I wanted to write something beautiful for my friend Josh Samman, a UFC fighter who died Wednesday at 28. After lingering for days in a coma that was both heartening and terrifying at the same time, Josh slipped from this world to the next. He was a remarkable man, giving, caring and bold, a gorgeous physical specimen with the soul of a poet.
These traits are rare in isolation. In combination they are almost impossible to find in any one human being. But Josh was that special. It’s easy to fall into trite platitudes. With Josh, they were true. He lived, hard, every minute. This was a guy who, during his last training camp, spent time hundreds of miles away from home teaching martial arts to blind kids.
If you made up Josh Samman for a story, no one would believe you.
He deserves art, certainly something better than I can give. But beauty requires truth, always. And truth is hard. It takes no prisoners and asks no mercy. None of us who knew him, and we are legion in this insular world of mixed martial arts, is quite ready for that.
Josh knew beauty and he knew truth better than most—let his autobiography, The Housekeeper: Love, Death, and Prizefighting, serve as his calling card if my word is not enough. He also knew pain. Too much pain for such a short life.
Twenty-eight-year-old professional athletes rarely drop dead as an act of God. Even the most capricious of deities wouldn’t be so cruel as to remove Josh from this world.
No, his death was worse in a way. Predictable. Pitiable. Preventable.
According to a statement from the Hollywood Police Department, police were called to the scene of a possible drug overdose last Thursday. Samman and his friend Troy Kirkingburg were found in Kirkingburg’s home. Kirkingburg was pronounced dead. Samman was breathing and had a pulse but was unresponsive. He was taken to a nearby hospital.
He never left.
Josh is dead, and drugs were likely the culprit. Likely is a journalistic term of art, designed to negate legal liability. It’s easy. Truth is hard.
Josh felt pain. It crept into his life, metaphorically and literally. The death of his girlfriend Hailey Bevis haunted him. Twinges from injuries old and new lingered. Psychic pain we bury deep, in places we hope never to find. Physical pain, for an athlete, must too be ignored or masked.
Josh, like many fighters, masked his with drugs. Those close to him say Fentanyl patches weren’t far behind when he trained. And, while I can only speculate whether or not pain killers or their opioid cousins from the street corner ended Josh’s life, I can say for certain he’d be far from alone.
Pain killer abuse is ravaging the nation—and inside the world of mixed martial arts, it’s the silent scourge. While steroids and designer performance enhancers receive the bulk of the media attention, many fighters would be unable to perform without that little boost a prescription drug provides.
It’s easy to ignore the sacrifices fighters make, the pain they endure to entertain in the cage. Fighters ignore it too, making unthinkable agony just another part of their daily routine, their grind in the parlance of the sport. It’s tragic all around, but especially when it takes someone like Josh who had so much to offer.
If we’re being honest, Josh was never going to be a UFC champion. He was finding his level in this sport. It appeared, no matter how much we loved him or wanted him to succeed, to be on the fringes. And he knew it on some level, whether he wanted to admit it or not.
Josh talked with me often about what was next. Unlike most former fighters, his options were myriad and they were bright. He dabbled in so many things—promotion, music and writing. It’s the later, I believe, where he was destined to thrive.
Disappointed in his book sales, he was looking for guidance about how to capitalize on his gift. I suggested he turn his gaze outward at the world that surrounded him.
Writing about himself was never going to be a cottage industry. Writing about the sport he knew so well could be. Josh began writing about others in his world and, predictably, was good at it right out of the gate. A media career seemed destined. But nothing in this world is—save death.
In the past few days, the one bright light in the darkness that engulfs you after losing a friend has been the realization that my special relationship with Josh was just run-of-the-mill for him. He touched many of us with his kindness, insight and intelligence. While we live, a part of him will too.
Jonathan Snowden covers combat sports for Bleacher Report.
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