Brandon Vera: You can’t handle “The Truth”
At his gym, Alliance Training Center in Chula Vista, California, just below San Diego and eight miles from the Mexican…
At his gym, Alliance Training Center in Chula Vista, California, just below San Diego and eight miles from the Mexican border, Brandon walks in the way Master Lloyd Irvin remembers seeing him the first time at a grappling tournament: Alone. Nobody acknowledges him. Not the WEC’s Ed 9MM Ratcliff, who is jumping rope, not Dominick Cruz, who is taping a glove, not the DJ spinning tunes, not the 20 or so guys on the mats. Nobody. It’s not that they don’t like him. They do. It’s just that he’s as ubiquitous there as the heavy bags that form a right angle along the far walls.
Vera looks thin, unimposing. It is difficult to imagine him fighting Brock Lesnar or Shane Carwin, much less Frank Mir, whom he destroyed in their meeting. He looks like the everyman; no cauliflower on the ears, no scar tissue on the brow. Neither Keith Jardine nor Assuerio Silva could send him home with any permanent souvenirs. People can talk about his cockiness or eating disorders, but nobody will ever question Vera’s sense of self-preservation in the cage. He has never been knocked out.
I was a fat son of a bitch, he says after a three-round sparring session and 20 minutes of jumping rope. He is referring to the Vera with the soft middle who fence-waltzed for three rounds with Tim Sylvia—two-and-a-half of those rounds with a broken right hand—back in October 2007 at UFC 77. I was around 240. I’m walking around at 212 now, man. At this weight I’m always in shape and I feel better.