I thought I was on the receiving end of a prank call when I was asked to interview Erik Ellington, Deathwish Skateboards co-owner and flagship pro skater. I asked, “What the fuck does either of us know about being healthy?” It was a knee-jerk reaction. I spent the better part of my twenties blacked out, boozed up, on drugs, having unprotected adventures in Hollywood, all chronicled in glorious detail in my book, Skinema. At the very same time Ellington was making a name for himself for similar hijinks as well as for his skateboarding talent. His Baker Boys/Piss Drunx crew was so iconic and influential at the time that Rolling Stone did a full (yet, unflattering) exposé on the partying antics.

But that was a long time ago. Nearly half a decade has passed. Ellington and I are both married with children now. We are business owners. And on most nights we can walk a straight line and pass a sobriety test. I suppose it’s not so far-fetched to think we know a thing or two about health or at the very least, how to avoid being extremely unhealthy.

I guess a good way to start is: how bad was it when it was at its worst?

ERIK: I guess it’s like any other kid that’s young and getting paid. I moved to California and was having fun with my friends and stuff. Our Baker thing was glamorized a little bit more than what anybody’s situation was. We drank a lot or whatever but who doesn’t? My mom was always really mellow with me drinking and stuff. I’d be sixteen and she’d be like, “If you’re going to go out and get drunk, come here and get drunk with your friends.” And I’d do that and I think that gave me a little bit of a tolerance in a way of not wanting to get as completely fucked up as possible, because I started at an earlier age, even though I ended up doing that too at times. Drinking is fun and it can get out of hand pretty quick and then you get into doing a little bit of coke or something and next thing you know you’re smoking crack in Hollywood. Fortunately my body, at the time, had a shutdown mechanism where at six in the morning or seven in the morning you’re smoking crack or whatever and I couldn’t do it anymore. The next day being a pro skateboarder I felt like such a piece of shit that I was regretful every single time I did that. Some people get to the point where they’re like, “Fuck it! I don’t care. The drug is more important.” But to me skating was always more important. I still go out and get drunk and stuff. I haven’t touched hard drugs in quite a while but I think it’s nice to go out and get drunk with your friends, but it’s also nice not to black out and be an asshole to everybody.

Omar Salazar told me recently that years ago in San Diego at a trade show party you were in a fight and you were supposed to get arrested and instead he got arrested and escaped with handcuffs still on his wrists.

ERIK: Really? I don’t know. I remember Tony Alva getting arrested and I think I should have. I guess maybe that happened too. The blackout stories are, like, your guess is as good as mine.

Tell me about it. Years after one of the Big Brother premieres someone came up to me and was like, “You know you pulled your dick out on the dance floor and pissed all over so-and-so’s wife.” And I was like, “Nope, not me.” They said they had a photo of it but I didn’t remember it, so it didn’t happen.

ERIK: I do remember the first time I got really drunk to where I threw up. I recall that like everybody can. Me and two of my friends, Gabe Fletcher and Thomas Noona, so me, Thomas and Gabe got Gabe’s sister to get us four 40s of Olde English when I was thirteen years old and we each drank one and split the last one. Then I remember falling in a creek in Anchorage, Alaska in the summertime and thinking I was going to drown. I was throwing up all over the place, all over myself. To this day I hate Olde English.

You lived in Anchorage through all your teenage years?

ERIK: Up until I was fourteen or fifteen, then I moved to Tempe, Arizona.

Alaska has those extended daylight seasons and then there’s months of constant night. I always wondered if kids were getting really fucked up during those extreme seasons?

ERIK: Yeah, in the summertime. Pretty much everybody gets such cabin fever in the wintertime in that exaggerated time of darkness where it gets dark at 3:30 in the afternoon and then it doesn’t get light until 10:30 in the morning; so you only get five hours of daylight. It’s the exact opposite in the summer so in the summer everybody takes advantage of the time of good weather. The memories of the summers in Alaska, running wild with my friends are rad. I don’t really have that many memories of wintertime. It’s the weirdest thing; my only memories are from when it was summertime.

You haven’t done hard drugs in a while. When was the last time and what made you stop?

