Mind games
He takes no prisoners in martial arts but says blokes should be able to cry if they want to. Lee Umbers talks to a man who wants to help Kiwi men win their inner battles.
Wrestling champ talks depression
Orlando Sanchez is a Harley-riding, pitbull-owning, tattooed world martial arts powerhouse who has bench-pressed over 300kg. Now, the Brazilian jiu jitsu (BJJ) superstar is coming to New Zealand to encourage Kiwi men to show their emotional sides.
‘‘I want to talk about the necessity of vulnerability of men. That it’s okay to be a vulnerable man in today’s society,’’ says Sanchez.
One of the top grapplers on the planet, Sanchez, 34, will also talk about the desperate years he spent wrestling with addiction and depression, and his inspirational comeback.
The US-based elite fighter, who will hold grappling and BJJ workshops during his visit next month, will talk with Mike King on his radio show The Nutters Club about mental health issues.
An All-American football player at high school, Sanchez says he was ‘‘consumed’’ by drugs and alcohol in his early 20s after not realising his dream of making the NFL.
‘‘There was times I don’t remember a thing . . . there were situations I got, places I shouldn’t have been . . . when you start living in the dark side, you start hanging out where the dark side happens,’’ he says. ‘‘But you don’t think about it when you’re so high. I could not have cared less about my life then.’’
Sanchez grew up in the city of La Canada Flintridge, in Los Angeles county. Both parents were immigrants, his mother from Costa Rica, his father from Cuba. ‘‘They literally came to the United States with nothing,’’ he says. ‘‘My parents met when they were 12 or 13 years old, got married at 18, had my brother at 19, had me at 21. My dad worked his ass off, and he made . . . success and he moved us to a nice neighbourhood.’’
Sanchez’s accomplishments came on the sports field. ‘‘I started playing soccer when I was three years old and I realised that the best way to get attention was to succeed at sports. Every time I would succeed in sports I realised that people loved me.’’
As the now 120kg Sanchez’s build began to more resemble a brick outhouse, he switched to American football. His position of nose guard, a defensive slot suited to strength and bulk, especially for low-slung players who can get under opponents and use their leverage, was ideal for the 1.75m future grappler. He was awarded a football scholarship to California’s Azusa Pacific University, where he studied communications, and from which he hoped to propel himself into the NFL.
When his dream didn’t eventuate, it ‘‘really messed me up . . . and once I stopped playing football and finished college, there was nothing for me to do, so that’s when I got really deep into my darkness . . . I would binge-eat, I would binge do drugs, I would binge-drink, everything was binge’’.
Sanchez says he thinks he was self-medicating for his then- undiagnosed depression. ‘‘Whenever I was high, I didn’t have to think about the world. The days that I got sober for a while is when I would get more depressed.’’
He says he realised he had to change or be lost. ‘‘I remember I was lying in my bed, I was like 350lbs [158kg], my chest was just killing me. I was smoking a cigarette and I don’t even smoke and I was super-high and I was looking at the mirror on the wall and I told myself, I said, ‘if I survive this night I have to change something’. And the next day I started reaching out to a friend of mine.’’
The friend took Sanchez to a martial arts school, where he started working out – only to get his ‘‘butt kicked’’ by an opponent less than half his weight but who had a black belt in BJJ. ‘‘That day there right on those mats, I told myself I need to learn this, this is what I love man, it gave me a high, it stimulated my brain. I said I’m going to dedicate my life to this.’’
Turning his life around, Sanchez threw himself into the combat sport, training eight hours a day and entering numerous contests. ‘‘My wife Trisha was in college at the time, she was finishing her masters in forensic anthropology. I would use her student loan money to sign up for tournaments . . . everything to follow my dream.’’
The investment paid rapid dividends. ‘‘I’m the only non-Brazilian ever to win the double gold at brown belt in the Brazilian national championships . . . I won the world championships at blue belt and at purple belt, I won the Pan American championships three times.’’ In just four years he was awarded his black belt.
Last August, Sanchez won the over-99kg division at the ADCC submission wrestling world championship, which pits elite contestants from jiu jitsu, wresting, judo, sambo, shooto and mixed martial arts (MMA) against each other. ‘‘It is the Olympics of grappling . . . the best grapplers in the world meet to fight in this tournament, invite-only, 16 people per weight division.’’
Sanchez wants to employ his takedown skills in the UFC. He is aiming to follow training partner and close friend Werdum into the Octagon later this year, five years after what he says was a knockout introduction to the Brazilian champion.
