WHEN IT COMES TO PAIN, there are two kinds of chiropractic patients. There are those who withdraw into themselves, becoming silent and tense as their therapist applies defibrillator-strength movements to their spinal joints. Then there are those who react. The mixed martial artist and model Michelle Waterson is the latter. “Ayeeeeeeee,” she cries out as chiropractor Beau Hightower deftly digs his thumbs into the muscles between her right shoulder and neck, straddling the strap of her lilac crop top with his fingers. Waterson delivers a long, pitiful mock wail.
Hightower, 39, smiles over his white-streaked black beard. It’s early March, and they’re in Hightower’s office on the second floor of the labyrinthine Jackson Wink MMA Academy in Albuquerque. High-tower is the director of sports medicine at Jackson Wink, and he also takes patients through the practice he founded in 2013, Elite Ortho-Therapy and Sports Medicine. This is one of five Elite-OSM offices; there are two others in Albuquerque, one in Las Vegas, and one in south Florida.
When Waterson arrived, they small-talked for ten minutes before Hightower’s wife, Brazilian model and fitness personality Lais DeLeon Hightower, holding a camera, lassoed their conversation with a pleasant but sharp “Let’s do this.” Hightower assumed a showman’s volume and intonation instantly. “What’s going on out there in YouTube land?” he asked loudly, like an old-school radio-show host, facing the camera and leaning over Waterson, who was laughing at the jarring switch-flip. He generally opens the show this way, with a sudden burst of schlocky animation, and in at least one instance he has leaped onto the table, going from a standing position to all fours with chimp-like agility, while delivering the greeting. “Today we’re back with one of our all-time favorite patients here: Michelle Waterson, the karate hottie.”
“Please be nice to me,” Waterson said. “I don’t want to cry today.”
Now she is seated on one of two padded tables, and Hightower is not being nice. The
