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00:03KONIEC
00:30WINE FIGHT WORLD
00:30IN THE 1990s.
00:34DON THE PREDATOR FRIE
00:36FOUND HIS HAPPY PLACE.
00:38SHIT, THIS IS WHAT I WAS
00:39BORN TO DO.
00:41THIS HAS NO FEAR.
00:43HE'S NOT GOING TO RETREAT.
00:44HE'S NOT GOING TO SURRENDER.
00:45DON FRY IS NOT GOING TO QUIT.
00:48AND HIS ABILITY TO TAKE
00:50AS GOOD AS HE GIVES,
00:51IS REVEREED.
00:52THE ALL-TIME FAN FAVORITE
00:54AND PEOPLE LOVE HIM.
00:55IN BOTH THE U.S. AND JAPAN.
00:57I had 50,000 people who don't show up to see you fight.
01:03Delivering crushing blows while absorbing damage that would make most other fighters tap.
01:08Ken tears his knee apart and he just lets it happen.
01:12The Predator wears down bigger and stronger opponents.
01:15Oh, they're gonna go here!
01:17But absorbing all that damage in the cage.
01:20He didn't even make a grimace.
01:22Nothing, not a peep.
01:23Leaves him in a real life battle against pain.
01:26I could tell shit was getting bad.
01:29I knew it was because he was hurting.
01:31I'm fucked up.
01:32I'm a physical train wreck.
01:33I just didn't have what it took.
01:36There comes a point in time of how much damage have you done to your body?
01:40Will you pull back out of or keep going?
01:44Until the Predator finds himself the prey against a possibly fatal opponent.
01:50Go ahead and fucking shoot me.
01:51I don't give a fuck.
01:53I'm done.
01:54I have no reason to be here.
02:17I'm Don Frye, professional MMA fighter known as the Predator.
02:22Or in Japan, they call me Otoko Juku, the man of men.
02:26And I always try to give people their money's worth.
02:30Back when the MMA world is filled with one-trick brawlers with a mastery of a single fighting style,
02:36Don Frye rewrites the rules with expertise in wrestling, judo, and boxing.
02:43He's one of the founders of what put this sport on the map.
02:47An MMA legend.
02:49He is the epitome of the tough guy.
02:52He might be the toughest guy in the ring, but outside the ring, he's just a good old country boy.
03:00Don grows up in Sierra Vista, a military town in the Arizona high desert.
03:05At 13, a self-professed angry kid, Don gets his first taste of organized fighting.
03:12Eighth grade, I weighed about 165 pounds.
03:15I did one boxing match, amateur boxing match.
03:19Knocked the guy down, he got up, broke my nose.
03:21What did your mom say about your nose getting broken?
03:24Oh, she was pissed.
03:26About her baby boy getting hurt, you know.
03:29And that was the end of that.
03:30I like the fighting part of it, you know.
03:33Go in the air and you sweat and you bleed.
03:37Sometimes you get hurt.
03:39So Don drops the gloves and puts on a singlet.
03:43I was a 190-pound wrestler for Wayna High School.
03:47I pinned everybody in the first round on the freshman team.
03:50Halfway through the season, they moved me up to varsity.
03:54I was coaching high school-level wrestling at another school.
03:59We would be in different tournaments in the United States, high-level tournaments.
04:03That's where I'd met him.
04:04He looked like a man wrestling children.
04:07I'm Steve Owen.
04:09I was Don Fry's coach and friend.
04:11I guess I still am his friend.
04:13I guess I still am his coach.
04:14We're just not in the fight business anymore.
04:17He was dominant.
04:18There's no doubt about it.
04:20The competition, they gave me a source for my anger.
04:23They released my anger.
04:24One-on-one.
04:26Don has the ability to turn it off and turn it on.
04:30He could turn himself into the meanest son of a bitch there was.
04:34I'm Jeff Spencer, former firefighter and best friends with Don Fry.
04:39I'm not sure where it comes from.
04:41I think some of it has to do with when he's young.
04:46You know, when I was a kid, I had a lot of anger and hate.
04:51I was six and a family friend molested me.
04:57My younger brother and I went there to stay the night with this guy and his family.
05:03When I came back, you know, the next day, I guess I was pretty much a different person, you know?
05:09Shell shock.
05:13When Don is eight years old, he falls victim to yet another child predator.
05:19Being molested a few times is real hard.
05:26You're the fucking victim, but you're ashamed of it.
05:30After I would cry, I'd hate myself.
05:33He'd motivate me to go out and destroy people.
05:39And he does just that, becoming a wrestling state champion in 1983.
05:45That helps him earn a scholarship to Arizona State University the following year.
05:50Watching Don in the practice room, he was gritty and kind of boneheaded.
05:55Don didn't mind butting heads even, even in that kind of format.
