Carlos Condit's UFC 195 fight journal, No. 2: Everything moves in circles

In the second of a multi-part series for MMAjunkie, veteran MMA storyteller Duane Finley takes us inside the upbringing and family life of UFC 195 title challenger Carlos Condit in Albuquerque, N.M.

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ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. – Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote in his essay “Circles” that man’s pursuit of the great unattainable truth and perfection is constant throughout his life. The legendary existential philosopher also described how the spherical pattern exists in both literal and metaphorical forms throughout the universe and reoccurs without end.

There comes a point in all things at which the end loses its finality and becomes the genesis for something new. This cycle repeats time and time again until an elevated mind recognizes the pattern and the circle is broken. Yet, before a fresh start can be had a battle must be waged, and it’s in that resistance where Carlos Condit has come to find a strange sense of peace.

The Albuquerque-based welterweight has come to embrace adversity as a gift on all fronts because within the fires of conflict he has found what he’s made of. His pursuit of self-discovery is voracious. The same process that has allowed the 170-pound wrecking machine to blend the intricacies of a finessed striking game with the kill-shot savagery of an apex predator are the methods he’s used to push himself beyond the limits of comfort to find growth and perspective.

And while the current version of “The Natural Born Killer” is calculated and refined in this regard, there was a time in his life when he reveled in chaos for the sake of a hard-knock education. By the time he was 18, he’d found his passion for fighting, but a home life in flux mixed with capricious youth brought him to a place darkened by uncertainty.

The only method Condit could find to deal with the pain and frustration of things beyond his control was to jump headlong into a nomadic existence as he pursued a career in mixed martial arts. A tight-knit crew of friends, spare couch space, and a bed frame he crafted from two wooden pallets – he slept in the same gym he trained at during the day – helped him navigate the initial stages of life among the wolves.

“After my parents split up, life took some strange and difficult turns,” Condit said. “Divorce is never easy on kids and I had a lot of anger built up inside of me. Some of that dulls as time passes and you get further away from the initial impact, but fighting was a way to channel some of that emotion and aggression. Once I reached a place where I knew I wanted to make a career out of it, I made the decision to leave home and find my own way through life.

“I didn’t have my own place, so I crashed out with friends and did the couch surfing thing. I worked odd jobs to get by and then spent the rest of my time training or taking fights wherever I could get them. This was back before MMA became this super-popular thing, and sometimes MMA bouts were hard to find, so I would take boxing or kickboxing bouts. I didn’t care who, how or where – I just wanted to fight. There would be times my opponent would change an hour before I got in there.

“There was a lot of chaos and other things going on in my life back in those days, but there was plenty of fun had along the way.”

The path less traveled by

While Condit wasn’t necessarily sure of where anything in his life was heading, he was most certainly aware of how his career choice broke one cycle and started another. As the product of a blue-collar, working-class upbringing in which his father, grandfather and uncle were all career electricians out of the same union in Albuquerque, it came as a surprise to the Condit men that Carlos decided not to go into the family trade.

His father Brian worked in the trenches for more than two decades before being voted into a leadership role with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. Brian Condit’s knack for communication and negotiations eventually led to a cabinet position under New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, and he spent two terms as Richardson’s Chief of Staff.

As his father’s commitments to the state increased, so did his time away from home, and it wasn’t long before the new order of things completely overshadowed the life their family once lived. With both father and son shifting into different phases of their lives, and the speed at which they moved increasing at every clip, discipline and direction were few and far between.

Nevertheless, Brian’s belief in his son never wavered. He knew his son had talent, but was also fairly certain the turbulence of an ever-shifting life would eventually bring him to terms with the type of future better suited for Carlos’ complex intelligence, or perhaps the family trade.

“I’ve never seen a more resilient human being than my son Carlos,” Brian said. “When he was in youth wrestling, he’d come out and get down on points every time and just when you thought it was over, he’d pull out something special and get the pin. He also hates to lose, so the matches he’d come up short and couldn’t turn it around, he’d go under the bleachers or locker room and just be inconsolable until something snapped and he’d processed it. Carlos had those qualities at a very young age, and his intensity for competition has never faded.

“To be completely honest, I didn’t think he’d fight for all too long before realizing it was a phase and then jumping onto something else. I was almost certain he’d eventually work it out of his system, but then he was invited to the Rumble on the Rock tournament in Hawaii (in 2006), and that changed everything. This was also right around the time he moved in with Seager, and for the first time in a very long while he had stability and something changed in him.”

