The Pain Game

"Harder!" Jeff Harrison shouts. "Faster! Jab! Jab! Jab!"

The recipient of these terse instructions, Mark Holst, unleashes a flurry of punches, grunting each time he hits one of Harrison's padded mitts. When the boxing session ends, Harrison, an instructor at the Ottawa Academy of Martial Arts, grabs a pair of kick pads that extend the length of his tattooed forearms. Holst attacks the pads with both legs, the thwack-thwack-thwack of shin on leather filling the empty dojo.

Holst, a 24-year-old Muay Thai kickboxing expert, is training for the biggest fight of his mixed martial arts career. On June 19, three weeks from this workout, he will step inside a chain-link octagon in Las Vegas, becoming the first Ottawa fighter to compete in the Ultimate Fighting Championship, his sport's premier league. To get this far took tremendous dedication. Holst devoted himself to martial arts after high school, forgoing university, much to the chagrin of his mother, a retired college teacher. She wanted him to further his education, told him a degree brings steadier income than a black belt. She wanted him to earn a living with his head, not his fists. Instead, he chose to pursue mixed martial arts, a brutal sport that some call The Pain Game.

In his book Blood in the Cage, Jon Wertheim wrote that many MMA fighters come from rough neighbourhoods or broken homes, or are self-proclaimed bad asses looking to get paid for something they would otherwise do for free. But Holst was raised in a safe environment by loving parents. A ruffian? Please. The man is so humble you couldn't pry a boast from his lips with the claw end of a hammer. So how did Holst end up fighting in a steel cage? He had other options. Why not become a teacher or an accountant? Engineers make pretty good money, and hardly ever get elbowed in the face. What would possess a man to dedicate his life to combat?

People ask Holst that question all the time, and he likes to joke that he fights because he can't sing or dance. But the truth is, Holst fights for several reasons, none related to his dim prospects on Broadway. If pressed, however, he will narrow it down to something that happened when he was seven years old, something as far from a joke as one can imagine. In 1992, Holst's father was diagnosed with Huntington's Disease, a cruel genetic disorder that affects muscle coordination and eventually leads to cognitive decline and dementia. His father's illness would shape young Mark's view of the world and his place within it. "My dad was always sick, and I felt the need to fight for him," explains Holst.

Mixed martial arts, or MMA, is the fastest growing sport in North America. According to a 2009 Ipsos-Reid poll, 39 percent of Canadian adults say their interest in MMA has risen in recent years, making it the top up-and-comer of the 30 sports analysed. In the United States, MMA dominates pay-per-view ratings on television and regularly draws tens of thousands of fans to live events. Not yet two decades old, MMA has been embraced by Americans like no other sport since NASCAR.

There are dozens of MMA leagues, but the Ultimate Fighting Championship, known as the UFC, sits high atop the list, with a market value north of $1 billion. It employs about 250 fighters, half making more than $100,000 a year, though superstars such as Canadian Georges St-Pierre, the welterweight champion, earn many times that for a single event. Holst, by comparison, will receive just $6,000 for fighting in Las Vegas, another $6,000 if he wins. That's not bad compared to the $500 he earned in 2006 for winning his first MMA fight — but still, considering the work it took to get here, it's not much. And though he signed a four-fight contract with the UFC, if he loses twice, he's out. If the financial uncertainty wasn't bad enough, consider the toll a career in MMA takes on the body. To succeed, it's not enough to be good at karate, or wrestling, or kickboxing. You have to be good at everything, which requires a training schedule that, if you were prone to understatement, you might call gruelling.

Holst has a Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu coach to hone his ground game and a striking coach to hone his stand-up game. He also works with a strength and conditioning coach. Then there are the many sessions with experts in other cities — wrestling in Montreal, grappling in Los Angeles, jiu-jitsu in Rio de Janeiro, kickboxing in Bangkok. Holst is used to training, of course, having been an athlete his entire life. Still, as a boy growing up in Quebec, he never imagined his love of competition would one day take him all over the world.

