“Now, little boy lost, he takes himself so seriously
He brags of his misery, he likes to live dangerously
and when bringing her name up
He speaks of a farewell kiss to me”
– Bob Dylan “Visions Of Johanna” 1966
These personal articles have always come very naturally.
Win or lose, I’ve written them quickly and with little second-guessing, at 3 A.M. a couple hours after the bout concludes or while on the plane ride home, pulling the napkin from beneath my pretzels to dab some plasma off my cheekbones. Historically, I’ve cracked open the laptop, known exactly where to start the tale, and been satisfied with the finished product in fairly short fashion despite the long-winded nature of the recaps themselves.
I’m struggling here. Perhaps that’s a symptom of being out of practice. It’s been two years since my last career update and three since my most recent fight. The story isn’t flowing from my fingers to the screen; it’s being coaxed and coerced bit-by-bit.
Let’s not bury the lede any further: I’m looking pretty retired.
It all goes back to that silly acoustic neuroma operation (details), the 12-hour neurosurgery that removed a brain tumor as well as the ability to hear from my left ear back in November 2018. In the six years since, there have been developments allowing for treatment via a cochlear implant. A successful implant could restore my hearing, which I’ll confess doesn’t really matter to me in itself. I have adjusted just fine to singular Airpod life, and I’m only really affected in places like bars where there’s lots of loud, overlapping conversations.
Fortunately, I don’t like bars.
The real reasons (for me) to pursue this additional surgery are long term. There are connections between hearing loss and risk of dementia, as well as ties between complete loss of hearing in one ear and brain atrophy. I’ve already put a decade into this MMA business, so doubling down on brain damage doesn’t feel advisable. I now have an option otherwise, and it would be irresponsible to pass it up.
As such, I’ll be going back under the knife sometime in early 2025. A cochlear implant definitively concludes my fighting career, as an impact to the head could dislodge it internally.
This would be — in my layman’s understanding — a bad thing.
I mentioned in my last recap a desire to compete one more time in Sacramento, to wash the bitter taste of my previous performance from my mouth in front of friends and family. When I moved back to Sacramento in June after two years in Chattanooga, Tennessee for my wife’s schooling, I was still flirting with the idea despite 22 months without serious martial arts training. This surgery effectively shuts down that thought, because the implant is less likely to work the longer it’s put off. Delaying further for the chance to make a thousand bucks and satisfy my ego would, again, be stupid.
In the immortal words of Max Holloway, it is what it is. There is still a chance that if the implant fails, and if I get it removed afterward, and if I feel like cutting weight again … but that’s too much uncertainty to seriously consider at this stage. Besides, if it all does work out that way, would I be the first MMA fighter to “unretire?” Hardly.
So, that’s the announcement. I also want to do a bit of retrospection and express some gratitude. I briefly considered writing a breakdown of my own skills in the “Fighter on Fighter” format in pursuit of that perfect full circle moment, but the risk of sounding appallingly arrogant, unbearably meek, or some gross combination of the two was too high.
Instead, I’ll quickly look back at each fight and offer some stats and fun facts:
- I won my first amateur fight in 90 seconds just two months after graduating high school. I looked so young on the poster that someone called in to question if I was really allowed to compete … twice.
- My second amateur fight was the only one of my 10 fights to go to a decision, win or lose. In total, seven of my eight wins (87%) came before the final bell. It took place on an active military base, and everyone who attended had to submit their social security number and other personal information to gain access. Subsequently, I sold about four tickets.
- I won my third amateur fight in 45 seconds, my quickest win.
- My fourth amateur fight (which I lost) came opposite the No. 3-ranked Bantamweight in California in his home town. It was actually quite a cool venue, and I felt I fought fairly well despite getting caught in the second.
- I won my fifth and final amateur fight in the first round. Roughly three weeks prior to the match, I saw a doctor about a messed up fingernail. We opted to removed it entirely that day with scissors and tongs sans any kind of anesthetic. The doctor commented that I “don’t react to pain like a normal person” — probably my favorite compliment I’ve ever received.