ERIK: It was before my son was born and he’s six years old. I just thought I’d make the conscious effort to stop doing that because it’s too heavy. I’m getting older, I was twenty seven when we had Julius; you don’t want to be a thirty-five-year-old dude doing coke and trying to find some bad shit out there. That’s what you look at when you’re younger and say, “I don’t want to be like that.”

You look healthy, you’re skating great. What’s the secret?

ERIK: The funny thing is my mom has always been kind of a hippy and into health food. When I was fourteen I worked at a health food co-op next to my house and I think I’ve always taken vitamins, even when I probably didn’t need to. Yeah, I’d mix it in with smoking and eating crappy food, but now I really make an effort to eat good especially now that I can afford to do that. I go to the vitamin shops and get the protein and glutamine mixes to put in your drinks so I don’t get as sore as I probably should after I skate. I cook my own food and make an effort to do better for myself. I’m into making pasta, like good ground up turkey pasta. I make these kale chips and squeeze lime on them and I cook with a lot of olive oil. I make fish here and there. Maybe that’s the key. I’m thirty four now, I feel pretty healthy and I feel like I’m pretty strong. And cooking smart seems to help.

Not that you need to concern yourself with other occupations but do you ever daydream and think, ‘If I wasn’t skateboarding, maybe I could be a chef?’

ERIK: Yeah, I did. I wanted to start a cooking show one time. I thought it would be neat to show that you could make something out of anything and it could be pretty good.

Thrasher’s Scarfing Material.

ERIK: It was kinda like that. Then I did have a dream of starting my own Cajun-style restaurant one time. My dad was a chef on an oil derrick in Alaska and I thought I could name it after him, but the restaurant business isn’t something that I can get into right now; that’s too crazy. But that was what got me into it, him and my mom could cook really good. He was always cooking Cajun, southern-style stuff since he was from Louisiana.

How intense is your pre-skate stretch session?

ERIK: Fucking horrible! I actually need to get better at that, too. I’m really bad with that. I drink those shakes and eat with flax oil on my food and then I don’t stretch for shit. I went to a dude the other day and he bent my hand back and was like, “You’re not flexible at all.” I was like, “Oh, that sucks. I guess I need to stretch more.” You know when they can tell right away? Certain people’s ligaments are just less flexible than other people’s? Well, mine are the least flexible.

When it comes to your vitamins, how do you compare to Dustin Dollin? I watched him take vitamins once and he ingests so many it took nearly 20 minutes to eat them all.

ERIK: I don’t know, I’ve never seen him take them, but he’s at the Baker Boys Warehouse right now so I’m going to ask him about that later. He’s gone through a couple knee surgeries so he’s probably got a full kit that his doctor prescribed him. I just do MSM, the glutamine, Vitamin C, Vitamin E, garlic oil, chlorophyll to oxygenate your system; I don’t really have one big supplement pack. I just freestyle it. See what shit works for you and what doesn’t work.

Dustin’s got the record; he has six knee surgeries under his belt. Have you had any serious injuries?

ERIK: No, knock on wood. I was talking to Dustin about that on Super Bowl Sunday and it’s gnarly, he’s bionic, for sure. Six is pretty gnarly and to come back strong from all of them is record breaking. I’ve been in the hospital for random fights but nothing skate related. I’ve broken my hand but that’s about it.

We’re all creeping up on 40 and you’ve made a living of jumping off big shit. How do you think you’ll feel at 40?

ERIK: Well, I didn’t think I’d feel too great at 34 and I feel like He-Man so I imagine at 40, I’ll be going pretty strong. I hope. I’m pretty confident I can do it.

Do you think that is more about having a young son than skateboarding?

ERIK: I guess, kids keep you young. It’s probably a collective of everything, mentally is the biggest thing. If you’re hanging out with kids that are eighteen, twenty years old you feel like a pussy if you’re not keeping with them. I’m not crazy but I think I can hang. It’s mostly your mental. I talk to people that are younger than me that don’t skate and they’re really old. They’re physically worn out, they’re mentally worn out and I think the people that we surround ourselves with in skateboarding allows us to stay young. You see Tony Alva and he’s fifty plus. He doesn’t look it, doesn’t act it; that’s what I want to be like. I don’t ever want to be like the squares you see that are regular, worn out people that are thirty five but look sixty. ♠

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

HEROIN HATES YOU.

