Photo: Esther Lin In the Shadow of The Monster By Shaun Al-Shatti

Junior year, 1993. There is no stopping this ghost in the red and white singlet. The shredded ligament in his knee is nothing more than a distraction, a discomfort, because this is winning time and motherfuckers like him feast on greatness. But then, a pop – his jaw is broken. He can barely clench his teeth. He calls time and thumps the side of his head. Once. He is a madman. Twice. He is a surgeon. The bones in his skull snap back in place, and with a jaw wired shut, he thrashes the next four men he faces. Back-to-back NCAA champion. Immortal before he leaves the mat. That was always my favorite Kevin Randleman story. It’s a creation myth of the highest order – this lunatic casually stepping back from an NCAA tourney match, asking his bewildered coach to "snap his face back into place," then just fixing the problem himself and winning it all. How terrifying is that? The supermen of that first era all lived their lives through tall tales, but Kevin Randleman was one of the few who truly felt capable of anything at his peak. Mark Coleman was Kevin’s coach at Ohio State University and he has a lifetime of stories about The Monster. One of his favorites was from the summer of ‘97 – the night Kevin fought off three Brazilian giants for 54 minutes just to see if he could. The ring was a stranger back then, but he was a sight, this lion with the bleach-blonde hair throwing grown heavies through the canvas. Life was simpler with bare knuckles. Endless rounds, no weight classes, no enswells. Just a suffocating heat and another hungry goliath waiting in the finals. They called it Vale Tudo, and there was no money in it. No guarantee of safety. Only a few fleeting minutes to feel alive. But Kevin was obsessed, and so he became a legend. Photo: Esther Lin The Monster rode through this game for 17 years, longer than most in that first class. His body betrayed him well before his heart let him quit. He was so full of stories by the end, he decided to write a book. Kevin could never sit still long enough to type, but Elizabeth Randleman could paint her husband’s words the way they deserved to be painted, so together they lounged for hours under the night sky in their backyard, Kevin telling his tales – tales of becoming UFC heavyweight champion, tales of becoming a Pride Fighting icon – Elizabeth copying notes shorthand into her blue binder, then carrying it inside to unload into something digestible. The yard was Kevin’s escape, more tropical than it had any right to be in the middle of the Nevada desert, and those nights became cathartic, the two of them reminiscing about the old days, the days of spectacle and pageantry, of backstage brawls and shadow warriors from distant lands reigning as kings. "People don’t know now," says Phil Baroni, a friend and teammate who joined Kevin on many of his travels. "Young fighters, they get to watch Embedded, they get to watch HBO 24/7. I used to only get this magazine called Full Contact Fighter, and I would read about Kevin Randleman fighting in Brazil with no weight classes. Just going down there and fighting. It was a way different era. It was the wild, wild west into the unknown. There was no videos, no nothing. I’m getting on a plane and I’m going to fucking Japan right now and I’m going to fight some dude from fucking Holland and everyone is bowing to me and I have no idea what the fuck I’m getting myself into. It was just crazy. We could die over there. It was way different. It was way scarier." Photo: Elizabeth Randleman " It was a way different era. It was the wild, wild west into the unknown. " Phil Baroni Baroni was one of the many who grew up idolizing The Monster. When Baroni was a wrestler in high school, Kevin was already forging a legacy at OSU. Once Baroni took his talents to university, Kevin already held gold in the UFC. The many accolades Kevin attained were a testament to how much he overachieved. He was undersized and underprepared fighting against the titans of his era, but he was also a supernatural talent in a moment that trafficked in the fantastical – ferocious, inhumanly strong, with once-in-a-generation athleticism. He could even drop a mic with the best of them. If The Monster came up as a prospect today, with his prodigious physical gifts and background of being one of the greatest college wrestlers ever, the game would be his to own. He would be destined for superstardom. "He was beating heavyweights when he was a light heavyweight, slamming them onto their heads," Baroni says. "He was a real fighter. He was a 205-pounder who took any fight, never fucking backed down from any challenge. He was not supposed to be picking up fucking Fedor and throwing him on his head when Fedor was beating everybody. He was not supposed to go in there and fucking knockout Cro Cop when Cro Cop was knocking everybody out. "If Kev came out of college now and went to Jackson-Winkeljohn, he’d be fucking unbeatable. He was a super fucking athlete. He could jump over the cage into the ring, no hands. He could jump over the fucking cage, into the fucking ring, not even touching it, land on his feet and start bouncing around. He was a super