06:00He's like a bull in a china closet, all right?
06:02My name is Daniel DeWayne Severn, but I was given the iconic cage name of Dan DeVish Severn
06:09by the legendary NFL Hall of Famer, Jim Brown.
06:13I'm the assistant wrestling coach at Arizona State University.
06:16Don Fry is on the wrestling team.
06:18Typically, whoever he was taking on was bigger than Don.
06:22In their mind, they're about to make short work of Don Fry, and then the tables get turned quite quickly.
06:29I did real good as a wrestler.
06:30But the freedoms of college life threatened to derail his success on the mat.
06:36I just fucked around too much.
06:39Chased women and drank too much beer and alcohol.
06:42Rum, tequila, Ivanka.
06:45Wake up with a girl in the bed next to you, and you're like, holy shit, how much did I
06:51drink?
06:52A couple of buddies.
06:53We were on an ATV, one of those three-wheel ATVs.
06:58And we'd been drinking all day long.
07:00You know, I got one more jump in me, so I went, front tire first, rolled it, boom.
07:07Bleeding from the shoulder, bleeding from the scalp.
07:10Couldn't move my arm, you know.
07:12Then you come running over laughing at me.
07:14I hurt my ego.
07:15I still wrestled, tried to finish that season.
07:18But I had about five or ten wrestling matches, and then I couldn't do it anymore.
07:23After taking a year off to recuperate, Don returns to the wrestling team and a shot at the Olympic trials.
07:32I won the 1988 Olympic qualifying tournament in Las Vegas, which qualified me for the national trials.
07:42And I went there and I got my ass whooped.
07:46You fool yourself into thinking you got a chance, you know.
07:53After failing to make the Olympic wrestling team, Don becomes a full-time firefighter and goes looking for a new
07:59combat sport.
08:01He showed up at the judo dojo, puts his back on my chest and flattens himself.
08:06And then I arm bar him because he's got his arm flopping around.
08:10And it really made him realize that he needed more skills.
08:14So he says, I'm going to make this guy my coach.
08:18Every Saturday, Steve Allen would come run the practice, training me.
08:22You know, I would compete.
08:23And I did real good competing.
08:26I like just the fighting part.
08:28I couldn't tell you the names of one or two moves, you know.
08:33But I'm a fifth-degree black belt, you know.
08:39He was a solid muscle back then.
08:42Me and some other guys had been doing a lot of grappling.
08:46So we thought we were pretty good.
08:48So we started training with him, just basically being humiliated.
08:53We watched the first couple UFCs.
08:56And we're like, hey, man, you need to do this.
08:59This is made for you.
09:00Don agrees, seeing the then-fledgling UFC as the place where his wrestling, boxing,
09:06and judo skills, along with his love of fighting, could all be put to use to hopefully make some money.
09:13I saw Dan Severn be a runner up in number four and then one number five.
09:18And I called him up, say, Dan, you know, Don Frye, remember me?
09:22Can you get me on this UFC stuff?
09:24His old college coach, Dan Severn, lands Don a fight in Atlanta in 1995.
09:29While not the UFC or even a sanctioned bout, Severn lures Don to what he describes as an upscale event.
09:38He said, it'll be champagne, caviar, all these rich people in their tuxedos and evening gowns.
09:45You'll be the entertainment.
09:47But on the way, on the way there, they, they pull, they turn and says, oh, by the way, we
09:52can't pay you.
09:54Do you still want to fight?
09:56Oh, shit, I came all the way to Atlanta.
09:58You're damn right we're going to fight.
09:59You know, I didn't think the UFC was going to just take anybody.
10:03I had to prove to Dan Severn that I was good enough for him to be in my corner.
10:08Because they had a warehouse with no ventilation.
10:11They had those blue plastic tarps separating every fighter, you know, for your dressing room.
10:18There was no caviar, there was beer and pretzels, you know.
10:22The guy I fought, you know, was on the poster.
10:25Big burly guy, rock hard.
10:27So I went out there and I started beating on him.
10:29And my corner's like, no, take it easy, take it easy hell.
10:34The guy's got tattoos and wears sunglasses inside.
10:38You know, he's here to kill me.
10:40So I beat him two out of three falls.
10:42And then went backstage to the locker room and nobody would look at me.
10:48Nobody would even look at me.
10:49It was just stone quiet.
10:51So I guess I scared the hell out of everybody that night.
10:55They had never seen someone be humanly locked like that in the cage industry.
11:00After proving himself in a series of unconventional underground fights, his reputation gains the attention of the UFC.
11:08They called up and said, we got to fight UFC February 16th.
11:13You know, you interested, you want to fight?
11:16Well, hell yeah, I'm interested.
11:17I want to fight.