Holst was born in Ottawa in 1985 and raised in Aylmer, Quebec. His mother, Diane Chevalier, was a teacher and administrator at various schools, including Algonquin College, where she met his father, Michael Holst, who taught history. A natural athlete, Holst played basketball, tennis, soccer and other sports during his youth. He began downhill skiing at age three and, even then, showed little fear of danger. After lessons, he would go to the top of the highest hill, then ski down it as fast as possible. At 15, he took up karate. Soon, he was spending all his free time at the dojo, earning a black belt in just two years. It was around this time that he took the first step on his path to the UFC, contacting Pat Cooligan, Ottawa's foremost expert in Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. Since then, Holst has trained under Cooligan, who runs the Ottawa Academy of Martial Arts out of a second-floor room in a nondescript building on Carling Avenue. Holst now works as the school's head Muay Thai instructor.

After completing Grade 12 at Grande-Riviere High School, Holst broke it to his mother that he was choosing martial arts over post-secondary education. She was not pleased. But at the same time, she recalled the many aimless young men she encountered during her teaching career, which reminded her of the value of passion — any passion, even one for fighting. "As a parent, you have choices," says Chevalier. "You can say 'no' to your children's wishes and make them do something else, which may bring them only anger and sadness. Or you can ignore the problem, but then there is no communication. The third option is to support them. That's what I did, but in order to do it I had to educate myself."

Chevalier read all she could find on MMA, attended competitions, and spoke with her son's instructors. She learned that, unlike during the sport's early days, when anything was allowed except biting and eye gouging, MMA is not as dangerous as it initially appears. Doctors check competitors before and after fights. Unlike professional boxing matches, in which overwhelmed fighters are given many opportunities to get back on their feet for more punishment, MMA fights are called quickly if someone gets hurt. And injuries, though often bloody, are mostly minor.

Now Chevalier not only cheers for her son, who lives with her, but also helps him prepare for fights. She makes his meals, ensuring he gets down to his 70-kg fighting weight before competitions. She even visits Sherdog.com, a popular MMA website, to research his opponents — including the man he will face in Las Vegas: John "Quick Guns" Gunderson, a 31-year-old veteran who, having recently lost his UFC debut, needs a win to stay in the league.

June 19, 2010. Blood stains from earlier fights dot the floor of the octagon, but Holst, dressed in white trunks and bouncing from one leg to the other, doesn't notice them. He's not looking down. He's looking straight forward, at Gunderson, a well-rounded fighter who trains here in Las Vegas. Fight night has finally arrived.

Gunderson, with an MMA record of 22-7, is an excellent grappler with three times Holst's experience. But at six feet, Holst is tall for a lightweight and holds a significant reach advantage over Gunderson, who stands five foot nine. Holst is rarely stronger or quicker than his opponents, but is a master of technique with a knack for finding the precise moment to strike. This talent had served him well in his March 20 bout with former UFC lightweight Corey Hill, who had been dominating the fight right up until the second Holst caught him in an armlock, forcing him to submit. The win improved Holst's MMA record to 8-1 and, more importantly, caught the attention of the UFC.

"He has a natural talent, a natural inclination to win," says Harrison. "He's got good instincts. He can hit without getting hit back. He can step outside the fight, and the emotions that go with it, and be a tactician."

The match begins, and Gunderson wastes little time in slamming Holst to the floor. Holst spends most of the five-minute round on his back playing defence. When the round ends, Holst returns to his corner, where Cooligan implores him to stay on his feet to take advantage of his superior kickboxing skills. "You've got to keep him off," Cooligan counsels. "He's going to try to take you down again." Four seconds into the second round, Holst attempts to punch Gunderson, who ducks and lunges forward, once again taking the fight to the mat. Unfortunately for Holst, the rest of this round, as well as the third and final round, is more of the same. Holst on his back. Gunderson on top of him. The fight ends in a unanimous decision for Gunderson.

Ten days later, Holst reflects on the fight over chai lattes with his girlfriend, Dominik Chartrand, in a coffee shop on Rideau Street. He had been too nervous, too stiff. He didn't attack. When he watched the fight online, he barely recognized himself. "That was probably the most boring fight I have ever seen," he says. "I wouldn't pay to watch that." Though he is critical of himself, UFC executives were impressed enough with Holst's grit in his debut to award him a $2,000 bonus. The unexpected cheque was encouraging, but for Holst, it's not really about the money.

In the octagon, Holst doesn't think about potential earnings. He thinks about his instructors and training partners and students. He wants to make them proud. He thinks about his mother, who supports his MMA career instead of dwelling on what might have been. He wants to make her proud, too. But most of all he thinks of his father, who died five years ago. "Even though he has passed away, I'm still fighting for him."

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