Any time between six and eight, I pitter around for a couple of hours, either think horrible thoughts about the rest of The Stooges, or think about some project we’re working on, or go over my notes for the day.

Yes, you, Iggy Pop.

I read The New York Times every day and The New Yorker every week. After I’ve been awake a couple of hours, I do something that’s related to Tai-Chi. It’s called Chi-Gung. They are exercises that involve breathing really hard, into here [points to abs] through your nose while doing various movements. A couple of hours? No, man, fuck no. For like, half an hour.

It thinks you’re the biggest piece of shit on the planet, and that includes Keith Richards, who at least looks like he served his time under the needle. At 64, you have an eight-pack, your mug is as leathered as it is egregiously well-held. It looks like the needle served time under you.

It’s already falling apart. It’s been falling apart for years, and it’s just good to make judicious decisions. I get a lot of bang for the buck, but the actual number of shows I do is very selective. If you keep going and going and going, people get sick of you. You wear out on them. Do I think about the allure? Fuck yeah. I mean, it’s just the common sense of: You can’t just appear again.

Hell, heroin hates you more than David Bowie, who produced a few of your albums and tried to help you kick the habit in Berlin with him in the mid-70s. But Bowie was always going to make it. He recorded “Space Oddity.”

It was my foot. I thought, ‘This is not something that… that piece of bone…’ I had so much trouble for so long when I didn’t have an acknowledged career, and I had so much aggro with everybody, that I’ve trained myself to be positive at all times. I just waited for the end of the song, said ‘Alright, yeah! I broke my foot, I think!’ It started hurting and swelling about three minutes later. Yeah, I finished the show.

What did you do? You? You know where you should be, now.

Miami? Twelve years. Before then, New York, for like, twenty years. I was looking around Gramercy Park, and I started seeing all these harbingers of Bloomberg, all these smug guys with little scarves and big, long overcoats that they only wore twice a year. I don’t know. Suddenly everything looked closed. There wasn’t really the music coming out of there at that time. I saw it more as a promotional center than a creative one. I knew I was going to leave in ’97.

It thinks you should be dead. You were the perfect target, from the first moment you invented stage diving in Detroit, rolling around, always with your shirt off, in broken glass and dirt and whatever kind of filth you could find on or off the stage.

I’m a hick kid from the streets. I grew up in Detroit, and I left when I was 25. I came down here when I was 50. In those 25 years, I lived in the pits of Hollywood, in London, in Berlin and in New York City. Just those four places. I was beat out, and I thought: I’m going to buy this house, and I’m going to move here, and I don’t give a fuck.

You were the first one to find your calling in the rapture of pain, chaos, feedback to feedback, belligerence personified. That made you the perfect target. So did the obscurity.

I said I’d try it out for a week. I came down here and nobody shot me, or bothered me, or hurt me. There’s a great grid in this area and it wasn’t full, and nobody knew what to do with the space. There were these little old people and these sleazy Cubans trying to sell, uh, a monkey, I don’t know. Everything was just the way I like it.

Your first two albums, with The Stooges, flopped. They broke up because of your addiction. It happened twice. The second time, The Stooges ended in a fight with a crew of bikers you told to suck your ass during a 45-minute rendition of “Louie, Louie,” which was right before you called them “faggot sissies.” This resulted in what legendary rock critic Lester Bangs called “the only rock album I know where you can actually hear hurled beer bottles breaking against guitar strings.”

My character is such that when I decide something, then I have the ability to throw the worry out, because it doesn’t matter. No matter what, I’m not going back, right up to death. It was the same way I felt when I decided I’m not going to be a lawyer, I’m not going to be President, I’m going to be a musician. My parents said, ‘What?! You’re going to ruin your life!’ Like that. Then when I was a musician, I was a drummer, and when I realized that meant I was going to spend the rest of my life looking at some prick’s butt shaking back and forth, well, in a lot of ways, it’s the shit place to be. So, I said, ‘I’m going to be a songwriter.’ And I just walked around Michigan for eighteen months just thinking about how to do it.

You were angry. You weren’t popular. You were such a fuckup, even Andy Warhol couldn’t explain why you hadn’t made it big, and that was in 1980, in the forward to your autobiography. You were 33. That was it. Done.

