WHAT GUYS WANT M A X IM Hello, TURNS It’s SW EET Topanga! Girl Meets World’s DANIELLE FISHEL 16 Your Lifelong Jennifer Crush Answers Love the Call Hewi$ of Booty! Jessica Alba Megan Fox & More!

Booze Is Good for You! and %# Other Happy Health Secrets The Ins and Outs of Sex Parties

We’ll wait while you high-!ve Tap to your 15-year- Play Video! old self. "# Cent Steve

APRIL %#&' MAXIM.COM Carell Veteran

Fight PETERBOHLER photographs by by photographs STEVEN LECKART fighter is helping his fellow ex-soldiers get better— get ex-soldiers fellow his helping is fighter by training them to battle one another instead. by C l u b Returning troops are battling drugs and alcohol, suicidal thoughts, and prescription meds that leave them feeling like zombies. Now one pro MMA Veteran It’s go time

at Undisputed, a boxing gym in San Diego. Two sweat-drenched guys with necks like tree stumps are grappling on a black mat inside a 24-foot cage with a black chain-link fence. Music from Metallica’s Death Magnetic blasts on the sound system. Grimacing, one guy breaks his adversary’s guard, mounts him, and starts ramming his shin into his opponent’s wind - pipe until the dude’s face turns red. It’s no secret that , or MMA, is brutal. There are no head guards. No shin guards. And fewer rules than in any other organized sport where boxing gloves are not man- datory. The violence can be gruesome. Still, there’s one big di!erence between the burly, ta"ooed men in front of me and basically every pro, amateur, and wannabe you’ll see bleeding profusely on YouTube: These guys have killed people. Just not in a cage #ght. Today I’ve joined a special MMA training program for military veterans. It’s called Pugilistic O!ensive Warrior Tactics, or P.O.W. for short. OK, technically I’m stand- ing outside the cage. But even if I weren’t too chickenshit to get in there, I’m o! the hook. The #rst rule of this #ght club: no civilians.

