“That’s a triple edged sword,” said Carter. “Let me explain one thing. As far as pimp, it’s not the one you’re talking about, ‘pimps up, hoes down’, and things like that. I’m talking about Paper In My Pocket. PIMP. That’s pimp. And as far as role models go, I don’t want to be a role model for a kid. One thing I wrote in my book is that after you learn about me, outside of the fight game, I hope to Ggod that you don’t want to be like me outside of the ring. I would tell people that you should want to try to take what I’ ve done and what I’ve given you, whether it’s good or bad, and learn from it.”
Carter’s road to the top of the UFC has been littered with roadblocks and tragedies. His mental toughness and reorganization of priorities have turned what may have been a dead end into a success story. But the sun wasn’t always shining on Carter. So what turned his life around?
“It’s been a bunch of things,” Carter admits. “The day my grandfather died; my grandmother died; my brother getting shot at with a sawed-off shotgun and he got narrowly missed; my cousin being killed in front of his three-month-old baby daughter; my mother losing her home to foreclosure; I lost a car to repossession; ACL getting torn in college; twice dislocating my left arm; once my right arm. It’s been a multitude of events in my life. I saved my brother’s life. I got shot once, but the thing is, I had a bulletproof vest on. Don’t ask me why I had one or where I got it, just know that I had one. I jumped on my brother and it hit me in the back where it would have hit him in the head. And the police asked, ‘Where did you get it?’ I said, ‘If you want it, you can have it.’ Once you get a bullet in your vest, it’s no longer serviceable.
“It’s been a lot of things that have transpired in my life,” he continues. “From working in an exotic dance club, or a strip club I’ll say, to being a cable man. I’ve been electrocuted, man. It matures you. I’ve been hit by a train in Budapest, Hungary. Now I’ve got a daughter, and a baby on the way. You live, you learn, you start to re-evaluate your priorities. You take those rose-colored lenses off and you realize that you’re not invulnerable. No one’s Superman out there. The things I’ve been through have enabled me to succeed. And whether you’re rich or poor, I don’t fault those people for not going through the things I’ve been through, and I wouldn’t wish them on anybody. You don’t have to go through hard times to be a good fighter; you just have to really want it. You have to have it in your heart and in your mind. And you have to have it in your soul.”
Needless to say, after all he’s been through, the concept of fear in the ring is a foreign one to Shonie Carter.
“I have a tougher time shaking a can of pop and drinking it,” he laughs. “Any fighter that fights in a cage willingly is crazy. It’s not that I’m arrogant. It’s confidence and training. I train my ass off, and I feel really good. So if you are confident in your capabilities, why should you be scared? It’s like taking an exam. You studied hard, so why should you be scared? After wrestling in the Olympic trials, wrestling on world teams, and just doing stuff, I’ve paid my dues and made my bones. Why should I be afraid of another man now? Because I’ve done what I’ve needed to do to prepare for any fight, any situation, I’m confident. Another thing is, I have a different mindset about fighting in the ring. I came out of the streets of Chicago, on the West Side, and I was in the Marines and in Desert Storm. Just the basic training apart, I’m not susceptible to freaking out, because I’ve been in the most adverse situations that you could possibly think of. And, to me, a fight is not easy, but it’s a controlled environment. There’s no one running up behind me and kicking me in the head. These guys are world-class fighters, but there’s just one of them.”
So how did MMA get Shonie Carter? Not surprisingly, with Shonie, it’s not your typical story.
“In case I have to go back to wrestle my last redshirt eligibility year, there was no money involved,” he laughs about the ‘bet’ that launched his MMA career. “Pancrase was on TV in America, and the UFC was on. It was the early years; the antiquated dinosaurs are what I call them. Royce Gracie, Bas Rutten. I respect them all, but they’re the older guys, the forefathers, four score and seven years ago. We were watching it and I was like, no big deal, because I was studying jiu-jitsu, judo, and wrestling. I hadn’t been boxing yet, but it was nothing that was alien to me. I had seen it. And I said, ‘Well, I’m not too impressed with that triangle choke.’ And everybody’s like, ‘Oh yeah, right. Like you can do that.’ I’m like, ‘I can, I’m just not getting paid to do it. I’m in college.’ So they were all betting me. Every college, no matter who it is or wherever you are, there is always a Billy Bad Ass amongst the dorm. And everybody was afraid of these guys. I was like ‘F**k that, I’ll smoke them.'”