But no. Bowie, again, this time with his covers of your songs in ’84. His version of “China Girl” was such a hit, it gave you enough money to get your life together and get clean.

I spoke to him last about seven years ago. He had two offers, and I couldn’t do either one. I haven’t heard from him since. He gave me his number, and I put it in a box somewhere and lost it. I don’t really have occasions to call him. Our relationship was always such that he would propose something, and I would do it. When I first moved to New York, I saw him quite a bit, and then at one point he was doing other things, with another vibe, for other people. It’s just a matter of different phases.

Then, another album, another kinda-comeback. You and Sex Pistols survivor Steve Jones with the Repo Man theme.

Detroit? It’s tough. I have a lot of nostalgia for the evil. I know all the things I can do there that are, you know… You could have a really good time on a really incorrect level. There used to be a little place downtown where I’d go and they’d throw drinks at me. It used to be a Catholic church or something.

You started acting. You know how many actors it got? Heroin loved actors, especially in the 80s. And then a funny thing happened: the 90s. Your first gold record. That classic opening scene of Trainspotting — heroin’s least-favorite movie ever — set to “Lust for Life,” a song about, among other things, scoring. There was even a line in the movie about you, where a character mistakes you for being dead. She was corrected; she stands corrected. Your music started appearing everywhere. In 2003, The Stooges get back together.

It was enormously beneficial for everything. The person I was in the first place that made everybody else want to work with me or led to anything else I did was formed in The Stooges, when I was twenty. Fortuitously, I’m one of those people who still resembles themselves and that’s rare, frankly. Too rare. There is something unchanging that I’m in touch with, there, but yet it’s not retro either yet, exactly. With us, it was something we were really insane to do, and just had to do. I’ll be completely straight with you: There are reasons that nobody really has rock bands anymore. The reason is that it’s archaic and inefficient, maddening and depressing. It’s like being married to three guys and they’re all hardhead lunatics. But when you go out and actually do it and you hear it and you see it and you feel it and you see what it’s doing to people, then that’s like, ‘Yeah!’ you know? There’s nothing as good as that.

Seven years later, they and you are inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

It started with Nirvana, halfway through. That was the last major attempt that I know of to actually have a real rock band, and come up from under, and do it your way. I saw them at The Pyramid before they got Dave Grohl, and the drummer wasn’t big time enough, they weren’t going to become millionaires from what they did at The Pyramid. But you could already hear it, like: ‘Oh, shit. He’s really got something.’ But very quickly, what’s the makeup of the band now? A widow, some buyout people, and somebody with another career, carrying on an associated brand of vastly inferior quality. It’s different. It’s branding, now.

And in 2011, a few days after Christmas, there you are.

I just bought the new Black Keys, but I also downloaded Hag, which is The Best of Merle Haggard. There’s one title on it, “I think I’ll Just Stay Home and Drink,” that’s a good fucking title, man. There’s a Bitches Brew reissue Sony sent. I’m listening to that, and I listen to No Age, a bit. I like No Age.

You are walking out of your “clubhouse” — a quaint colonial Spanish-style home with a lush, tropical flora-covered yard deep in Miami, on the edge of a roughed-up suburb—the secret location we’re escorted to after a rendezvous at a nearby Starbucks with your longtime assistant.

Reading and enjoying nature. Trees, grass, the sea. I spend a lot of time by the sea. I live on the sea down there and I can go nude if I want to. I’ve enjoyed many years of quality bedtime with a chick that’s not my wife, so, things like that. We’ve got a lot of animals. It’s more her thing, but I do enjoy that. I’m going to get rid of you guys soon and I’m going to have a little bit of Clos Du Marquis and make a simple pasta.

You are doing what so many old people go to Florida to do — dying, to die — but probably not how you should have. You’re dying well. You still have the piss, and the vinegar. And yet, you’re not angry. You’re not even crotchety.

I avoided all the movements because I thought they weren’t really going to do anything for me. My heart goes out to those people, it really does.

You are, oddly, in your prime.

The best part of all of this has been about the last ten years, since I was 50. Those have been like, the really: “Wow.” When I look back at the other stuff, I tend to remember the sex. That’s a really nice one.

They say the best revenge is a quiet life.