- My first two professional fights took place for the infamous Gladiator Challenge promotion, so bragging about the outcome would be very silly. That said, I did receive the brain tumor diagnosis just nine days before the second fight, which I think makes the win pretty cool regardless of the competition level.
- My third pro fight is probably the proudest moment of my career. I fought a legit opponent from a world-class gym exactly 10 days prior to the anniversary of my surgery, and I won in the first. Despite a problematic training camp, it’s the most zoned in I’ve ever felt for a fight.
- I’m almost as proud to have accepted and won a five-round title fight on two week’s notice in the midst of COVID shutdowns.
- My final fight was my most disappointing performance by a considerable measure. Physically, I entered in great shape but I don’t believe I achieved the mental acuity necessary on the day of the event. It sounds extremely corny, but I’ve always entered the cage relaxed and ready to die, and I couldn’t get to that state of mind. That — aside from fighting a skilled and experienced opponent, no disrespect intended to his abilities — is what I attribute the loss to, and fixing the issue was one of the challenges I was hoping to take on in a return.
- Across my entire career, I only pulled out of one fight due to injury after taking a spinning kick to the hip bone that left me struggling to walk, let alone train in any meaningful way. On the flip side, I have had at least two dozen potential opponents pull out or decline my name outright, including one who is currently considered among the best unsigned Flyweights in the US. I find this very funny, because I have to be among the least visually intimidating fighters out there (refer back to that first bullet point).
- I took down every opponent I ever fought, more than once if I didn’t finish the fight in the first. I grew to be quite a convincing pretend wrestler under the Team Alpha Male tutelage of wrestling coaches Lance Palmer, Danny Castillo, Alexander Munoz, Lee Kemp, and Ryan Loder. A lot of non-wrestlers fail to embrace that grind when transitioning to MMA, but cage wrestling and scrambling with submissions has always been my favorite part of fighting.
- Every time I took an opponent’s back, I won the fight before the bell. If there is one part of my game I believe to be truly world-class, it’s my back taking, control, and finishing. The only fighter I’ve ever seen from that position who has made me think, “Wow, he’s doing all my s—t!” is Tatsuro Taira.
- I never missed weight, including hitting 124 pounds on two week’s notice for that title fight.
I’m pleased to have done some cool stuff in my prizefighting career, though I have regrets aside from the final fight as well. Primarily, I wish I would’ve fought more times and more often. Much of this was beyond my control — opponents pulling out/declining, the brain tumor, COVID — but I surely would’ve been able to display more of my skills and abilities with more time in the cage. There are so many aspects of fighting I consider myself good at, sequences I’ve learned or developed, that just didn’t happen in my actual career.
What use is having a rather nice spinning back kick if you never threw it in competition? I didn’t get to show off a lot of my counter wrestling tricks — a decade at TAM will teach ya some neat ones — because hardly anybody actually shot on me. I view reversing and submitting wrestlers as easily one of my best attributes … but it never came up!
Back to the “Blessed” quote: it is what is is. Or, as Cormac McCarthy put it, “People complain about the bad things that happen to em that they dont deserve but they seldom mention the good. About what they done to deserve them things.”
This journey has resulted in far more positives than negatives. I lived the dream for a long time. There is nothing I’ve found better than training full time with an awesome group dedicated to the same cause and inching towards those shared goals. Fighting is a difficult business fraught with problems, but the lifestyle is simply the best. I have friends for life spread around the globe, and I only met my wife because MMA took me to Sacramento.
I owe an extra bit of thanks to the MMAmania community. I started writing comments here in 2010 years before landing a job, and even back then I was writing Fanposts (which don’t exist anymore) about my first jiu-jitsu tournaments and receiving encouragement from many. Several people I’ve met through this site have attended my fights in person! I’ve stayed in MMAmaniac homes! Really, I’ve been continually overwhelmed by the MMAmania community support, even as that community has shifted and changed throughout the years. So, potentially one last time — thank you.
I hope you’ve all enjoyed coming along for the ride with me.