Five seconds after the bell rings Friday, Beau Tribolet is on his back.
All 6 feet 6 inches and 280 pounds of Jo Jo "Chocolate Thunder" Thompson lies on top of him.
Tribolet, a 34-year-old father of three, walked into a punch and is now experiencing dozens more. In his second professional mixed martial arts fight, Tribolet's head bounces between the mat and Thompson's gloves at Desert Diamond Casino.
Tribolet, a Tucson Police Department sergeant, tries anything to keep the referee from ending the fight. MMA bouts are made up of three 3-minute rounds and decided by decision, knockout or submission. They feature kicks, punches and grappling. Tribolet looks up at Thompson, whose extra weight scored Tribolet an extra $100, bringing his fight total to a modest $600.
"Wanna take a break now?" Tribolet says, on the ground. "I'm a little tired."
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Thompson pounds away, more violently than before. • • •
Every day but Sunday, Tribolet drives from his Sahuarita home to Undisputed on Stone Avenue. He's been going to the gym, off and on, since 1996. He met his wife, Morgan, there.
"It's the drinking pond," he said. "All the animals come here."
It's his morning coffee, and his coffee shop, rolled into one.
Morgan Tribolet works as a computer engineer in Phoenix. Tuesday through Friday, she and their 2 1/2-year-old daughter, Ailis, live in Phoenix.
Tribolet carries memories of his daughter — his red-capped tooth that echoes her hair color, and the baby blue paint on his fingernails. Each Monday night, he lets Ailis paint his fingernails before she leaves for Phoenix.
Then he's on his own four days a week. He stays in the gym for three hours each day, and likes to hang out in the parking lot afterward.
"It's sleep until noon and be a bum," he said, "or come down here, where everyone's like family.
"It's like my church."
For a second, tear away the blood-lust stereotype of MMA. Tribolet's routine comes close to a golf outing or a weekly pickup basketball game — complete with dreams.
He spends mornings in the gym and is either on patrol or at his TPD desk by midafternoon Monday through Friday.
"Maybe if everything clicks right," he said, "I'll get on a big show some time."
Tribolet is like a golfer — only golfers don't have 280 pounds of "Chocolate Thunder" on top of them, praying for the first round to end. • • •
Tribolet repositions his weight and ends up on top of Thompson with about a minute left in the first round.
The ring announcer makes his cheesiest "Beau knows reversals!" comment. A 20-person rooting section erupts from the near-sellout crowd of about 2,000. For three hours, the room had been filled with speed metal, beer and an engrossed young crowd. Vendors sell T-shirts made by companies named Jitz, Grudge and Spinecrank.
Tribolet feels his mammoth opponent tiring. Blood spills across Tribolet's mouth. • • •
The Nov. 15 knockout from Tribolet's first bout came in front of 400 people in a parking lot in front of a Subway sandwich shop in Mesa.
The impact, however, spread.
When Thompson and Tribolet met before, the former landed a right, then a left.
"How many people want to see a knockout?" the ring announcer screamed.
Tribolet staggered to the far corner; the referee called the fight for Tribolet's safety.
The video is on the Internet; some friends and coworkers mocked Tribolet.
"To have it passed around as a joke or, 'Watch this dude get knocked out,' " he said. "If the worst anybody can do is point out my mistakes, what does that make them?"
He had spent that week at Disneyland with his three daughters, two from a previous marriage — a blonde, a brunette and a redhead. So many fights had fallen through that Tribolet had stopped scheduling his life around MMA.
He drove home on a Friday, and to Mesa the next day.
He was supposed to fight an amateur, but Thompson's opponent didn't show up. In 20 minutes, Tribolet agreed to become a pro and fight in the main event.
His mouth and ambition had gotten him into trouble before. At Amphitheater High School almost two decades ago, he and a friend agreed to go sky diving to impress their friends, praying in vain the operators would notice they were only 17 and turn them away. They were allowed to jump, and Beau spent the half-hour flight up cursing his own hubris.
A year after that, some football teammates watched him bungee-jump in Australia after he complained his all-star team wasn't allowed to. Coaches made an exception, and Tribolet had to jump.
"You kinda sit there and say, 'I want a fight,'" he said. "But in reality it was scary. I kinda ran my jib a little much." • • •
The second round starts, and Tribolet lands a jab that knocks Thompson to his knees. Thompson recovers. Seconds later, Tribolet lunges at Thompson's left thigh and knocks him down.
Thompson is on his stomach now, with Tribolet on top of him. Tribolet puts him in a choke hold, his arm wrapped underneath Thompson's chin.
Thompson submits. A bloodied Tribolet is declared the winner 1 minute 19 seconds into the second round. • • •
At 6-foot-2, 250 pounds, Tribolet isn't afraid to submit.
"If I get into a position where it's either fight through it, or they might break my leg, I'm going to tap out," he said. "It's not that important. I'm going to say, 'Good job, you won. I have a career to worry about.' "
Tribolet, an 11 1/2-year TPD veteran, works as a supervisor on the West Side. The force offers "concerned support" for his MMA career, he said.
A former power lifter, Tribolet started sparring three years ago with his brother in a boxing ring. One day, he sparred with MMA legend and Sierra Vista native Don Frye, and landed a punch. What would happen, he wondered, if he actually trained?
MMA became a passion, but has made him about $1,000 over two fights. He loves the physical challenge and the competition, but said it would take a $10 million fight to pull him away from his job.
"His first passion on life is not to be a MMA fighter," his wife, Morgan, said. "This is not his true calling. This is not what he's trying to do with his life."
Police work is similar to fighting. Both are dangerous, but require a myriad of skills to get out of trouble.
"You've got to be able to deal with the old gal whose car has broken down," he said. "And as soon as you help her out on the road, you'll have to fight with a guy who hates the police. Right after that, you might have to go to a community meeting. After that, you might help a kid who's been injured."
Most fighters come from poverty; Tribolet is comfortable. There is no practical reason, he admits, to climb into a ring with people trained to hurt him.
But he'll probably keep doing it.
"I'm not doing this for anyone else," he said. "I guess the fight is what fires me up."
On StarNet: Check out an audio slide show of the Beau Tribolet story at azstarnet.com/multimedia as well as a photo slide show of Tribolet's win over Jo Jo "Chocolate Thunder" Thompson on Friday night at azstarnet.com/slideshows