11:18It was my last chance to be an athlete again.
11:21And, you know, I screwed it up a couple of times.
11:24Wasn't going to screw it up again.
11:27So I trained my ass off.
11:29The early days of the UFC are known as the no-holds-barred era.
11:34In the beginning, there's only really those two rules.
11:36No biting, no eye gouging.
11:38People say, can I run over there and stomp them on the head?
11:41Sure.
11:41Can I kick them in the face?
11:43Sure.
11:43Can I knee a man to the head?
11:45Sure.
11:47On February 16th, 1996, Don makes his debut at UFC 8 in Puerto Rico.
11:54The glare and then the sneer.
11:57He would side look people.
11:58It's like, I'm going to kill you.
12:01It was a great, it was a great look.
12:04My name is Big John McCarthy and I was lucky enough to be the guy that was in the cage
12:10with Don Frye with his first fight in the UFC.
12:14Introducing the Predator, Don Frye!
12:18Early UFC tournaments require the winner to beat three different opponents on the same night.
12:24You got paid $500 to walk through the cage.
12:27You won, then you advanced to the second round and you could get paid $2,500.
12:33And then if you won, you go to the third round and you either got $50,000 or $10,000.
12:39So it was important for me to win.
12:41There are also no weight classes and Don's first fight is billed David vs. Goliath.
12:49He was a David.
12:50He was the lightweight.
12:52So his first match was a Puerto Rican, 400 pounds.
12:57I thought Don was going to wrestle him, but Don just goes out there and basically one jab and knocked
13:04him out.
13:04And Frye hurts down Ramirez and that is it.
13:07That was eight seconds.
13:09It was a record for 15, 20 years.
13:13Don's skill, strength and stamina are unmatched through all three of his fights.
13:18The flurry of power.
13:20Don wore him out and just put shots on him that eventually just broke down.
13:25That's it, it's over.
13:26Don Frye.
13:27Donnie Frye wins it.
13:29He proved that, hey, he was a tough guy.
13:32Don's victories earn him a championship belt and a check for $50,000.
13:38That was a lot of money back then.
13:40I'll tell you, I changed my life completely.
13:42I'm feeling elated, you know what I mean?
13:44I'm feeling, shit, this is what I was born to do.
13:47Gladiator fighting.
13:48That was my calling.
13:50But after cashing in with one of the most unforgettable and overpowering UFC debuts to date, Don will
13:57discover that over time, his new calling comes with a very high cost.
14:02He had superpowers, but he paid the ultimate price.
14:06That anger and that hate will destroy you, you know.
14:15The David beats Nick O'Lion.
14:18With a stunning victory in his debut at UFC 8, Don Frye leaves even the man who gets him his
14:24start in MMA,
14:25shaking his head in amazement.
14:28I helped him get his foot that door, but he's the one that kicked the wide open, so he got
14:33what he deserved.
14:35With another win a few months later at UFC 9.
14:38Well, that definitely proves that the UFC, the Frye one, was no clue.
14:42He's here to stay.
14:43Other fighters begin to feel uneasy about facing an undefeated Don the Predator Frye in the upcoming UFC 10.
14:51As for Don, he's feeling something else.
14:54Hell, the night before, I felt like shit.
14:57Had a cold or something.
14:59I just woke up and I went downhill.
15:03An under-the-weather Predator battles through it to win his first two fights.
15:07Don now needs to defeat a UFC rookie in the finals to remain undefeated.
15:14A manager told me he has a slot in UFC 10.
15:19This is what I've been wanting to hear.
15:21And I immediately said, that's my slot.
15:25I marked the hammer Coleman.
15:28We fought two times back in the day.
15:30And nothing but respect for this man.
15:33Coleman, he had just come off of the Olympic trials.
15:35He had already made one of the Olympic teams.
15:37So he's tougher than the hell.
15:39He's ready to go.
15:41Watched the last UFC.
15:43I said, I'll smash Don Frye's ass.
15:46As promised, Coleman begins delivering smashing blows to Don's face.
15:51You know, his eyes were getting swollen, more swollen.
15:55They were closing his whole face.
15:57I stopped the fight multiple times to take Don to a doctor.
16:02The doctor keeps asking him, you know, you want to continue?
16:05I crossed my fingers and hoped he said no.
16:08And he's like, yeah.
16:11I'm like, goddammit.
16:12Put him back out there and, you know,
16:15Mark Coleman would take him down and start beating on him again.
16:18Kick up by Coleman!
16:19I started realizing that this man is special.
16:22And he's not going to quit.
16:24He had a broken ocular socket.
16:26And it shut his body down.
16:28But Don Frye and I made an agreement.
16:30He goes, I don't give a shit what happens.
16:32Do not ever throw the fucking towel in.
16:35Do not stop the fight.
