If Tim Kennedy can be believed, getting shot at is a good way to learn some important things about yourself. Among the things you'll learn is that not everyone reacts the same way, and you can never know exactly how you'll react until the first time a bullet snaps past your head.
Then it's like a truth serum. Some essential fact about your identity rises to the surface, and it manifests itself in whatever you decide to do next.
Kennedy got his moment in Afghanistan. He was a brand new Green Beret, and he was headed with the rest of his team to hit a house where insurgents were thought to be holed up. The insurgents were right where they were supposed to be, and they were well-prepared for a fight. As soon they heard the sound of the Black Hawk helicopter transporting the Green Berets in, they opened up on the squad with machine guns.
"The moment we hit the ground and they started shooting, every single Green Beret that was with me starting sprinting toward the gunfire and shooting at the same time," Kennedy remembers. "I'm brand new, very green, no idea how I'm going to react in a gunfight, and I'm sprinting towards it too. I look to my left and my right, and there's my team doing the same thing I am. One out of a thousand guys would have the instinct to run towards gunfire. A calm, normal person would probably run the other way, or lay on the ground. Not these guys."
When Kennedy talks about this moment now, he does so not only with a sense of pride, but also one of gratitude. This, in its own way, was a great day for him. It was the day he found out that there was a place in the world where he felt he belonged and, terrifying though it may have been, that was a comfort.
With a guy like Kennedy, a lot of people know the 'what.' His story – American Special Forces hero when his country needs him; 12-2 professional MMA fighter and budding middleweight star when he can find a free weekend in his busy calendar – has made him one of the most famous Green Berets this side of John Rambo. But the question is how he ended up there, and more importantly, why?
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The quick version is that Kennedy watched the planes flying into the World Trade Center on 9/11 and he wanted to, as he puts it, "directly influence our response." That's simple enough, but it's also a little too cause-and-effect to tell the whole story.
The more complicated version is that Kennedy was another young man struggling to find himself. He went to college, got serious about martial arts, but he still felt a void in his life.
"I went to the police academy, I was a firefighter, an EMT. I worked at boys group homes, but it all felt just shy of what I knew I needed to be doing," he says. "I couldn't find a place where I fit. But the first time I got shot at in a war and everybody I was with did exactly the same thing I did, I knew I was in the right place."
It's a strange thing, to find your place in life in a war. Horrible things happen on a regular basis, and they're no less horrible to the men who, as much as anyone really can, actually want to be there. The hard part is often finding a way to deal with the specter of those events once you're safe at home.
Here's where we're used to the veteran stereotype: the emotionally scarred warrior staring off into the distance and slipping into a trembling flashback every time a ceiling fan sounds a bit too much like a helicopter rotor.
I've been starved, beaten, waterboarded, and then interrogated, and that's just training. That's just normal Special Forces training. That's my life. So then you put me in a cage or a ring and expect me to quit? It's not going to happen.
-- Tim Kennedy
But then there's Kennedy, who's about as far from that cliché as possible. His friends all unfailingly describe him as the happiest, funniest person they know – a "social butterfly," according to one fellow soldier. As Kennedy sees it, his sense of humor may be his greatest coping mechanism.
"The first time I had a real post-traumatic stress dream – I don't suffer from any depression or anything – but I came back from seeing some really traumatic things in war, like things with kids or women and blood and, you know, things happen," Kennedy says. "But I remember waking up in this cold sweat, freaking out. I called my buddy, and Special Forces is such a small, close-knit community that everyone knows everyone, and I told him, 'Man, I just had this crazy dream.' He was like, 'Yeah, I had one of those the other day.' Then we joke and laugh about it and it's out there, it's over. I don't have to bury that stuff in me."
There are times when things get confusing, when one life bleeds over into the other. After Kennedy's last fight, a first-round submission victory over Trevor Prangley in Los Angeles, he was briefly alarmed by fans running up to him to ask for an autograph.
"My first instinct is, what's this person doing? Why are they running? Do they have a bomb on them? Then I'm like, ah, I'm in Los Angeles. At worst, they're trying to steal my wallet. Then you relax. You remember where you are and it's not a big deal."
The flip side is, after what Kennedy has gone through in uniform, the pressure of a fight – even this weekend's Strikeforce title bout in Houston – doesn't even rate.
"He stays so relaxed beforehand it's unbelievable," says longtime friend and fellow soldier Justin Lakin, who also helps with Kennedy's strength and conditioning training. "Before the Zak Cummings fight he was messing around on Facebook until like five minutes before he had to go out. You never really see him serious and worked up unless it's a matter of life and death."
While other fighters work themselves into a frenzy before a fight, for Kennedy it's almost like a night off. His conditioning is the stuff of legends in just about every gym he's ever trained at, and no matter who you talk to they all say the same thing about what to expect when you get in the cage with him: it's impossible to make the man quit.