Yeah, it is fucking long. It’s working out that way for me. You do start thinking about life expectancy and whatnot, and then start wondering: How many years do I have left of what I would actually call life? You know? It still looks pretty long. I still feel like there’s a good fifteen years in there, but I might have longer.

But you are still living loudly.

I have certain privileges.

And we know this because when we meet you, you are smiling a warm smile, your crystal-sharp blue eyes glowing, and as you stand next to your Ferrari F430, shake our hand and say:

Hi. I’m Iggy. Nice to meet you. ♠

It’s late fall in NYC, ASAP Rocky is on rapper time. He’s an hour and a half late, due to a last minute meeting about a video series featuring him and his crew. These days his schedule is jam-packed, which makes sense for an artist that just inked a three-million-dollar deal with RCA records. Some would say that giving a rapper a major deal on the heels of just two songs isn’t fiscally responsible, but Rocky is a safe bet. It doesn’t hurt that ASAP’s “Purple Swag” and “Peso” were two of the best rap songs of 2011.
 
Rocky’s multi-coastal flow and hybrid rhyming style make him unique, and whether you’re a fan or not, his diversity deserves to be applauded. As he finally shows up to sound check, he greets his ASAP cohorts like a young boss, going over the night’s set list. He has the DNA of a person from Harlem — he’s charismatic and well-dressed and he doesn’t take shit from anyone. A perfect recipe for a household name, Rocky’s ready for super-stardom. Ground control to ASAP Rocky. 

You told The New York Times that it would bring a tear to your eye to be embraced by New Yorkers. Why do you think some people have been reluctant to co-sign you?

ASAP: Because I came out of nowhere, I’m an Internet child, and I’ve gotten a deal so quick. There are people that have been in the game for three or four years that don’t have a deal, or one that suits them correctly. I feel like a lot of people weren’t convinced because my mixtape didn’t drop before I got the deal. I don’t blame them. I felt I’d make believers out of everybody when Live.Love.ASAP drops.

A lot of people also criticized you for rapping too Houston-like when “Purple Swag” dropped, was that annoying for you?

ASAP: It was natural when I did it. I didn’t study a fuckin’ Pimp C. record or video, it was all natural. It’s like, you can’t stop the trillness. I was sipping on some syrup and I was influenced by all of that Houston shit, that Memphis shit, that New Orleans shit. At the end of the day it was everything I grew up on. It became quite easy for me to make those records that you hear today because I grew up on that shit.

Do you pride yourself on making diverse records?

ASAP: I like making different kinds of records. I like to be diverse and versatile. That’s my only purpose. I don’t like to give you the same thing over and over and over. I want the people who hate one type of song to like another type of song. It’s all good, you can’t please everybody and honestly I’m just doing me, whatever pleases me.

One thing that is different from you and a lot of rappers is that you don’t really glorify selling drugs.

ASAP: Well, I can rest assured my bills will be paid without having to worry about getting caught by cops or getting hit by a stray bullet or being mugged. That drug shit is corny. A lot of rappers glorify it because they never really lived it. I actually lived it and I don’t have to front. Like, I’ve never been a gangster, I’ve never been a tough guy, I’ve always just been about me and my business. I don’t perpetrate a fraud, so I’m not no trap motherfucker, but I can rap about it because I experienced it.

You said your brother influenced everything about you and you lost him at an early age, how tough was that for you to go through?

ASAP: I hated it. I was mad at God himself for a while. I was young. It was really tough and I was so lonely. He was my mentor, the guy to look up to, my go-to guy. It was just like, I lost the only person that really actually treated me equally as a friend when he had no reason to. Honestly, he was really so genuinely nice to me, and I know how it feels to be loved and I know how it feels to have your love taken away.

That must’ve have been tough…

ASAP: I guess that’s why I’m so harsh with women. I know this sounds pretty weird but it’s the truth. I know how it feels to be hurt. When my brother died it was like I lost my wife and children. I mean, it felt like I lost my fuckin’ brother and that’s what happened.

What exactly about losing your brother affects how you deal with women?