16:38Finally, it got to the point where I just, I stopped it.
16:41He had taken a ton of abuse.
16:43I'm glad they finally stopped it when they did.
16:46Because Don Frye, he would have never quit.
16:49I would have had to kill him.
16:50His first UFC will be a winner.
16:53I admired him immediately during the fight and after the fight.
16:57But then I would see Don on occasions at small shows over the next year or so.
17:03And I would wave to him and say hi to him.
17:06But he didn't seem too interested in saying hi back.
17:11I'd have ran him over in the parking lot if I had a car.
17:16I hated him.
17:17I hated him.
17:18I'm a poor loser.
17:20A very poor loser.
17:22Show me a happy loser and I'll show you a loser.
17:26I hate being weak, you know?
17:29Every time I'm weak, I get madder and madder at myself.
17:34And I hate myself more.
17:38Don's chance to shake those feelings comes five months later
17:41when he's scheduled to fight Coleman again.
17:44This time at UFC's Ultimate Ultimate.
17:47An event where past winners and runners-up
17:50battle each other to be named the 1996 UFC champion
17:54and win $150,000.
17:58It's not to be.
18:00Two-time UFC champion Mark Coleman is out.
18:04I just got back from Brazil.
18:06I caught some kind of funk virus over there.
18:10I couldn't get rid of it.
18:11I was pissed.
18:12Couldn't fight Coleman again.
18:14But fuck them.
18:15I'm going to win this tournament.
18:17This is my show.
18:18And in the first two rounds, it is the Don Frye show
18:21as he submits Gary Goodrich and then Mark Hall.
18:24Now, all that's between Don and the $150,000 is a tank.
18:29The savage pit fighter, Tank Abbott.
18:33He got on top of him and sunk in the rear naked choke.
18:38And that was up.
18:39The front has won.
18:40You know, so I won.
18:42I was feeling good about myself back there in 96.
18:45But there was always that little nagging,
18:47that little bitch on your shoulder nagging at you,
18:51saying, but you didn't be Coleman.
18:54You didn't be Coleman.
18:55You know, get out of here, you little bitch, you know.
19:00I was out for six to eight weeks for a broken hand.
19:03But during that time, New Japan Pro Wrestling came calling.
19:07In 1997, New Japan Pro Wrestling is a hugely popular
19:12and significantly more profitable promotion
19:15than the still-floundering UFC.
19:17There was things happening with him and the UFC.
19:20He's now looking and saying,
19:22just one year Ultimate Ultimate.
19:23I want, you know, some more money.
19:25And the UFC didn't have the money to pay him.
19:27You've got all my damn fixed.
19:29So Don heads east for a raise in pay
19:32in the land of the rising sun.
19:34In front of my daughter.
19:35They had to feed her.
19:36We had to close her.
19:38Everything I did was for my girls.
19:42Including flying across the Pacific Ocean
19:44to take on a new sport
19:45with risks he didn't face in MMA fighting.
19:49Pro Wrestling is completely different from the UFC.
19:52You've got a predetermined outcome.
19:55You're not trying to hurt the other guy, though.
19:57But, you know, you end up getting injured more in pro wrestling.
20:01You know, shit, we'll do 18 shows in 21 days.
20:05So you end up getting hurt a lot worse.
20:08I call it a stuntman performance.
20:11And it absolutely breaks your body
20:14because they are taking true blows.
20:18The doctors describe it like being in a car wreck every day.
20:22So, you know, you get whiplash, you know,
20:2510 times a match every day for the whole year.
20:29In one match, an opponent lands hard on Don's neck.
20:33He stomped the back of my neck
20:36and I heard crunch and I thought, well, that ain't good.
20:39And I wrestled on it for probably a year and a half.
20:44And finally I said, you know, I can't do this anymore.
20:46You've got to see a doctor.
20:48And I went and saw my doctor and she took an x-ray and says,
20:52well, you got a broken neck, dummy.
20:54Can't be ever doing this anymore
20:55until you get the operation and you healed.
21:00And I'm like, well, I got the Tokyo Dome.
21:03And she said, you can't do that.
21:05You got a broken neck.
21:06You're damn right I can.
21:08And he does just that, wrestling in front of a huge crowd.
21:13And then after the match, I went in and got the surgery.
21:17The doctor came in the next morning and said,
21:19when did you break your neck before?
21:22And I says, I never did.
21:24And he said, yeah, you've broken before.
21:27They went in there to fuse my neck.
21:29From the break, they can see where it healed up itself, you know.
21:34And so that's when I put it together.
21:36The ATV.
21:38I'm damn lucky, you know.
21:40Good Lord was with me.
21:42And God takes care of fools, I guess.
21:46Three months and one day after the surgery,
21:48I was in the ring again.