ONCE A WEEK some guy at the !ym asks to train with the veterans. The answer is always the same: “No, man, it’s just for us,” says P.O.W.’s head coach, Todd Vance, a jacked 31-year-old covered in tattoos. A former Army infantry squad leader who fought in Iraq, Vance founded P.O.W. in July 2010 with no funding or assistance from the VA. Since then more than 100 vets have attended his free three-times-a-week classes. More than half the P.O.W. vets have been diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder. A severe anxiety disorder, PTSD (once known as shell shock) is character- ized by a litany of symptoms, including "ashbacks, repeated nightmares, out- bursts of anger, irritability, easy startling, headaches, dizziness, and “feeling like you have no future.” “This program is full of badasses,” he tells me. “But they’re more sensitive than freakin’ contestants on America’s Next Top Model!” The go-to treatments at VA hospitals are psychotherapy and pharmaceuticals. Overprescribing has become so common that soldiers have taken to calling the meds “ranger candy.” What’s remarkable—counterintuitive, even—is that the P.O.W. vets swear the in - tense, violent full-contact sport helps them cope with PTSD. In some cases, they say MMA’s even more e#ective than the meds. “Is the sport aggressive? Absolutely. But these guys are that way by nature. You dinner at his grandmother’s house. She put his plate of lasagna in the microwave. “I saw it and started crying, and I threw up in the sink,” he says. “How many people know what brains look like?” Vance couldn’t eat lasagna for two years. During that time his relationship with the Dear John girl imploded. One morning he missed a &ight to go on a family vacation because he had blacked out in bed. His mom told him it was time to seek help. When Vance !rst opened up to a VA therapist about combat, she responded by sobbing. So much for therapy, he thought. Along with pain- killers, the VA gave him can’t deprogram them,” says MMA legend the wall,” he says. “It’s like, fuck, dude, antidepressants and anti-anxiety meds. and Army vet Randy Couture. “You’re that was my best friend.” For a month he felt seasick and disori- dealing with a warrior mentality, a spirit Vance enlisted in 1998 at age 17. When ented. “I’d rather be an angry maniac that’s been conditioned to tactically he was a few months shy of !nishing his and feel like myself,” he says. So he threw engage, assess an opponent’s strengths service, 9/11 struck, and he reenlisted. away the pills, except Xanax for panic and weaknesses. That’s MMA to a T.” Then in 2003, while on leave, he met a attacks. The opiate withdrawals were a It stands to reason that combat vets girl back home. They spent two weeks nightmare. “It was like Trainspotting,” he would enjoy MMA. But can tossing a falling in love before Vance redeployed. says. “That used to be one of my favorite bunch of Rambos into an arena of ag- Their complicated long-distance relation- movies. Now I can’t watch it.” gression really be a better, let alone safer, ship went on to inspire the bestselling alternative to quiet their inner demons? novel Dear John, which was written by WHEN HE WAS $%, Vance was an Vance’s cousin Nicholas Sparks, the au- up-and-coming pro muay Thai !ghter. By THE FIRST SIGN that shit was about thor of several romantic tearjerkers-that- 2007 he’d switched to MMA. He took the to go down was the sound of a vehicle became-movies, including The Notebook. !ght name Hooligan after earning a repu- accelerating. Sergeant Vance was pulling Channing Tatum played Vance in the tation for “going overboard” while bounc- guard duty at a base in Mosul, Iraq when 2010 !lm version of Dear John. ing at dive bars. By day he was laboring in he spotted a truck 100 meters out, gun- While he was in Iraq, Vance e-mailed the sun, laying concrete foundations. In ning straight for the gate. with Sparks every few weeks to update the early evening he’d pound heavy bags By the time the smoke cleared and him on the relationship, but he never at the 'ym until his knuckles were raw. the machine guns ceased !re, three told him, nor any other member of his “I didn’t have the ener'y to go cause a suicide truck bombers had attacked. The family, the ghastly details of combat. ruckus as often,” he recalls. “I didn’t have base itself was safe, but the third truck Vance kept it all bottled up, worried they that anger just festering, waiting to pop managed to detonate outside the gate, would see him di"erently. all the time. It was worked out of me.” decimating a dozen U.S. soldiers. When he got out of the Army for good Slowly he came out of his shell. “It’s 130 degrees, and it’s cooking body and returned to San Diego in 2006, he Thanks to the GI Bill, he started college parts and guts on the blacktop,” Vance truly was a di"erent person, inside and in 2008. He went back to therapy, read tells me, tears welling in his eyes. “Shov- out. Among the many tattoos Vance up on PTSD, and learned how soldiers eling the soup into body bags, you don’t collected: a ticking time bomb and #$% are biologically adapted to combat. He forget that it’s people.” (fuck the world). volunteered at a VA hospital and declared That 2004 bombing wasn’t an isolated For six months he went full blast, social work his major. Someday, maybe, incident. Four soldiers died on Vance’s pounding Seagram’s 7, picking !ghts, and he’d !nd a job helping vets. !rst mission in Samarra, Iraq. All told, he popping painkillers. He was on the edge: In 2010 he was working as a trainer at led more than 250 missions and 75 raids Crowds, slammed doors, and aggressive Undisputed and prepping for an MMA in the roughest combat zones. “You’re body language triggered a slew of emo- !ght. He had eight weeks to train but no done !ghting, and all you see is a pair of tions in him. So did seemingly mundane sparring partner. Looking around the trousers or a piece of skull stuck against things. One night Vance was late to 'ym, Vance spotted a muscular guy with

APRIL !"#$ # MAXIM !" army. an building but our mission is di is new our This platoon, We’re basically !! erent.

