the characters in the stories became my only friends. My life sucked. My family sucked. I would have done anything to get away from them.

  When I was twelve, I broke the law and found a way out. Armed with a junior high school education and parented by the state of California, I left home and never returned.

  This is the story of what happened to that little boy, a story that I have always wanted to tell the world but didn’t have the courage to. This is the truth about what a person can endure and still blossom.

  I wrote this book to give strength to the human spirit. My hopes are that it gives a voice to a child who is afraid to speak, inspiration to those who are challenged, and motivation to help yourself and fellow human beings. I also hope that these words show you that nothing is impossible if you never give up your dreams.

  I believe that there is a champion in all of us. No matter the circumstances, each and every human being should be encouraged to achieve excellence in life. You should live your own dreams.

  Words and love hold powers unimaginable. I share them both with you now.

  1

  CHILDHOOD

  My earliest memories are of living under a train trestle. Our apartment in Redding, California, was in a big building, and the trestle was the most enormous thing you ca
n imagine—huge and loud, and right over our heads. The trains would go by and the whole world would fill up with a mechanical, quaking sound.

  Redding is the star of Shasta County, sitting in the Central Valley of California, the rich agricultural flatland that is scooped out of the middle of the state. Located exactly halfway between the Mexican and Canadian borders, and wrapped around the Sacramento River, it was a kind of dumping ground and very diverse. It was all poor people, mostly whites and blacks and some Latinos, and everybody was living on welfare. My family must have stood out—my white, redheaded mother and her gang of Mexican-looking kids. My real dad was long gone.

  My mom, Lydia, was a hippie chick, a flower child from Los Angeles. She had grown up in a strict family of Jehovah’s Witnesses. Her father was an engineer, a straight-arrow sort of guy, but her mother was a little wild. She liked to drink and party. So she left her husband and ran off with an alcoholic named Nelson. My mom went from being a rich, private-school girl from a stable and normal home to living in a trailer park with two addicts. Her family and father were not Jehovah’s Witnesses at all, but her mother, Jackie, got obsessed with the religion and ran off with a church elder. He, in turn, was especially mean to her. They were fanatical about the religion, or what they called the “truth.” After that, Lydia and her brother, Mike, spent their youth in the back of a station wagon while their mother went door to door preaching the word. Their new home was a single-wide trailer with a built-on addition for her brother.

  She met my dad at a Jehovah’s Witnesses church assembly. He was Mexican. His name was Frank Alicio Juarez II. His family were all Jehovah’s Witnesses, too, and they lived in Lancaster, out in the desert north of Los Angeles. Frank was good-looking, very dark with Mexican-Indian features, and he worked with his hands. Lydia had already had my older brother, Perry, and I am pretty sure was pregnant with my sister Robynn when she got together with Frank. I never knew anything about their father; he was gone before Frank came along.

  Soon Lydia was pregnant with me. I was born on December 18, 1972. Nine months later, my mom and Frank had another child, my little sister, Suzy. But soon after that, Frank left, too. My mom was a young single mother, without any job skills and without any higher education. She had started having kids when she was sixteen, before she even finished high school, mainly so she could leave her mom. So now she was living on welfare with four children under six years old in a crummy apartment building under a train trestle in Redding, California.

  For a while she had a relationship with another man, whom I think she married. But pretty soon he was gone, too, and it was just us again.

  My memories are cloudy, very scattered but happy. We were always together—me, my mom, and my brother and sisters. We didn’t mix much with outsiders, but we had each other. We liked being together and we always had fun. I remember going to a preschool surrounded with manzanita trees. I remember playing under the train trestle with Perry. There was a creek there, and a kind of wild area on the other side. After a while we found out there was a golf course past the overgrowth. We started sneaking onto the golf course to find lost golf balls and turn them in for money.

  My mother had always been a pretty happy person, and even in our meager circumstances we were a pretty happy family. She always had food on the table, and we were always doing things together.

  I was a happy kid, very energetic and physical. I was also smart. One day I was going to kindergarten, then the next day I wasn’t. I don’t know exactly what happened, but my mom had come to school to talk to the teachers, the next day I was in first grade. Somehow I had already learned all the stuff you were supposed to learn in kindergarten. I don’t remember learning it. I just remember knowing it.

  I liked learning, and I liked being in school. But I wasn’t a popular kid. I had no social skills. Maybe because my family was close, I had no training in being with unfamiliar people. I was awkward. I had bowl-cut hair, and I wore goofy, used pants. I was kind of chubby, too, until I was seven or eight. I came from the poor family with the hippie mom. I wasn’t ashamed of any of it. But I felt different, and I was aware that I was outside the circle. I just felt a little off.

  Then my mom met Joe.

  I think they met at a bar, some local dive in Anderson. Joe was personable and energetic—very energetic. He was popping and snapping and moving a mile a minute, and my mom said, “This is the man for me.”

  For a kid like me, with no father and no man around and no male role models, Joe was supercool. He was always moving, always talking. He got things done. He was good with his hands and with machines. He had been in the military, gone to Vietnam, and he had learned to work on engines. He had an appliance-repair business and a utility truck with tons of boxes and drawers built in the sides. It said JOE’S APPLIANCE SERVICE on it.