21:52On a short break from his wrestling schedule,
21:55Don returns to Sierra Vista, Arizona.
21:58When he came home, I get a call from him.
22:01I guess he got some kind of infection.
22:04He's puking his guts out and tore up the first back surgeon.
22:09So he goes in, they put it back together.
22:11They gave him pain medicine for that.
22:14I was taking oxycodone, Vicodin, Pergocets,
22:17other pills to help you sleep.
22:20Whether you're laying down or sitting up,
22:22you're always in pain.
22:24It's impossible to get comfortable.
22:26Then he's really infected.
22:27So he has to go back and get another one.
22:30That was in the matter of two or three weeks.
22:32Were you concerned about him?
22:34A little bit, but I figured he had it under control.
22:37Did you ever think that you were doing too much at that time?
22:41I don't think I was addicted.
22:43I think I was dependent.
22:44I was heavily dependent.
22:45You're addicted, you'll do anything.
22:47Anything at all to get that high.
22:52I wasn't at that point.
22:54Then when it caught up to me,
22:57it was horrible.
23:00Fucking horrible.
23:02Lost everything.
23:13In the late 90s, Don Fry moves from MMA fighting in the UFC
23:17to wrestling in Japan's biggest promotion.
23:20Being in the pro wrestling ring feels like magic
23:24because, you know, you have everybody's attention.
23:27You control them.
23:28You control whether they're happy or whether they're sad or, you know,
23:32whether they're angry.
23:33It's like being a puppeteer of a whole arena.
23:37But that scripted manipulation of the audience still requires inflicting very real damage on his body.
23:44And soon Don needs help to keep up with wrestling's relentless schedule.
23:55Don continues wrestling with pain until the success of a former rival compels him to return to his first combat
24:02sport.
24:02When Coleman won the Pride Grand Prix,
24:07then I lost my freaking mind.
24:10I had to go back into the fight game.
24:13Don is still carrying the emotional turmoil of losing his only UFC fight to Coleman.
24:18Now, his tormentor is also in Japan, competing in Pride fighting championships.
24:25From 1997 to 2007, Pride is easily the world's top MMA promotion, dwarfing the UFC.
24:33Pride was like Barnum Bailey Circus, the biggest show on earth.
24:38It was like being part of the Super Bowl every three months, man.
24:43On September 24th, 2001, Don Fry makes his return to MMA at Pride 16,
24:50just two weeks after the terrorist attacks of September 11th.
24:55I wore the flag trunks out and terrorist-sucked t-shirt.
24:59It wasn't show.
25:00It wasn't bullshit.
25:02I wanted to represent the USA as an American.
25:05You know, I was like, fuck Bin Laden.
25:08Lick my nuts, you know.
25:10The Japanese people, they loved that I was standing up for my country.
25:14They also love how he begins overpowering opponents.
25:18His popularity in New Japan pro wrestling is soon eclipsed by his superstar status and pride.
25:24There he is, and the ovation sets it all.
25:26They would call Frye the blue-eyed samurai.
25:29We were gods.
25:30You had 50,000 people, you know, show up to see you fight.
25:35Listen to that crowd, they loved Don Frye.
25:38Walked down to the ring, you know, and do this.
25:42They'd all stand up and cheer.
25:44I'd do that, and they'd all stand up and cheer.
25:46The highest-paid cheerleader on the planet, you know.
25:49Yeah, look how you're gonna do it.
25:50Enough to make my ex-wife rich.
25:54The first time I went to Japan, it's friggin' amazing.
25:59He's being mobbed by fans.
26:02Fifty people are around him, wanting his autographed and wanting to take pictures with him.
26:08The Japanese here are extremely punctual.
26:11Should the goddamn bus driver run over somebody instead of being late?
26:14As we're getting ready to go to the airport, these street workers, they come out with sawhorses, block the road.
26:22There's like 25 of these guys.
26:25They all get on the bus, they walk down the aisle.
26:28They didn't ask for an autograph.
26:29They actually vowed.
26:31It's one of the neatest things because they're fanatics about being on time.
26:38Got this from Pride.
26:40I had about 20 different action figures during my run over in Japan.
26:47Ruhei Katamura put me in a Godzilla movie.
26:50He just won't quit.
26:52You know, he wrote a part for me.
26:54It was great.
26:55We even did other stuff across the country.
26:58It was a great time.
26:59You have a real soft spot for the Japanese drink.
27:02Oh, yeah.
27:03Love the culture and the people, you know.
27:05And the people love me back.
27:08Along with his fame, the damage to his body continues to grow.
27:12By early 2002, Don says he needs painkillers just to enter the ring.
27:17I took a couple pills before the samurai fight.
27:20The pain was phenomenal.
27:23It was intense.
27:25I had to get through it.
