Growing up in New York City generally leads to a lifetime’s worth of stories before you hit age 21. After you’ve visited the bar scene (legally), those stories multiply exponentially every six months. Outsiders think Zuccotti park is the only place in the city where police brutality and public violence takes place, but those people never saw what North Brooklyn looked like before fixed gear bicycles, locally sourced beef, cruelty-free water, and artisanal cupcakes were invented. While New York has changed, West Linn Oregon hasn’t. It’s a town few of us have ever visited, and even fewer of us were brave enough to be raised in. Chael Sonnen grew up around Oregonian gang violence his entire life and probably has hundreds of stories depicting what his childhood was like, but this is the first known account of those experiences that shaped the toughest middleweight contender in UFC history.