ASAP: With women I just feel like that’s a whole ‘nother situation, but I just feel like I don’t trust them. I don’t. I like a lot of women but I don’t trust them. You can’t. Especially when you’re in my position. Like right now, it’s like, “Yo! So you’re really in love with me? Yeah? Okay.” Just finish what you were doing. [ASAP makes a fellatio motion].

Is the groupie situation steadily increasing?

ASAP: It’s so crazy, it’s crazy! I just take advantage of the situation and make sure all my brothers get some pussy. Every last one of them. The ASAP crew they never go without.

What was it like kicking it with Drake?

ASAP: It was cool. He’s way more humble and appreciative and down to earth than I thought. Like, he appreciates regular people. That guy, he’s a good guy. And shout-outs to Mac Miller, he’s a good friend of mine, too. Drake and Mac Miller those are my boys right there.

Have either of them helped or taught you stuff?

ASAP: Mac and I just randomly speak every other day about random bullshit. Like Mac is really my boy. Like his boys, when he’s away in different countries and shit, come out here like to visit with us for days. Those are my guys. They come out and we smoke and chill. My crew embraces his crew and his crew does the same. People hate on Mac Miller, that shit pisses me off. I don’t like that shit, that’s my friend. I’ll smack the shit out of somebody if they disrespect Mac.

So you’ve talked about the Hodgy Beats situation in a lot of interviews. Were you surprised by the stray shot?
 
ASAP: I don’t know. You think he’s crazy? Maybe he’s crazy. He might be crazy but he’s far from stupid. I just look at it like, “Yo, I love Odd Future, fuck that shit, I love them little niggas.” Them niggas are wild. Tyler never dissed me, Taco shows love. I don’t have anything bad to say about Odd Future, but if I see Hodgy and Left Brain, I’m going to have a little talk with them. But I doubt I could get to them.

Do you see Odd Future as competition?

ASAP: No, you know why? ’Cause you got to look at it like this: me and Space Ghost Purp, our fan base was at the same place for a while. Like now, I’m getting more popular or whatever the case. I’m Raider Klan, I’m ASAP Raider Klan. We’re the same. If me and Purp can do it, why can’t me and Odd Future and Purp do it? Why can’t me, Odd Future and Danny Brown do it? We could all stick together and be cool. Honestly I don’t want to come into this industry with any enemies, but at the same time, I will fuck one of them motherfuckers up. I’ll smack the shit out of anybody on some real shit, but at the same time I got love for Odd Future.

You’re definitely a fashion-forward dude, where did you get your fashion-sense from?

ASAP: My brother taught me how to style. Like, he was light-skinned with all the girls and shit. His nickname was “Pretty Ricky,” so he used to get all the girls and I was like, “I want to be like him.” He was “Pretty Ricky” and I’m that “Pretty Motherfucker” and I’m trying to walk in his shoes. Honestly, I wear whatever I don’t see everybody else wearing. Like these are black ACNE jeans. They look regular, but not many people are wearing these. I like that. Then I have my fucking army coat ’cause I’m still gutter, and Timbs on ‘cause I still do this. This is just for sound check, wait till you see what I have on tonight. Might come through with some Alexander Wang, stylin’ on motherfuckers yo, Rick Owens and shit.

Have you always been a trendsetter?

ASAP: Hell fuckin’ yeah! In high school I had all the hoes on my dick. Ask anybody man, I used to go to high school around the corner from here. The School for the Humanities, it’s right around the corner from where we are right now and I used to have all the hoes. All the hoes.

I bet now you’re getting a lot of free shit.

ASAP: Oh, hell yeah, but not from the brands I really want free stuff from. Raf Simons didn’t call me, Jeremy Scott still didn’t call me, Rick Owens didn’t. They might soon, hopefully.

How fun was it fucking with label execs?

ASAP: Oh my God! One executive, he wanted me to come to his office and I’m like, “Yo, you got to take me shopping at Barneys first because I got to look presentable for the interview. If you don’t, then I can’t come.” I told him I needed these new Lanvin shoes and Marc Jacobs pants, and to make sure he had them. He was like, “You’ll get it Monday, don’t worry about it.” I was like, “No, it’s not going to happen.” He ended up going, and missing his flight to LA. After it he was like, “You made me late for my flight motherfucker.” That was fun.

You’re probably a few months away from being at a place where you can’t really go outside without a lot of people noticing you, are you ready for that kind of attention?