"I joke with him sometimes that he's like a secret government experiment, because the guy is just non-stop," says Dylan Ali, a trainer at CTC in Austin, Texas, where Kennedy currently fights out of. "I don't think I've ever seen him really get tired in training."
The way Kennedy sees it, his endless motor is as much a result of mental conditioning as physical.
"I've been starved, beaten, waterboarded, and then interrogated, and that's just training. That's just normal Special Forces training. That's my life. So then you put me in a cage or a ring and expect me to quit? It's not going to happen. You have to bring a lot more than that."
The next man who will get a chance to try is Brazilian Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza, who faces Kennedy for the vacant Strikeforce middleweight title on Saturday night (Showtime at 10 p.m. ET).
On paper, Kennedy admits, "Jacare" is the vastly superior submissions fighter, but it's not as if he's going to start shying away from challenges now. He may be a 2-1 underdog in the fight, but he's also a man who's come near enough to his own death to regard any chance to jump in a cage and test himself in a relatively safe environment as a bonus.
"I know I'm not going to get blown up or crushed in a helicopter and never get to see my kids again, so this is just a fun sport," he says.
Even his wife, Ginger, has developed a muted response to the pressures of fight night.
"Watching him fight is nothing in comparison to his deployments," she says. "I may hold my breath while some blows are being traded, but I don't lose any sleep over it. Stress levels are nil when comparing my husband being shot at, versus fighting a refereed bout in the ring."
If there's any knock at all on Kennedy in MMA circles, it's that his military obligations have prevented him from focusing all his energy on his fighting career. Only recently, when he moved into his current role with the Texas National Guard, has he gotten to train and fight full-time. He's a few weeks away from his 31st birthday, and it seems as though we still haven't seen him reach his full potential as a fighter. We haven't even seen what that might look like, and he's nine years into a career in a line of work where longevity is the exception rather than the rule.
Does it bother him? Not in the least, he says. Fighting is fun. Fighting is something he'd be doing whether he could earn a living at it or not. It's his passion, the thing he does with his own time, out of uniform, but it's not what defines him, he's quick to point out.
"I don't view it as a job. I view it as something I love doing. I get to do it and get paid for it, which is great, but that just feels like something extra to me."
Win or lose on fight night, the real Kennedy is still the guy who had to go away to war to find out where he belonged. He's the guy who heard gunfire and ran towards it. He's the guy who knows that there are still people out there fighting for much higher stakes than a piece of leather and metal, and there are much tougher things to deal with than a loss.
Then it's like a truth serum. Some essential fact about your identity rises to the surface, and it manifests itself in whatever you decide to do next.
Kennedy got his moment in Afghanistan. He was a brand new Green Beret, and he was headed with the rest of his team to hit a house where insurgents were thought to be holed up. The insurgents were right where they were supposed to be, and they were well-prepared for a fight. As soon they heard the sound of the Black Hawk helicopter transporting the Green Berets in, they opened up on the squad with machine guns.
"The moment we hit the ground and they started shooting, every single Green Beret that was with me starting sprinting toward the gunfire and shooting at the same time," Kennedy remembers. "I'm brand new, very green, no idea how I'm going to react in a gunfight, and I'm sprinting towards it too. I look to my left and my right, and there's my team doing the same thing I am. One out of a thousand guys would have the instinct to run towards gunfire. A calm, normal person would probably run the other way, or lay on the ground. Not these guys."
When Kennedy talks about this moment now, he does so not only with a sense of pride, but also one of gratitude. This, in its own way, was a great day for him. It was the day he found out that there was a place in the world where he felt he belonged and, terrifying though it may have been, that was a comfort.
With a guy like Kennedy, a lot of people know the 'what.' His story – American Special Forces hero when his country needs him; 12-2 professional MMA fighter and budding middleweight star when he can find a free weekend in his busy calendar – has made him one of the most famous Green Berets this side of John Rambo. But the question is how he ended up there, and more importantly, why?
Share
The quick version is that Kennedy watched the planes flying into the World Trade Center on 9/11 and he wanted to, as he puts it, "directly influence our response." That's simple enough, but it's also a little too cause-and-effect to tell the whole story.
The more complicated version is that Kennedy was another young man struggling to find himself. He went to college, got serious about martial arts, but he still felt a void in his life.
"I went to the police academy, I was a firefighter, an EMT. I worked at boys group homes, but it all felt just shy of what I knew I needed to be doing," he says. "I couldn't find a place where I fit. But the first time I got shot at in a war and everybody I was with did exactly the same thing I did, I knew I was in the right place."
It's a strange thing, to find your place in life in a war. Horrible things happen on a regular basis, and they're no less horrible to the men who, as much as anyone really can, actually want to be there. The hard part is often finding a way to deal with the specter of those events once you're safe at home.