with a few guys in brown military-issue T-shirts. It was the beginnings of P.O.W. Vance took Hanner under his wing,

texting and calling him daily to get him oceanic-themed tat sleeves. Turned out to the $ym. Vance made Hanner his he was an ex–Navy SEAL. sparring partner, and before long they One veteran saw the pair grappling in were best friends. the cage, then another. Within a month “I had no problem con!ding in him my seven vets had joined them. Vance darkest secrets,” recalls Hanner. “I knew intended to use the guys only as tackling he’d battled the same kind of demons.” dummies, but they wanted to learn. He Within four months he had dropped

started coaching them. After Vance won 20 pounds. His social anxiety was dis- his big !ght by a “vicious ” sipating, but Hanner wanted more: He Vance texts me the four-digit code; I (fracturing his own shin and both feet in dreamed of !ghting professionally. “You park and walk over to an enclosed pool the process), he returned to Undisputed. already put in the hard work,” Vance and picnic area. Twenty or more guys The vets wanted to keep training, and he told Hanner before his !rst jujitsu bout. in matching black P.O.W. T-shirts are couldn’t refuse. Undisputed agreed to let “The !ght is the fun part.” huddled around a cluster of tables, cool- Vance borrow the cage. Stepping into the ring, Hanner had ers, and a grill. One of them lets me in. butter%ies in his stomach. When the At !rst Vance hoped all his P.O.W. stu- SHANE HANNER, one of Vance’s !rst ref blew the whistle, he struck like a dents would follow Hanner’s trajectory. students, used to be an outgoing Midwest- cobra, locking his opponent in a choke Most of the “OG crew” from 2010 wound ern teenager. That was before he dropped hold. The !ght was over in 30 seconds. up competing in jujitsu tournaments. out of college, joined the Navy in 2004, Hanner advanced to the next round. But by 2011 word had spread about and deployed to Kuwait at the height of Then another. He won !ve !ghts that his special MMA class. Support groups the war. By 2008 Hanner was out of the day, !nishing in second place. like the Wounded Warrior Project and service and su"ering from PTSD and de- Since then Hanner has entered six Veterans Village started sending more pression. He had few friends and couldn’t jujitsu competitions and placed at all vets to P.O.W. Beyond PTSD and alcohol keep a girlfriend. Mostly he just stayed of them. He’s also dropped another 25 abuse cases, Vance began seeing vets home alone with the blinds drawn. pounds, sprouted a six-pack, and earned hooked on heroin. Some were homeless. Counseling didn’t help. Nor did the a master’s in homeland security. He hopes Several were missing limbs. At the BBQ meds: He was constantly drowsy but to graduate to pro MMA !ghts this year. I meet one skinny, baby-faced vet with a unable to sleep for days at a time. It almost doesn’t matter what happens leg amputated below the knee. Vance has His only comfort was food. Late at in the cage. Vance has already declared learned to tailor his MMA classes so vets night he’d binge on pepperoni pizza and his friend the winner. with all types of disabilities can train. Ben & Jerry’s. He gained 35 pounds in Ultimately Vance realized that P.O.W. six months. As a Navy petty o#cer, he’d “HOW DO I GET through the gate?” isn’t about transforming ex-soldiers into earned top !tness scores. Now his 5'8" I !re o" a text message to Vance. pro hopefuls. It’s about providing cama- frame “looked like a bowling ball.” It’s Veteran’s Day, and Vance is hosting raderie. After every class the vets huddle After catching a UFC !ght on TV, he a BBQ for the P.O.W. crew at a gated up, place their hands together, and shout, decided to join Undisputed, where half community in the desert, 20 miles east “Brotherhood!” Many of them socialize the trainers are pro MMA !ghters. For of San Diego. I’m running late because regularly and text each other for support. months Hanner saw Vance around the I stopped to buy a 12-pack of beer. Show - “The Fight Club movie references are $ym, but he was too intimidated to talk ing up empty-handed—today of all a little played out, but we are basically to the tattooed hulk—until the summer of days—wouldn’t just be tacky. It would building an army,” says Mike Judd, a 2010, when he noticed Vance working out be downright un-American. 30-year-old former Army squad leader.