ASAP: Shit. I mean I can still walk around and people don’t fuck with me. They just say, “What’s up.” I don’t see that much craziness happening. I just want to be what I’m meant to be. I just want to have recognition for the work that I do and my talents. ♠

The world wanted a real fighter, and it got one.

Stockton, California’s Nick Diaz, the unpretty, putty-nosed one hundred-seventy pound mixed martial artist, hasn’t seriously lost a fight in more than five years. (When a ringside doctor stopped a 2007 contest with KJ Noons because of a gushing cut over Diaz’s eye, he left the ring middle fingers raised.) Diaz is uniquely pugilistic: he’s a fighter’s fighter, meaning he’d rather not have to leave the cage unless he — or, better yet, his opponent — is being hoisted and carried out by paramedics.

He’s also more complicated than that.

Diaz was expected to fight Quebec’s Georges St-Pierre for big money and the Ultimate Fighting Championship’s Welterweight title on Oct. 29, at the regal Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas, NV. It was to date the biggest break of the 28-year-old’s career.

In the mixed martial arts galaxy, the UFC is the sun around which all other fighting organizations orbit and, eventually, are consumed by. This is the same organization that deported Diaz in 2008, banishing him to lesser outfits to fight lesser opponents for lesser paydays.

So, it was as though Diaz had won fighting’s version of the lottery when he was called up to challenge the UFC’s champion darling St-Pierre. And if you were Nick Diaz, you’d see in Georges St-Pierre, the God-gifted, aeronautically shaven wrestler, a very beatable somebody standing between you and a better life. You’d see the unmissable opportunity of a lifetime.

But you are not Nick Diaz.

Only Nick Diaz is Nick Diaz.

And, for whatever Diazian reason (there are many, and they are often incomprehensibly strange), Diaz disappeared. He didn’t show up to press conferences and promotional junkets in Toronto and Vegas leading up to the fight with St-Pierre. He stopped answering phone calls. The UFC’s candid — and brilliant — mob boss-like president, Dana White, was flabbergasted. No one, not even Diaz’s trainer and manager, knew where he was.

As quickly as the title shot was granted unto Nick Diaz, it was taken away. He was pulled from the fight with St-Pierre and replaced. He’d been asked to “play the game,” to follow protocol. When you fight for the UFC, you do what the UFC tells you to do. White knew Diaz was flaky, so he made it especially clear. In interviews the day he pulled Diaz from the St-Pierre fight, White, wearing a duped expression of the I-should-have-known variety, said he would never trust Nick Diaz again.

Hours later, Diaz surfaced. In a self-recorded cell phone video while merging off a California highway, Diaz attempted to explain himself.

“All these deal makers making deals,” he said. “All I know is I’m ready to fight. I’m sorry I didn’t make it to the beauty pageant, but I’ve never not showed up to a fight.”

With the unexpressive eyes of a sociopath Diaz acted as though he had no idea what they were talking about; why not showing up to promote his own fight was such a big deal.

But to understand Nick Diaz’s decision-making, you have to think like Nick Diaz. Here’s a guy who was stripped of the biggest win of his career — against Japanese fireball Takanori Gomi — when a drug test came back positive for marijuana, perhaps the most counterintuitive drug a fighter could take. (Diaz swears by the weed, says it helps control his ADHD.) Here’s a guy who, in 2006, after losing a decision in a fight against the overly inked, former heavyweight Joe “Diesel” Riggs, confronted his opponent in the hospital lobby and, allegedly, knocked him out. Here’s a guy who had his eyebrow bones surgically filed down to prevent future cuts, like the one that cost him the first fight against KJ Noons.

Somewhere along the line, fighting, the cruelest game ever played for prize, became a glamour sport, one dominated by promotions, sponsors, and television exposure. Somehow, Nick Diaz didn’t get the message. Or maybe he just didn’t answer his phone. And even still, Diaz isn’t here to be a role model or an icon.

Nick Diaz isn’t here at all. ♠

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Interview by John Morgan courtesy of MMAJUNKIE.com

Nick, you were recently removed from a UFC 137 title bout with Georges St-Pierre for missing a pair of pre-event press conferences promoting the fight, and Carlos Condit was given your spot. Can you explain what happened and why you weren’t at the press conferences?

