Pretty close. He opened up their training session by giving them all Bibles and asking them to read a certain section (I forget the name but it was about 9 pages) and tell him who, in that section, reminds them of himself. He said that he wasn't forcing it on anyone but encouraged it.
There were some great lines that came from this though. One of the fighters said something like "I didn't see any bad ass farm boys that drop people on their heads in the bible, so I don't know who he was." hahaha
One guy, Mac Danzig, wasn't reading it and was instead taking a nap. Matt walked up to him and was like "you don't have to read it, I'm not making you. But I really think you'd enjoy it." Whatever.
Serra heard about it and was furious because what if someone wasn't Christian? What if they were Jewish?
EDIT: This was taken from Hughes' blog on UFC.com
This week I was able to give Bibles out to my team, and everyone knows that my faith and being able to read the Bible and the stories is a huge part of my life, but my number one reason for giving Bibles out was that those guys only know two things while they’re on the show – the house and the gym – and I was giving them a third avenue to go to. When they go on the show they get their cell phones and their reading material taken away, and there’s no TV, so there’s nothing for them to read or do, and that’s why there’s so much excitement on the show – because they get bored. I gave them something where they got to read, they had something else to do, and something else to think about for a little while. I thought that would be big for these guys, to let them come into the gym, relax a little bit, and read. I couldn’t get them anything else to read, but I was able to talk them into giving them Bibles.
I wasn’t worried about any negative reaction from the guys because I really stressed the point that if you wanted to read, you could, if you don’t want to read, you don’t have to. Mac (Danzig) didn’t want to read, and a couple times I told him, ‘hey, it may be interesting to you. You don’t have to take some faith from it and I’m not trying to change your mind or anything, but there are some really interesting stories, in the Old Testament especially.’ But he didn’t want to, so I didn’t ask him anymore when I got the impression that he wasn’t going to.
As a starting point, I picked the Book of Esther because it was a short story, a good story, and it showed that the Queen was there for her people. In applying that story to what we were going through, I wanted those guys to know that I was put in my position to help them as a coach. I wanted them to know that I was there for them.
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“I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times.” - Bruce Lee
Last edited by dscott : 09-28-2007 at 09:55 PM.
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