  So when we found out we were moving in with him in Anderson, I was happy. We left the apartment building under the trestle and moved into a nice house on a nice street, just like a regular family. Joe had money, and he had a job. He had a daughter, Michelle, and she seemed nice. We were all going to live together in this four-bedroom house with a big backyard, on a street with mature trees, near a school and a park. It was a huge step up for my family. It seemed like we were going to be OK.

  But pretty soon it seemed like maybe we weren’t.

  Being around Joe was exciting at first. He was cool. He smoked Camel nonfiltered cigarettes. But we soon learned he was a very controlling guy. He liked things his way, and his way was strict. There was no cussing allowed. You couldn’t watch TV without permission. You couldn’t watch TV during the day. Even my mom couldn’t watch soap operas—he hated them. No eating between meals. No taking food that wasn’t yours.

  He and my mom never entertained, and we never had people over to the house. I wasn’t allowed to bring friends home. I wasn’t allowed to invite someone to spend the night. I wasn’t allowed to have a sleepover at someone else’s house, either. We didn’t do that. The family was the family, and you stayed inside the family, and you never let anyone inside the family.

  If you weren’t doing what he wanted, he’d let you know. If you were hanging around and bugging him, he’d push you across the room and tell you to get out. Even when he was being affectionate, it was kind of violent. He never hugged anyone, or touched anyone with kindness. But he’d hit you in the side of the head and say, “Go on—get out of here.” That was his way of showing affection.

  If you did something wrong, he was the one who’d punish you— with a belt. The punishment was very controlled, too. It was event-based. You did something wrong, you were going to get swats with the belt.

  There was other abuse, too. He had learned to hate certain kinds of people in Vietnam. So when he wanted to demean you, he’d call you names. You were a “fucking idiot,” or a “fucking jerk.” If he was really mad, you were a “fucking nigger” or a “zipperhead.” That was about the worst thing you could be. With me, he was often angry because I was dirty, or I had lost something, or I had gotten into trouble at school. He’d call me those names and spank me.

  I was scared of him, all the time. He made me feel small and weak. He’d sit across from me at the table, with his hands under the table, and ask me questions. If he didn’t like the answer, he’d whip his hand out and slap me upside the head. It was like some sort of interrogation torture. You never knew what was the right answer, or the wrong answer, or when you were going to get smacked next. But you had to stay at the table and answer his questions.

  If I had done something really bad, he had other punishments. Sometimes he’d make me kneel in the hall with my nose against the wall. I’d stay there for hours. How long depended on what I’d done—like eaten a piece of fruit from the kitchen that wasn’t mine, or left some dirty clothes on the floor. He would also check on me periodically to see if my nose was on the wall. I would always listen closely to see if I could hear him walking on the carpet. If I thought the coast was clear, I would rest on my heels
, a big no-no that would bring more time in the hallway or a trip to the closet.

  Sometimes the punishment was worse. There was a linen closet down the hall. Joe would make me go down there and take all the towels and sheets out of it and put them on the floor. Then he’d make me climb up on the shelf and squeeze in there, and he’d lock it from the outside. Then he and the others would do something fun, like watch a movie on TV or something, and leave me locked in the closet for two or three hours. Sometimes I fell asleep. When I woke up I didn’t know where I was, and I felt scared.

  Sometimes the torment was just psychological, and you didn’t even know what it was for. One Christmas, I wanted a foot scooter. I really wanted it. I bugged my mom, and bugged Joe—please, please, can I have it? Will you buy it for me? Joe finally lost his temper and told me to shut up about it or I wouldn’t get anything.

  When Christmas came, I could see that he’d bought it for me. It was all wrapped up, but I knew from the shape what it was. I was dying to open it, but Joe told me I had to go last. So I waited while my brother and sisters opened all their presents. I was dying with excitement.

  Finally it was my turn. I grabbed the present and ripped the paper off. Inside was an old vacuum cleaner. Joe had wrapped it up and made it look like the scooter I wanted, just to trick me. He saw the look on my face and started screaming with laughter. I’d never seen him laugh so hard. Everyone else started laughing, too. So I started screaming, too, and crying. I tried to run away. Joe grabbed me. He told me to calm down. He said my real present was in the garage. He actually had bought me the scooter I’d been dreaming about. But now I didn’t want it. I didn’t want anything, especially anything from him. I was so mad and so hurt that I didn’t want any Christmas presents at all.

  Joe fought with my mom, too. I didn’t realize it at the time, because I didn’t know anything about the world, but he was an alcoholic. He’d get tanked up and come home to fight. I never saw him drinking, because he did it outside the house, but I saw the effects. He’d come home and start needling my mom and yelling at her. She was a very mellow person by nature. But after a while, he’d get under her skin and she’d lose it. She was always a very meek, mousy person. But she had a low emotional threshold when it came to communicating her feelings. She’d be really quiet, and then she’d explode. They’d start yelling and screaming, and then they’d start throwing things—plates and glasses and furniture. They’d smash the place all up, screaming the whole time. It was scary. It freaked me out to see my mom like that.