DIAZ: I’m not trying to make all these little excuses. If I’d have known the fight was going to be off, I would have fucking gone to the press conference, or I would have told somebody, ‘Hey, if I don’t make it to this stupid shit, I’m not fighting.’ I think that people would have gotten me there. I think people would have come and gave two shits and gotten me to that press conference.

I didn’t even know there was a press conference. I thought it was some PR thing. People were trying to tell me, ‘You’re going to do this skit’ and that I was going to be a part of some PR skit where I had this part where I was walking through a hall, kind of like that scene Jake Shields did. I was like, ‘What the fuck? Are you kidding?’ So I’m thinking, ‘Somebody better come over here and tell me what I’m doing and get me ready to go do it so I don’t look like an asshole.’ That’s how I feel when you’re coming to get me ready for something I’m not ready for.

I didn’t know it was supposed to be a press conference until the same day I was supposed to be making it to the press conference. I just don’t like the way people are treating it and acting like I backed out of a fight. Why would I do that?

And what are your thoughts about St-Pierre? He seemed to be surprised that you didn’t show.

DIAZ: I really don’t appreciate this motherfucker sitting there at that press conference and laughing at me. That’s some real bitch shit. He’s sitting there laughing, like it’s funny or something. If I saw Georges on the street and called him a bitch, I bet you he wouldn’t do shit. I bet you if I walked up and gave him a slap, I wouldn’t be surprised if he didn’t do shit. But you can’t do that to me. That’s not how it works for me. That’s something to fight about.

It makes me mad that Georges is going to sit there and call himself a fighter, but he’s not going to stand up and say something about this. He’s going to let it ride. I think I would say something. I would at least have said, ‘I disagree. I don’t agree with cancelling my fight because of some dumbass bullshit.’ Instead, he sat there and said, ‘He doesn’t have the commitment to be a champion.’ What is that? I obviously have the commitment to throw my life away. I’ve thrown my life away and sacrificed everything so that I can fight. I did that. I threw my life away so I could work hard and train and fight. That’s commitment.
I’m disappointed. I thought people really wanted to see me fight Georges. But nobody gives a shit, and nobody out here cares whether I was fighting. Nobody cares that I just took first place at a pretty hard Xterra [off-road triathlon] out there, that was just for fun but actually made for a good time. Nobody gives a shit what I’m doing for training out here.
I sleep four hours a night — maybe five or six hours tops. I wake up, and then I’m out on a run or out on a mission to get to the Bay Area so I can train with some bad motherfuckers, and I do that every day. And nobody gives a shit. Nobody has ever wanted to come on a ride along to see what it is to live a day in the life of Nick Diaz. That would be some shit. People would trip.

Eventually, UFC president Dana White decided to re-book you on the card, pairing you against BJ Penn. What are your thoughts about facing Penn? Is it a fight that motivates you?

DIAZ: It’s not like it’s an easy fight for me. I’m not like these bitches. I’m not going to hold BJ Penn down the whole time like these guys have done. They held BJ down because they’re bigger than him and stronger than him. I’m not going to do that. I’m not a little bitch to try and hold somebody down. I’m going to go out there and fight this tricky motherfucker, and it could mean a lot of problems for me. It would have been a lot of problems for them, too, if they had fought him like I fight. They would have lost that fight.
It’s a different matchup, me fighting BJ. I’m not afraid to fight BJ. I’m not afraid to fight anybody. I’ve proven that. I’ve won three belts in this shit with people trying to take my head off.

If you win this fight with Penn, it’s conceivable you could be booked to fight St-Pierre again. Is that a fight that still interests you despite what has happened?

DIAZ: The bottom line is Georges is being a little bitch. He didn’t step up and say anything when the UFC pulled me out of this fight. I understand sometimes you have to do what you’re told, but why wouldn’t you tell the media you still want to fight me? If I was Georges, I would want to fight the best. I would have asked for the Anderson Silva fight. I would have asked to fight the Strikeforce champ. But he sits there like a robot and doesn’t say anything at all, just like he’s not going to say anything about me calling him a bitch now. If I saw BJ Penn walking down the street and called him a bitch, we would be fighting right there on the spot. ♠