athlete. He just didn’t know. He didn’t have a jiu-jitsu coach. There was no real striking coaches for MMA, especially in Ohio back then. If he had a coach like that his whole career he would’ve been knocking everybody out. He’d be a super-charged [Daniel Cormier]. That’s how good he was." It is strange now to think that all of this happened on a whim. Team Hammer House was a lie Coleman concocted after a tournament run at UFC 10, when a Brazilian promotion called and wondered if he had any fighters who wanted to compete. He shrugged and said he had a whole stable. Kevin was the next person he rang, and the two of them ended up traveling the world together, fashioning careers out of thin air. "Kevin was one of the most charismatic guys I’ve ever met," Coleman says. "One minute you’d be terrified of the guy and the next minute you’d fall in love with him. That’s it. Everybody fell in love with him once they got to talking to him. "I don’t know anybody who didn’t want to be around Kevin Randleman." The Monster penned the final chapter to his book this past spring with Elizabeth. One of his favorite stories to relive with her was the afternoon they first met. It was winter in the early 2000’s, and he and Coleman were riding around in the back of Ricco Rodriguez’s new Escalade. Just three heavyweight champions cruising Las Vegas. Rodriguez phoned Elizabeth over his old-school two-way radio, but Kevin sat in silence, captivated by the sassy Italian soprano cracking jokes over the speakerphone. He swore by those first few minutes. Months later, Elizabeth’s old rottweiler Brutus got sick and Kevin nearly missed a fight to stay behind and help. The selflessness floored her, so she agreed to go out with him on Valentine’s Day. They ended the night with their first kiss. Photo: Elizabeth Randleman The past few months have been hard, but Elizabeth has been strong. She says it would be selfish of her to pick now, of all times, to become a broken woman. There are too many people relying on her, too much left unfinished. Ceremonies. Paperwork. The cold inconvenience of death that life often forgets. "Kevin and I had the love most people dream about their whole lives," she says. "It'll hurt forever, but you can’t focus on the unlucky. I just have to be grateful that I did have this amazing love, that I did have this incredible man." No one saw this coming. Photo: Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images Elizabeth says that things were not easy for Kevin in the five years since he retired. Life as an aging MMA legend does not come with a pension, so paychecks were scarce, and he went through dark times trying to find his place in a world without fighting. But Kevin finally had momentum on his side. The nasty hip infection that nearly took his life in 2014 was a thing of the past, his memoirs were competed, and he was about to take a trip to San Diego that could change his family’s life forever. There was so much to celebrate – so the night before he left, he and Elizabeth went out for one last date night. Watching Kevin walk the red carpet that Friday at the World MMA Awards, suited up in black and purple, a glimmering watch and a fitted vest, confidence overflowing – it was a sight. The Monster was back, just like the old days, and Elizabeth was so proud. The next morning, Kevin said his goodbyes and took off towards San Diego where he aced a string of job interviews to finally catch his big break. It was the chance he had been waiting for, the chance at a post-fighting career mentoring NFL rookies. He would be working out with young stud athletes, living alongside them, teaching them how to not wander astray. Nobody would be better at that than Kevin. "That’s just what’s so crazy about life," Elizabeth says. "It was a trip that was going to change his career path and give him some positive things to look forward to. Instead, Daddy kissed our four-year-old goodbye last Saturday, and this Sunday I have to tell him that Daddy is never coming home again. Nobody can tell me what’s going to make that any easier." In retrospect, the trip felt off from the start. Kevin always called home a thousand times a day when he was away. It was one of those quirks Elizabeth loved. But in San Diego his calls were sporadic, and when they came, the voice on the other end of the line sounded haggard. By Tuesday, Elizabeth asked Kevin to go to the hospital. On Wednesday, she asked again, more forcefully, just to make sure it was not something serious. Kevin already had his share of health crises – twenty-plus surgeries, his 2014 hip infection, plus the most notorious staph infection in the history of the fight game. The last thing he needed was something new. He finally relented and checked himself into the E.R. at eight o’clock Thursday morning. Within hours, the doctors called Elizabeth, relieved. They told her that Kevin had some fluid in his left lung and a little in his right. But, they assured over and over again, everything was going to be fine. He was okay. A few hours later, those same doctors called back. The Monster was gone.

The doctors said he was okay, that everything was going to be fine. A few hours later, the Monster was gone. Photo: Esther Lin