27:27It's a questionable choice for a fighter who won't ever quit.
27:31Ken tears his knee apart and he just lets it happen.
27:34He breaks both my ankles and tore the tendons.
27:38Done by, I don't think, in his constitution to tap out.
27:42I remember talking to Ken Shamrock about that fight.
27:45And Ken basically said, he goes, John, I heard his ankles break.
27:49I heard his knees popping.
27:51He goes, I could feel it.
27:54And still, Don scores the victory by split decision.
27:57But with two broken ankles and his knee ligaments shredded.
28:01Whether he's a winner is debatable.
28:04It was a hard walk out of there, I'll tell you.
28:07Painkillers.
28:08Helped a lot.
28:09Then, Don finally gets what brought him to pride.
28:12A scheduled rematch with his UFC nemesis, Mark Coleman.
28:16Just four months after the bruising Shamrock fight.
28:20Just busting my ass training.
28:22And I needed to get big for Goldman.
28:24Because Goldman was, you know, a monster.
28:27Fucking guy had shoulders on him, you know, like this.
28:29You know.
28:30Like bowling balls.
28:32I was taking testosterone.
28:34Everybody was taking tests.
28:36And plus with painkillers.
28:38The problem with steroids, they don't necessarily make you stronger.
28:42They enable you to do more to get stronger.
28:46But the price to pay on that is everything is brittle.
28:51So you're aching all the time.
28:53So you start out on painkillers.
28:56Pretty soon you need more painkillers.
28:58And then, you know, a week or two before we get the phone call of Coleman and gotten hurt.
29:05And then they switched to the opponent.
29:07After training for Coleman, Don is now fighting pro wrestler turned mixed martial artist, Yoshihiro Takayama.
29:15On the way over there, I'm thinking, the guy's a pro wrestler.
29:19He's not going to be very tough.
29:20Fry's going to kill him in one round and it's going to be over with.
29:23Well, then when he walks out in the ring, the guy's a giant.
29:28The stare down says a lot.
29:30You know, they're face to face.
29:32And Don, he looks like a pit bull that's just ready to pounce.
29:36I'm looking up until I'm trying to read him.
29:39And, you know, I can see the doubt in his eyes.
29:41Do you think he saw any doubt in your eyes?
29:44No, I don't think he saw anger.
29:48There's a lot of anger in my eyes, in my being.
29:53Fry is just like a fist of stone.
29:57You know, it's crazy.
29:59And he's just pounding the dude in the face.
30:01I'm thinking, holy shit, this guy's tough.
30:04He grabbed me one time, threw me on the ground, kicked me on the way up.
30:08Damn near dislocated my shoulder.
30:10He almost paralyzed it.
30:12If it wasn't for the adrenaline, I wouldn't have been able to finish.
30:18After getting battered by Takayama, Don leaves the ring with another win.
30:24But the emotional turmoil from losing to Mark Coleman years earlier endures.
30:30I want to call it bad.
30:31I hated myself.
30:33I hated life.
30:34You know, I got a copy of that fight.
30:37And I watched it every day for probably two or three years.
30:43It just stuck in my mind.
30:45It drove me crazy.
30:46I was obsessed with it.
30:48In November 2002, Don Frye returns to Arizona to try and recover from his injuries.
30:54The pain doesn't go away.
30:56It just became part of my life.
30:58It's not Hollywood.
31:00You know, where everything disappears in a half hour.
31:04Sat on the back porch, smoked cigars, drinking all day long.
31:08I was still on the pain juniors.
31:10When you're on that kind of pain, you build an immunity to it.
31:14So you have to chase it with alcohol.
31:17So he got himself in a really, really bad place.
31:23Don is still in this bad place in 2003 when he finds himself back in Japan.
31:28After finally getting the fight he's been chasing for almost seven years.
31:33I needed the pill to walk down to the ring.
31:38Because that was, you know, a hundred yard walk.
31:42When we did finally meet the second time, I don't think he was at the top of his game.
31:46A couple minutes into the fight, I heard him breathing pretty hard.
31:51These pills fucking deadens your reflexes.
31:55You know, your response time.
31:57Your thinking, your coordination.
32:00Coleman in total control here.
32:02I'm trying to cover up my weakness because I'm fucked up.
32:05I'm a physical train wreck at this time.
32:08Made the fight a lot easier.
32:10I laid there on my back like a cheap whore.
32:13Laid there and let him beat on me.
32:15Didn't fight back.
32:17And there it is, folks.
32:18Fights didn't have what it took.
32:23Came across each other at the end for fight party.
32:26Shook my hand and said, I can't hate you.
32:28We're too much alike.
32:30And I said, hell yeah, Don.
32:31Don, you're damn right we are.
32:33Let's go have a beer.