Being the wife of an elite-level fighter is stressful by its very nature, but the connection between Carlos and Seager has held deeper elements from the very inception of their relationship. Regardless of how much chaos has been present at various times, she always has been able to see the passion and capacity for love that pulsed just below the surface.

Furthermore, she also could see the longing for greatness that burned within him, and she’s never once hesitated to challenge the man she loves.

“He showed up and just never left. And I’m OK with that,” Carlos’ wife Seager said. “He was staying with friends all over town and fighting on the weekends. Fighting wasn’t as popular or widely accepted as it is today, but even back then his passion to compete was obvious. He wanted to be the greatest fighter in the world, and living that nomadic style kept him hungry. At the same time, we were both kids who had a lot to figure out, and one of our biggest strengths has always been our willingness to do it together as a team. That’s the way it’s always been, and that’s the only way it’s ever going to be.

Harmony in anarchy

As Condit continues to push himself toward becoming the best athlete and mixed martial artist he can be, his drive toward self-evolution is never-ending, as well. Condit keeps himself on the razor’s edge in all facets of his life because he believes the education that comes through the experience of joy, pain and sacrifice is the highest form of science in the universe.

Condit’s sense of self-awareness enables him to recall the emotional chaos of darker days, and rather than bury those feelings into some distant place he prefers to keep them present if for no other reason than to strengthen his sense of what his own son needs from him. With the biggest fight of his career against current welterweight titleholder Robbie Lawler looming on the horizon, it would be easy for Condit to bow out of his soul-searching for a bit. But taking the path of least resistance has never been his way.

Anything less than his best when a challenge is presented is a failure in Condit’s mind, and his ability to maintain grace under pressure is the direct result of his refusal to turn away from adversity. He knows what he’s capable of today, but there will be a new set of expectations tomorrow that he’ll pursue with dogged tenacity.

“I know I’m willing to push myself to places others refuse to go,” Condit said. “There is a safety in comfort, but most fail to recognize it as a weakness. How can we grow if we stay within the boundaries of the little world we’ve created for ourselves? The people who fall victim to that type of stagnation are also the same people who magically believe tomorrow will be a better day despite past patterns constantly repeating to produce the same results. I couldn’t live that way because I need to be moving forward toward the best version of myself.

“There has to be a balance between light and dark, and sometimes the scales tip heavily in one direction for me. I have the type of brain where I can have two totally opposing views floating around up there and I can analyze the elements I dig and disregard what I don’t. I’m kind of weird like that. I take some type of strange pleasure in finding out more about myself in those situations. You could say I revel in the duality.”

Although Condit’s quest for a higher level of consciousness allows haunting elements to linger, his deconstruction and understanding of those specters serves to strip away the power those emotions once had over him. Due to his discipline to recognize and conquer, he can fixate on the greater glory that can be obtained by becoming the father, husband and champion he knows in his heart he can become.

When the ties that bind those passions together are examined, the surging contender’s journey has the potential to bring everything full circle. He is a man whose mission of determination extends to all things just as his father did before him.

Brian Condit’s voice is filled with affection when he speaks about his son’s achievements in life, but there are the slight tones of regret present, as well – the type borne of ambition and circumstance. Nevertheless, the cycles of the past are carved in stone while the patterns of the future are yet to be set, even if those circles happen to intersect in the strangest ways.

“Carlos has never been afraid of hard work,” Brian said with his mega-watt charm on high, yet cutting the same stern eyes that have become his son’s calling card. “My father was a career electrician and I followed in his trade to do the same, but Carlos chose a different path entirely.

“Funny enough, though, it was his work ethic that brought things full circle in a familial sense. The same gym he trained at and slept in the back on a bed made out of a pallet was the same building my father worked out of during his time as an electrician. Close to 50 years passed between the two, but there was my son working and sleeping in the same building I used to sit with my father on days I could go to the office with him. Patterns have a funny way of repeating themselves in our lives, but how crazy is that?”

Also see:

• Carlos Condit’s UFC 195 fight journal, No. 1: Getting weird in Albuquerque

For more on UFC 195, check out the UFC Rumors section of the site.

Follow Duane Finley on Twitter at @DuaneFinleyMMA.