“So they all got together and said, ‘Well, I bet you can’t beat so and so,’ and I was like yeah, I’ll fight him,” Carter continues. “The RA let it go on in the dorm. I said, ‘No matter what happens, guys, realize I’m not mad at you and I’m going to beat you, so keep your hands up.’ So I took the soccer player down. He tried to kick me like a jackass, and forgot that I had just gotten back from the Olympic trials. So I took him down, sunk the hooks in, and choked him out. The basketball player? Same song, second verse, a little bit louder, a little bit worse. The hardest one was my buddy Antoine. I said, ‘Antoine, I won’t kick you because we’re on the wrestling team together. If I kick you in the mouth, the coach is going to be mad at me.’ He was a 190-pounder who could bench 500 pounds, so you can pretty much imagine that it was harder to deal with his ass. So I eventually tired him out, and I armbarred him. The football player was a little bit rough because he was just an athlete. After I beat them all, they signed me up for some street wrestling tournament, and I breezed through it. I almost got into a fight, a giant melee if you will, because there were a bunch of hillbillies there. And there was a lady there yelling, ‘Oh, that ain’t right, you’re a professional.’ And I’m pointing at this guy, telling him to shut up before I even realized it was an old lady. And then the whole front row stood up. I’m like ‘Oh s**t, I said that to a lady.’ You know when you catch yourself? And it just so happened that the wrestling team walked in. Let’s just say the situation was extinguished entirely.”
Carter went on to not only excel in the UFC, but in organizations like Extreme Challenge, SuperBrawl, Ironheart Crown, and Pancrase. And as a true martial artist, he wants not only to excel in MMA, but in all combat sports, a fact that has allowed him to avoid burnout.
“You want to know why I don’t burn out? Because every type of fight that I do is different from the previous one,” he said. “I don’t knock guys like Travis Fulton or Dan Severn, but they stick to mixed martial arts. I, personally and professionally, dare anybody in the mixed martial arts venue, no matter who they are, to do the type of fighting that I am. They are not willing to go into a boxing match against a true boxer. They are not willing to go into a kickboxing match, whether it’s American style, Muay Thai rules, or Sanshou rules, against national or international competition and win. Or judo. Everybody tries to take a whack at jiu-jitsu because it’s safe. If you lose a sport jiu-jitsu match, who gives a s**t? But if there’s a chance of you getting knocked out, or doing a bare knuckle Shidokan Karate tournament – not a match, but a tournament – and making it to the finals after fighting the night previous in the UFC. I’m willing to take that chance, to go out and try something different. That’s the ultimate fighting challenge.”
Carter’s high points in MMA are commemorated on a wall in his home. “Winning my first belt at Extreme Challenge,” said Carter when asked about his high points in the sport. “I was the underdog. Are you surprised? I was fighting a guy named Jesse Jones. He was briefly ranked tenth in the world and number one in the U.S., and I was ranked number two in just the Midwest. And I upset him. That was one of the higher points. But higher than that was my first UFC appearance at 24. That’s why when I framed the poster; I called it “Finally.” That was it for me.”
With a victory over Miletich on Friday, the challenge for Carter may be his inability to sneak up on prospective foes anymore, something he has used to his advantage thus far.
“I’m not fighting out of somebody famous’ gym,” he said. “The people that I train with are working stiffs that work 9 to 5, or 11 to 5 in my case; 11 at night until 5 in the morning. I’m not with Miletich Fighting Systems, Golden Glory, Renzo Gracie, the Lions Den, HammerHouse, or the Shark Tank. I’m not with anybody notably recognized. I ‘m with a bunch of guys that just bust their asses. We go out there and do what we’ve got to do, and we don’t have any human fear of another man that pisses in the toilet and bleeds like us. I don’t expect people to recognize any of the people in my gym. And it’s best that way, because when you’re not highly recognizable, and you’re the underdog, you remain hungry. When people become the favorite, they tend to become complacent and take people for granted. And surprise, surprise.”