On August 21, 2010, Chad Robichaux stood in the middle of the Toyota Center before thousands of cheering fans. He had just finished a fight for Strikeforce, the second-largest mixed martial arts (MMA) organization at the time. The three judges submitted their scorecards. It was a split decision. After the third scorecard was read, he was still undefeated at 13–0.
From the outside looking in, Chad Robichaux seemed to have the world on a string. This moment in the octagon seemed the emblematic story of his life: enduring a hardscrabble childhood, joining the Marines and quickly rising to its special unit Force Recon, starting his own highly successful MMA gym, and now marching through his competitors one-by-one. But that was on the outside. That was the man on paper. It was not, however, the man himself….