A Man Who’s Happy to Be Fighting His Way to the Top

No point denying it, David Lee Abbott just loves to fight. He knows it’s not hip or politically correct, but the man loves to beat people up. “I think it’s something that’s inside of me,” he says. “I just thrive on combat. If this was 600 years ago, I’d probably be on the front of the boat.”

Wearing a pelt, I ask.

“You got it,” he says.

So it was last year that when Abbott and some friends watched the “Ultimate Fighting Championship” video, featuring bare-knuckles, no-holds-barred brawling that makes some people cringe because of the brutality, they all had the same harmonious thought: “Everyone said, ‘You have to do that!’ ” Abbott says. “ ‘That is you!’ ”

Abbott entered his first competition last July in Casper, Wyo. He knocked out his first opponent, a 400-pound Samoan, in 18 seconds. He won his second match that night in under 2 minutes by forcing his opponent to submit as Abbott ground his face into the wire fence that serves as the “cage” for the fights. In the championship that night, a Russian jujitsu expert named Oleg Taktarov got him in a chokehold and Abbott “tapped out,” as they say in the trade.

“If I was to fight him again,” Abbott says, “I would absolutely annihilate him.”

I met Abbott last week in his Huntington Beach home, not knowing if I’d find a monster or America’s next cult hero. At 6 feet and upward of 250 pounds, the 30-year-old Abbott prowls the floor like a bear with a buzz cut. His head appears bolted to his neck, and he sports a bushy goatee and elaborate tattoos on both calves. A recent Esquire magazine article referred to him as “the first villain of the Ultimate Fighting Championship.”

He is, let’s face it, a scary sight. Offsetting that, though, is his amusing, almost nonchalance on this business of inflicting pain. And why not? He’s hot right now, believing that he can parlay his bruiser status into big bucks.

I begin by asking whether this is a lark or a profession. “It’s absolutely a profession. It gets lots of bad raps, and I’m not sure why. At face value, I guess it scares people, but if you delve into it, you basically have the three combatant sports--wrestling, boxing and martial arts--all rolled into the ultimate fighting challenge.”

He and sponsors of the fights are convinced it’s what America wants. So far, the fights have been staged in arenas across the country and marketed on pay-per-view and home video.

“What sets me apart from everyone else is that I have an extensive wrestling background,” Abbott says, assessing his style. “And I’ve boxed too. But I also have real applicable skills that I’ve used in bars. I’ve been in over 200 street fights, easy. I’m one of those guys who always ends up getting in fights in bars.”

He went to Marina High School and Cypress College. He can be engaging and articulate, but his love of brawling once landed him in Orange County Jail for six months. His street-fighting days are over, he swears. “I don’t know if you’ve ever been in jail. I’m college-educated, and jail is not the most fun place to be.”

In that sense, the Ultimate Fighting Championship is a godsend. “A lot of people say, ‘Oh, what happened to you?’ Nothing happened to me. I had the perfect childhood. People think my parents locked me in a room and beat on me. It was nothing like that. People think it’s aberrant behavior, but there’s always been warriors. It’s just that society doesn’t allow that, so now they’ve come up with the Ultimate Fighting Championship, and I believe it should be recognized as a legitimate sport.”

“How much of this is shtick?” I ask. He says none. “Everybody hates me,” he says of his competitors. “They’re there under the guise that they respect each other and they’re going to test their skills against each other. I believe I’m coming from a more honest point of view, which is that, ‘I’m here to hurt you and I have no qualms about doing it and I have no interest in talking to you. As a matter of fact, I think you’re all morons.’ ”

He says it with such enjoyment that, not only is he chuckling as he talks, so am I.

He shows me videos of the several fights he’s had so far, two of which he’s lost. Assessing one defeat, which went the maximum 18-minute distance, he says of his opponent: “He was on that night. I had some bad breaks, I gave him too much respect for his choking abilities, but that’s hindsight. No excuses. When it’s all put together right, I believe I’m unstoppable.”

For now, Abbott is doing nothing but training for more fights. He’s scheduled to fight again in May. He’s convinced he can make a living in this “sport of the future.”

And if he can’t?

“All these other guys, they’re martial-arts experts or wrestlers who want to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger. They’re fighting to enable themselves to act. I’m fighting to enable myself to be happy. This is what I love to do.”

After we’ve watched one of his losses, to someone named Dan Severn, Abbott turns off the VCR. “Some people think that was horrific,” he says, referring to the head shots he took while Severn had him pinned to the mat. “It didn’t bother me at all. I don’t know how to explain it. I have a very high pain threshold, and it’s part and parcel of what we do.”

So, no regrets about the fight, I ask. Abbott looks at me like I’m nuts and says: “God, I can’t wait to fight him again.”

Dana Parsons’ columns appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at the Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.