!" MAXIM # APRIL !"#$ Last September the Depart- ment of Defense and the VA announced they’re investing $100 million to research new treatments for PTSD and TBI (traumatic brain injury, which results from exposure to repeated explosions). Already the VA has sanctioned alterna- tive therapies like acupunc- ture, the Buddhist method of “loving-kindness meditation,” and neuro-feedback treat- ments, in which vets monitor their own brain waves on a screen. Outside the VA, doctors are exploring even more radical approaches, “This is our new unit. This is our new “Medication couldn’t do what this including marijuana and ecstasy. platoon. We’re physically !t, we’re highly class does,” Judd explains to me. “It’s “Nothing works for everybody. There trained, most of us still shoot regularly. de!nitely a body high.” are many alternatives. The question is the But our mission is di"erent.” “Once you’ve lived at the speed of same: Where’s the beef?” says Matthew What is their mission? light, it’s hard to go back to 55,” says Friedman, M.D., executive director of the “Keep our sanity, stay out of trouble, Beaux Engelbert, a 29-year-old former VA’s National Center for PTSD. The beef take care of each other,” he says. “That’s Recon Marine with a blond mohawk he’s referring to is scienti!c research. “I’m all that matters.” who enjoys the rush of MMA. not going to make a recommendation for Besides P.O.W., Vance encourages vets a treatment that hasn’t been validated.” JUST AS BRAD PITT’S full-contact to try therapy and yoga. He invites a VA Currently researchers are beginning club gave guys a reason to cut their hair psychologist friend to pass out business to investigate the e"ects of martial arts short and trim their !ngernails, Vance’s cards; calling her direct line cuts the wait on PTSD. In time a program like P.O.W. P.O.W. veterans watch their waistlines time by a month. Vance’s new girlfriend, could be legitimized. Either way, Vance and dial back on booze. It doesn’t require a yoga instructor, teaches free sessions is sticking to his mission. He just needs them to stay sober, just un-hung-over. at P.O.W. at least once a month. Beyond to lock down funding to make P.O.W. his “You can’t be a shitbag and do this poses and postures, she shows the vets full-time job. Eventually, he envisions class,” says Judd, who used to do “Beer breathing techniques to alleviate anxiety. franchising P.O.W. across the country, Olympics,” in which he’d close down a Finding better ways to !ght PTSD is but for now he just needs a bigger cage— bar, grab breakfast, and then go balls- a top priority for the government. Dur- that 24-foot one is getting crowded. to-the-wall again at 6 #.$., when the bar ing the !rst half of 2012, more soldiers “I was a squad leader in the Army. Not reopened. At the Veteran’s Day BBQ, he committed suicide than died in combat having that role is boring to me,” he says. limited himself to three Bud Lights. in Afghanistan. “I need people counting on me.”

SUPER TROOPERS SPORTS STARS WHO WORE STRIPES.

NAVY ARMY NAVY ARMY USMC ARMY ROGER STAUBACH RANDY COUTURE DAVID ROBINSON ROCKY BLEIER KEN NORTON SR. PAT TILLMAN NFL Hall of Famer Six-time UFC champ NBA Hall of Famer NFL Heavyweight NFL Captain America A"er serving six Having started his A"er being dra"ed boxing champ An All-Pro safety for didn’t earn his nick- years in the military, basketball career by the Steelers, the Ken Norton began the Arizona Cardinals, name during his tour eventually reaching playing at the Naval fullback was dra"ed his boxing career Tillman opted to enlist in Vietnam with the the rank of sergeant Academy, and learn- again—into the Army while enlisted in the in the Army following Navy. Rather, it refers in the 101st Airborne, ing that his height in 1968. Doctors told Marine Corps and the 9/11 a$acks. He to Staubach’s leading Couture took his would restrict him him he’d never play !nished it as one was deployed to Iraq “America’s Team,” talents into the from active duty, the football again a"er of only !ve people and later Afghanistan, the Dallas Cowboys, UFC Octagon, where seven-footer landed su#ering a leg injury to have ever defeated where his life tragi- to !ve Super Bowl he won six di#erent at center with the in Vietnam. Rocky Muhammad Ali in his cally ended as a result appearances. championship titles. San Antonio Spurs. proved them wrong. professional career. of friendly !re.

APRIL !"#$ " MAXIM !!