32:34And he told me, I taught him that he's not the toughest man in the world.
32:39Six months after his loss to Mark Coleman, Pride releases a debilitated Don from his contract.
32:46He was drinking so heavy you couldn't believe it.
32:48I said, you're out there.
32:50You're totally incoherent.
32:52You didn't follow anything that we did.
32:54So I said, no.
32:55I said, here's the deal.
32:57I am not coaching you for any more fights.
33:00But Don keeps going, taking any fight offered to him in the lower level promotions.
33:05Fighting powered by drugs and alcohol only accelerates the damage his mind and body are suffering.
33:12I was drinking from nine o'clock in the morning.
33:16I'd probably drink a bottle of Patron, big bottle.
33:19And then I had five different narcotics in me.
33:24Then in 2007, at a pro wrestling meet and greet in San Francisco, Don's addiction-fueled fighting becomes tabloid fodder.
33:32He was absolutely under the influence.
33:35He said something, you know, to someone.
33:38They said something back.
33:40Come on.
33:42Come on.
33:43Come on.
33:45That's what happens when, you know, you decide to put yourself into a position where you're addicted.
33:52You can't stop.
34:04At this point in my life, I was on a downward slope because of the pills and the alcohol.
34:13And, you know, then I just quit caring.
34:17When life is busy, you're always hard to go because you've got this come up, that come up.
34:23Now when you're sitting around and you have nothing but this, that's a whole different story.
34:32When I would come up and visit, I could tell shit was getting bad because he was drinking like a
34:38fish.
34:38You'd have me drive him down to the liquor store to get not a bottle of liquor, like giant jugs
34:46of liquor.
34:47And I knew it was because he was hurting.
34:50His wife knew that he was using so much pain medicine.
34:57My wife had filed for a divorce.
35:00We were having a lot of problems.
35:01She called up the cops.
35:03You know, she said, my husband's the next MMA fighter.
35:06He's drunk.
35:07He's on pills and he has guns.
35:10So they showed up, you know, 10 or 11 of them showed up, you know, loaded for bear.
35:16You know, don't go ahead and shoot me.
35:18I don't give a fuck.
35:19I'm done.
35:20You know, I've accomplished everything there is accomplished in life.
35:25And I love my family.
35:28And if they're tired of me, go ahead and fucking shoot me.
35:32What the hell am I going to live for?
35:34I've got no reason to be here.
35:36I'm ready.
35:38Shoot me here.
35:39Shoot me here.
35:40Don't fucking make me limp around here.
35:43Obviously they didn't kill you.
35:44Yeah, good thing.
35:46They were fans of mine, which pissed off life.
35:50Nobody wanted that on their resume.
35:53So I ended up going to jail for the night.
35:57Lost my wife, lost my family.
35:59I lost my children.
36:01I lost a whole lot of money.
36:03I destroyed you.
36:07With little left to lose, Don heads to Los Angeles,
36:10trying to make ends meet as a stuntman and actor.
36:14I was going down the highway.
36:17Tire blew out.
36:18Bounced me off the guardrail twice and pissed me into the median.
36:22After the truck accident, I knew my back hurt, but I didn't know how bad, you know.
36:28So I kept walking around on it and doing what I could.
36:33I was getting weaker and weaker.
36:35The pain gets so bad that Don finally goes to the hospital.
36:39X-rays show that the two titanium rods that were fused to his vertebrae in an earlier back surgery were
36:45broken.
36:47I'd broken both the rods in it, you know, and one of them had slid down about four inches.
36:54And it was like a 10 or 11 hour surgery.
36:57Pulled out the old rods, put in new ones.
37:00And then three hours from the scrape of scar tissue I had developed on my back from the broken rods.
37:06I was good for four days and sat up and complained about a headache.
37:11So they gave me a CAT scan.
37:14Said I had a stroke, hemorrhagic stroke, you know, where it explodes.
37:21His life in jeopardy, Don is put into a medically induced coma in a last desperate attempt to save him.
37:28They thought that there was a good chance that he was not going to make it out of it.
37:32They thought he was going to die.
37:34There comes a point in time of how much damage have you done to your body?
37:38Will you pull back out of or they eventually just declare you medically dead?
37:46I don't want to get the phone call.
38:03As Don Fry, the man who once refused to ever say quit in an MMA fight, lies in a medically
38:09induced coma,
38:10his heart says it for him and flatlines.
38:14Now I died and went to hell.
38:16This is in your unconscious?
38:18Yeah.
38:20Across the river, sticks in a boat, getting thrown about, you know, in the water and all that.
38:26You know, you could see like a big auditorium type deal.
38:31Shadows against the wall and fires.
38:34I wanted to go in.
38:37I was hunting down those fuckers that molested me.
38:41They wouldn't let me go in there and kill them.
