I didn't start fighting because I loved it.I started fighting because I didn't want to watch someone I loved die again.
There's a lie people tell about fighters.
They say we're born with fire. Born with rage in our veins. Raised throwing punches in the crib, cracking knuckles before we can count.
Truth is, most of us were born soft.Scared. Quiet.Kids trying to survive in houses too loud to think in.
We didn't start fighting because we were tough.
We started fighting because no one ever fought for us.
I was thirteen when I watched my father get stomped half to death behind a liquor store.
It was summer. I remember that much. My shirt stuck to my back. I was holding a cheap ice cream bar in one hand and an empty wallet in the other. He had just finished panhandling outside a corner shop on the east side of Detroit. Some guy had told him to get a real job. My father said something slick. Too slick.
Two of them dragged him out back. I followed. Maybe I thought they'd just rough him up. Teach him a lesson.
But when the boots started flying—when they took turns aiming at his ribs like it was target practice—I realized this was different.
I didn't move. Didn't scream.
Just stood there.
My father looked at me once during the beating. Blood was in his mouth. One of his eyes was already swollen shut. He didn't look afraid. Just disappointed.
"Don't ever let this be you," he said. Then they kicked out a tooth.
He died three days later.
Not from the beating—though it didn't help.
From a .38 in his own mouth, in our kitchen, while I was asleep in the next room.
The cops told me he left a note. I never saw it. Didn't need to. I already knew what it would've said.
"I couldn't take it anymore."
After that, I didn't cry.Didn't talk much.Didn't sleep unless my back was against a wall.
Grief didn't hollow me out.It hardened me.
It made me understand the world in ways no child should:
If you're weak, you lose.
If you hesitate, you bleed.
And no one's coming to save you—not God, not police, not the older brother you don't have.
You either learn to hit back…Or you learn to stay down.
I found my first fight at fourteen. Not in a ring. Not on TV. Behind a storage unit near our school.
A kid named Bryce cut in front of me in the lunch line. I told him to fuck off. He shoved me.
I swung.
The moment my fist hit his cheekbone, something inside me clicked. Not pleasure—just clarity.
There was no doubt, no fear, no noise.
For the first time in a year, my hands weren't shaking.
I started fighting anyone who gave me a reason. Fists. Knees. Headbutts. Didn't matter.
I lost some. Won more. What mattered was that I never backed down. Ever.
By the time I was fifteen, people started whispering about me in locker rooms and hallway corners. Not "he's tough," but "he's crazy."
I liked that. It kept people at a distance.
It made me feel safe.
At sixteen, I found a real gym. Beastworks MMA.
I walked in with bruised knuckles and a busted ego from losing a street fight to a guy twice my size.
The place smelled like sweat and bleach and something primal.
Dutch owned it. Retired middleweight brawler. Ears like ground beef. Beard like steel wool. No patience for bullshit.
He watched me shadowbox for five minutes and said, "You fight like you want to die."
I said nothing.
He tossed me a pair of gloves. Told me to spar one of his amateurs. Kid named Rico. Built like a fire hydrant.
Rico made me eat leather for two straight minutes. I didn't land a single punch. Didn't block a damn thing.
But I didn't fall either.
When it was over, Dutch grinned and said,
"You don't have talent. But you've got a goddamn death wish. That'll do."
I trained there every day after school.Didn't care about grades.Didn't care about girls.Just fighting.
It was the only thing that made sense.
It was math. Physics. Pain management.
It was simple:If you want to survive, you hit first.If you want to win, you learn how to take a hit and keep walking forward.
By eighteen, I was fighting grown men in underground smokers.By twenty, I was undefeated as an amateur with a jaw like granite.By twenty-one, I had my pro debut televised on cable.
They called me The Ghost.Because I never blinked. Never showed pain. Moved like I'd already died once and had nothing to lose.
What they didn't know was…
I didn't feel pain because I didn't feel anything.
After fights, I didn't party.Didn't celebrate.
I sat alone in locker rooms, staring at my gloves like they were handcuffs.
People thought I was focused. Disciplined.But the truth was: I didn't want to go home.
Home meant silence.Silence meant thinking.Thinking meant remembering.
So I kept fighting.
The cage was the only place I could scream with my body and still look calm on the outside.
Then came the Freddie West fight.
He was slick. Fast hands. Built like a boxer, but with that wrestler's smirk—like he'd already figured you out before the first punch was thrown.
We went three rounds.
I landed a flying knee. Right under the ribs.
He went down. Didn't move.
Ref called it.
TKO.
Another win.
Until he didn't get up.
Freddie died that night in the hospital.
Internal bleeding. Lacerated liver. Trauma.
Just one of those freak things.
They called it tragic.The commission cleared me.Said it was nobody's fault.
But when I watched the footage later, I saw something else.
The moment before I threw the knee… he hesitated.
For half a second, he looked at me like he saw his death coming.
And I gave it to him.
After that, I disappeared.
Pulled out of my next three fights.
Sponsors dropped me.Paparazzi caught me puking in an alley after a press conference.
They said I had PTSD.They said I was cracked.They said I needed a break.
But what I really needed was to stop seeing Freddie in my dreams.
Lying there.Mouth open.Eyes frozen.
For two years, I floated. Underground fights. Quiet cities. Backroom deals. No media. No interviews.
No heart.
Just violence on autopilot.
Just punishment I believed I deserved.
Until last week.
Until the rewind.
When I felt myself lose to Rivera, and came back ten seconds earlier—alive, alert, breathing—I thought it was a hallucination. A trauma flashback. Too many hits to the skull.
But when it happened again…
When I dodged the punch I remembered knocking me out…
When I landed the counter I had no right to know…
And when I heard the voice say:
"That's one."
…that's when I knew something was wrong.
Or maybe something had finally gone right.
Now?
Now every fight is more than survival.It's time itself.
It's the ten seconds between death and resurrection.Ten seconds that separate me from the world.From the rest of humanity.From whoever—or whatever—is whispering in my head.
I don't know what I'm becoming.
But I know this:
You don't win because you're better.You win because you suffer more.
And I've got suffering to spare.