Sanchez says he went to train at world- renowned Kings MMA gym at Huntington Beach, Southern California, to master mixed martial arts. ‘‘I’m always chasing the high and to me there is no greater challenge in the world than to lock yourself in a cage with another man who wants to [destroy] you.’’
Kings MMA founder and supercoach ‘‘Master Rafael Cordeiro, who’s my coach now, my mentor, he’s like, oh why don’t you spar with Fabricio here. And I was like oh, okay and I went in there and I got kicked in the face so hard that my lights turned out and I fell to my knee, and I got up and I just went [for] Fabricio and after [that] Master Rafael put his arm around me, he said, ‘man, you’re tough’. He goes, ‘I can show you technique but I can’t show you heart, you already have it’.’’
Sanchez says Werdum is his ‘‘brother’’, but they don’t hold back when they train against each other. ‘‘We put our gloves on and we beat the s... out of each other. We fight, we spar, we grapple . . . we eat lunch . . . We love each other, we respect each other, but we go [allout].’’
Sanchez’s own MMA record is 5-0, three wins by TKO and two by submission. His main weapons are his ‘‘grappling and the power of my hands . . . I have really heavy hands . . . I have a really fast explosive twitch.’’ He says his punches are so hard, he has knocked opponents out with body shots.
The dad of two (son Orlando Jr, 4, and daughter Penelope, 2) has made an impact in the business world as well. Sanchez owns two BJJ schools (one run by Trisha), with more than 400 students, and was named ‘‘La Canada Businessman of the Year’’. He opened the Gracie Barra Pasadena school while still a blue belt and with 15 students. Success ‘‘was my only option. And I think that is the essence of success . . . if you have a way out, then you’re not going to succeed.’’
But Sanchez says shortly before he got his black belt he feared his life was about to unravel. ‘‘I started realising
that, wait a minute, something’s happening again. I’m craving drugs I’m starting to find all these reasons to f...k my life up again.’’
While giving a private jiu jitsu lesson to a friend who publicly helps educate people on the subject of substance abuse, ‘‘out of nowhere I just started crying I was so depressed.
‘‘He said, Orlando, you need to get yourself some help. And that day we started calling some therapists and I got my appointment and I’ve been going back to those rooms ever since. I’ve been doing one-on-one therapy. I’ve been doing group therapy. And my life has never been so successful.
‘‘Jiu jitsu got me on the right path, but if it wasn’t for therapy I would have been right back to where I was. If it wasn’t for truly going in and figuring out the way my brain works, I would have never made it.
‘‘My therapist always says addiction is kind of like that whacka-mole game . . . you whack one mole and then another mole pops up . . . I know now that that’s addiction, that’s being an addict. So I clear one addiction out of my life, something else is going to pop up . . . and I always have to be ready and use my tools [to] be mentally in that headspace to start taking care of myself.’’
The cauliflower-eared, hulking martial arts phenomenon says men need to know it’s okay to seek help, to be vulnerable. He plans to spread that message to a global audience later this year via a TED talk. The talks, addressing science and culture, have been watched more than one billion times.
‘‘What I wanted to talk about in my TED stuff, is men we are just programmed . . . when a little [boy] starts crying you hear, don’t be a pussy . . . be a man . . . Now we have an entire generation of grown men who can’t cry, who can’t talk, who can’t express emotion. And the more you hide that, the more you suppress that, the more f...ed up you’re going to become.’’
Sanchez says the image of the strong, silent type of man is ‘‘a myth . . . I’m the strong loud type’’. He says, instead, it would be better ‘‘if men could all agree that, hey we all have feelings, we all suffer from something, we all feel like crying some days, we all feel like we need a hug . . . we all feel this’’.
Jiu jitsu brings communities of men together, he says, giving them opportunities to have people to talk to and make friends.
Sanchez says he regularly gets Facebook messages from men wanting help, which he gladly offers.
He will make himself available to Kiwi fans during his first visit to this ‘‘beautiful’’ country. ‘‘I love spreading jiu jitsu, I love spreading grappling, I love spreading my story, I love talking to new people. I think every single place I’ve ever been I’ve connected with somebody who needs help. And I just can’t wait to go out there and tell my story.’’
Sanchez will hold grappling and BJJ workshops at Auckland MMA, Pakuranga on April 9; and Club Physical, Albany on April 10.
My therapist always says addiction is kind of like that whack-a-mole game . . . you whack one mole and then another mole pops up.
Orlando Sanchez