Here's where we're used to the veteran stereotype: the emotionally scarred warrior staring off into the distance and slipping into a trembling flashback every time a ceiling fan sounds a bit too much like a helicopter rotor.
I've been starved, beaten, waterboarded, and then interrogated, and that's just training. That's just normal Special Forces training. That's my life. So then you put me in a cage or a ring and expect me to quit? It's not going to happen.
-- Tim Kennedy
But then there's Kennedy, who's about as far from that cliché as possible. His friends all unfailingly describe him as the happiest, funniest person they know – a "social butterfly," according to one fellow soldier. As Kennedy sees it, his sense of humor may be his greatest coping mechanism.
"The first time I had a real post-traumatic stress dream – I don't suffer from any depression or anything – but I came back from seeing some really traumatic things in war, like things with kids or women and blood and, you know, things happen," Kennedy says. "But I remember waking up in this cold sweat, freaking out. I called my buddy, and Special Forces is such a small, close-knit community that everyone knows everyone, and I told him, 'Man, I just had this crazy dream.' He was like, 'Yeah, I had one of those the other day.' Then we joke and laugh about it and it's out there, it's over. I don't have to bury that stuff in me."
There are times when things get confusing, when one life bleeds over into the other. After Kennedy's last fight, a first-round submission victory over Trevor Prangley in Los Angeles, he was briefly alarmed by fans running up to him to ask for an autograph.
"My first instinct is, what's this person doing? Why are they running? Do they have a bomb on them? Then I'm like, ah, I'm in Los Angeles. At worst, they're trying to steal my wallet. Then you relax. You remember where you are and it's not a big deal."
The flip side is, after what Kennedy has gone through in uniform, the pressure of a fight – even this weekend's Strikeforce title bout in Houston – doesn't even rate.
"He stays so relaxed beforehand it's unbelievable," says longtime friend and fellow soldier Justin Lakin, who also helps with Kennedy's strength and conditioning training. "Before the Zak Cummings fight he was messing around on Facebook until like five minutes before he had to go out. You never really see him serious and worked up unless it's a matter of life and death."
While other fighters work themselves into a frenzy before a fight, for Kennedy it's almost like a night off. His conditioning is the stuff of legends in just about every gym he's ever trained at, and no matter who you talk to they all say the same thing about what to expect when you get in the cage with him: it's impossible to make the man quit.
"I joke with him sometimes that he's like a secret government experiment, because the guy is just non-stop," says Dylan Ali, a trainer at CTC in Austin, Texas, where Kennedy currently fights out of. "I don't think I've ever seen him really get tired in training."
The way Kennedy sees it, his endless motor is as much a result of mental conditioning as physical.
"I've been starved, beaten, waterboarded, and then interrogated, and that's just training. That's just normal Special Forces training. That's my life. So then you put me in a cage or a ring and expect me to quit? It's not going to happen. You have to bring a lot more than that."
The next man who will get a chance to try is Brazilian Ronaldo "Jacare" Souza, who faces Kennedy for the vacant Strikeforce middleweight title on Saturday night (Showtime at 10 p.m. ET).
On paper, Kennedy admits, "Jacare" is the vastly superior submissions fighter, but it's not as if he's going to start shying away from challenges now. He may be a 2-1 underdog in the fight, but he's also a man who's come near enough to his own death to regard any chance to jump in a cage and test himself in a relatively safe environment as a bonus.
"I know I'm not going to get blown up or crushed in a helicopter and never get to see my kids again, so this is just a fun sport," he says.
Even his wife, Ginger, has developed a muted response to the pressures of fight night.
"Watching him fight is nothing in comparison to his deployments," she says. "I may hold my breath while some blows are being traded, but I don't lose any sleep over it. Stress levels are nil when comparing my husband being shot at, versus fighting a refereed bout in the ring."
If there's any knock at all on Kennedy in MMA circles, it's that his military obligations have prevented him from focusing all his energy on his fighting career. Only recently, when he moved into his current role with the Texas National Guard, has he gotten to train and fight full-time. He's a few weeks away from his 31st birthday, and it seems as though we still haven't seen him reach his full potential as a fighter. We haven't even seen what that might look like, and he's nine years into a career in a line of work where longevity is the exception rather than the rule.
Does it bother him? Not in the least, he says. Fighting is fun. Fighting is something he'd be doing whether he could earn a living at it or not. It's his passion, the thing he does with his own time, out of uniform, but it's not what defines him, he's quick to point out.
"I don't view it as a job. I view it as something I love doing. I get to do it and get paid for it, which is great, but that just feels like something extra to me."
Win or lose on fight night, the real Kennedy is still the guy who had to go away to war to find out where he belonged. He's the guy who heard gunfire and ran towards it. He's the guy who knows that there are still people out there fighting for much higher stakes than a piece of leather and metal, and there are much tougher things to deal with than a loss.