38:43So they put me back on the boat and sent me back.
38:50After 30 days in his coma, Don regains consciousness.
38:54I woke up and I was speaking Japanese.
38:58Nurses and doctors didn't know what the fuck I was talking about.
39:02Well, what were you saying in Japanese?
39:04I had to go to the bathroom.
39:07Toy day, toy day.
39:09It was a hell of a, hell of a trip.
39:14Fry's getting out of the hospital again.
39:16On the way home, I'm talking to him.
39:18You know, dude, you need to quit drinking.
39:19Your back's fixed.
39:21You need to straighten stuff up.
39:22You need to come and live with me.
39:23He stopped drinking that day.
39:25He was with us for four years.
39:28He was in the hospital a lot of that time.
39:30Including one in Medellin, Colombia,
39:33where Don travels to undergo treatment
39:35at the specialized clinic bioaccelerator.
39:37They gave me the stem cells.
39:39And after the injections,
39:41we walked around for two or three hours.
39:44That was the first time I'd been able to walk in years.
39:49What are you doing with that wheelchair?
39:51I'm not riding in.
39:52I'm pushed.
39:59My web was weaved way before I was born, you know.
40:04What do you mean by that?
40:05You know, things took a shit
40:07when I got molested the first couple of times.
40:10There was no choice of my own, obviously.
40:14You know, I wanted to reinflict back, you know.
40:19Make them fuckers pay for what they did to me.
40:23You got to fucking deal with it or fucking die.
40:29When you were fighting, it helped a lot.
40:31Helped sustain it.
40:33You know, put it on the shelf.
40:35But then, you know, it was only temporary.
40:38You can overcome anything.
40:40You just got to decide to do it.
40:42You know, I still got my daughters.
40:43I got to try and hang on a relationship with my daughters.
40:47Are you clean now?
40:49No, I still take pills.
40:51You know, I only take four a day.
40:54Yeah, I'm in pain 99% of the time.
40:56It's just enough to knock the edge off
40:58so that I can function.
41:00In a four-year period,
41:02he was either in the hospital or in a rehab.
41:06Most people would just give up and die.
41:08Not fry.
41:09I'm very proud of my scars.
41:11This is the shoulder I destroyed
41:13when I crashed at ATV.
41:15I've had about six surgeries.
41:17Same thing with this one.
41:19I've had about five surgeries on this one.
41:21And I got my back.
41:22They did my back, like I said,
41:24about 17 or 20 times they've gone in there.
41:27Broke this hand twice.
41:28These two things have done real well for me.
41:31Got me a house.
41:33You know, got me a good pickup truck.
41:35Got me a couple of horses.
41:36Got me a couple of daughters.
41:38You know, they've done real well for me.
41:40My body's a tool, you know?
41:43And it's given to me by God to use.
41:46And I'm gonna use it all the way to the end.
41:50You know?
41:51You don't get any rewards
41:54for dying with the prettiest body.
41:57Being strong mentally
41:59don't only allow you to be a good fighter
42:02and take all kinds of crazy pain in the ring.
42:05It also allows you to do things
42:08that most people can't do.
42:11His superhuman grit and determination,
42:14both outside and inside the cage,
42:16is recognized by his peers.
42:19Please welcome the newest member
42:21of the USC Hall of Fame,
42:24Don the Predator Frye.
42:28I'm honored to share the stage with Don,
42:32the heart,
42:33and that boneheaded determination.
42:35Don Frye deserves to be in the Hall of Fame.
42:39What does that mean to you?
42:41I accomplished what very few people have accomplished,
42:44you know?
42:45And not only the fans appreciate what I did,
42:49but the other fighters appreciate what I did.
42:51Thank you very much.
42:54You know, a lot of people in this fight game,
42:58they act like it.
42:59They say they're willing to die in there,
43:02but it's 99% not true.
43:05But Don Frye, he's one of those men,
43:08and he's that 1%,
43:09and that's a unique rare breed.
43:12Who he was at a time in this sport
43:16when there wasn't a whole lot for the fighters.
43:19He was remarkable.
43:22Just his persona and his presence.
43:25He's iconic in the fact that
43:27you may find someone as tough as Don Frye.
43:31You'll never find anyone tougher.
43:34Don the Predator Frye
43:35survived legendary wars inside the cage
43:38and even harder battles beyond it.
43:40And every one of them helped forge him
43:43into one of the greatest to ever do it.
43:46Did you ever once think
43:47what Don Frye's MMA fight career would be
43:51if you didn't have this burden behind you?
43:55Probably wouldn't have been a Don Frye,
43:57so Don Frye wouldn't exist.
44:11I'm going to be in person.
44:13I'm going to be in person.
44:16I'm going to be on Have People's hating
44:17I've loved you and I've really started
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