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Airmen push for mixed martial arts competition

Chair force? Tech. Sgt. David Perez has got your “chair force” — right here. A cyber airman at Fort Meade, Md., by day, he is not the service’s stereotype desk jockey.

When this badass airman steps into the boxing ring, he packs a real punch — and a kick — as other pros in mixed martial arts have learned the painful way.

But when Perez bleeds, it’s Air Force blue. That’s why he wants the Air Force to start its own competition, so he can pursue both ambitions.

He’s not alone.

Perez is among a die-hard group of fighters who say the Air Force would create better warriors if it incorporated more combatives into training and let airmen fight it out in a sanctioned tournament.

“MMA is a true professional sport … and one day I think it can come to the Air Force sports program,” said Perez, the command transportation, safety and unit fitness program manager for U.S. Cyber Command at Fort Meade, Md. “I have no doubt in my mind that it instills discipline and … a combative confidence in individuals.”

Air Force officials say they might follow the lead of the Army and Marine Corps in starting a servicewide competition.

Better warriors

MMA fighters say they want to compete with other airmen, and ultimately, represent the Air Force in a contest against top fighters from other services.

That kind of competition would give airmen confidence they can take to the battlefield, said Staff Sgt. Rachel Nelson, one of the few female fighters on the MMA circuit.

Nelson, at 5 feet, 3 inches tall and 115 pounds, is an Air Force cop with the 823rd Base Defense Squadron at Moody Air Force Base, Ga., who travels to Tallahassee, Fla., for additional training.

“I would say if you want to breed real warriors with the warrior ethos mentality and physicality, you need MMA in a combatives program,” she said. “It breeds all of that.”

Capt. Jason Carter of the 28th Medical Support Squadron at Ellsworth Air Force Base, S.D., agrees that the Air Force needs its own tournament.

“If they did, I would be the first to jump on that,” Carter said. “MMA is a pure form of combatives, and it would be a great asset to be a part of the Air Force training program. If I had it my way, there would be interservice competition going on.”

The Air Force is looking at the Army’s competitive combatives program, which places soldiers into one of four levels based on their skills. At the highest level, competitors get to use mixed martial arts, and at the lower levels, they use basic grappling, wrestling and boxing techniques.

The Air Force isn’t completely sold on a competitive program but hasn’t ruled it out, said Col. Billy Walker, director of the Air Force Combatives Center of Excellence at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colo.

“Mixed martial arts provide a valuable foundational training for our airmen,” Walker said in an email response to questions. “However, it is not the primary focus of the [combatives] program. Our training philosophy is to transition from sport fighting to battlefield competencies.”

Combatives training

While some airmen have taken to gyms to pursue their passion for MMA, for the past three years, the Air Force has been putting 6,000 through combatives training that is comparable to mixed martial arts — including time in the ring.

“Airmen participate in full resistance training including live matches against one another,” said Air Force spokesman Meade Warthen.

Airmen learn standing and ground fighting techniques that emphasize fighting strategy, situational awareness and maintaining control of their weapons, said David Durnil, chief of instruction and training at the Combatives Center of Excellence. The center sprang from a 2007 forcewide task force that standardized the combatives curriculum.

“Techniques are based on the recognition that one-on-one fights with no weapons are rare,” Durnil said in an email response to questions. “The ultimate goal is for airmen to have the ability to utilize their training in order to best deal with real-world situations.”

New recruits going through basic military training receive limited combatives training, while airmen who work in security forces train in the full curriculum, Warthen said. Others receiving combatives include Air Force Academy and ROTC cadets, and airmen in battlefield careers such as joint expeditionary tasking airmen, and joint terminal attack controllers.

The Air Force modeled its fledgling program after the Army’s four-tiered Modern Army Combatives program, in which soldiers start with basic combatives at Level I and can advance to Level IV, or master trainer.

But a major difference between the Air Force and Army programs is that soldiers have a formal competition.

Service rivalries

If the Air Force were to enter the military MMA competition, the Army would be the service to beat.

Only soldiers who qualify for advanced combatives — Level IV in their four-tiered program — fight under rules similar to those in a professional MMA bout.

The soldiers fight in one of eight weight classes spanning bantamweight to heavyweight. They wear utilities and limited safety gear, which includes open-fingered gloves and shin guards. Bouts typically take place on a mat but sometimes in a boxing ring.

The Army made combatives part of service doctrine in 2002. As of October 2005, every soldier receives formal training in the hand-to-hand fighting system. And now the Marine Corps is following suit.

The Marine Corps is looking at allowing Marines to participate in fights that start at the small-unit level with the best fighters moving forward to commandwide and then Corps-wide tourneys.

The Corps’ plan likely would allow women and men to fight one another, as they do in the Army. But for those bouts, there’s likely to be some flexibility with weight classifications to ensure fighters are matched evenly. The current standards at Army tournaments allow women to outweigh their male counterparts by up to 12 percent. And while it’s not an immediate focus, there could come a time when Marines will be clear for interservice competition.

Street fighting roots

Mixed martial arts got its start about 20 years ago with dangerous undertones of street fighting. Now the sport is so popular that more than a million people have paid to watch the fights on television, and the sport’s largest promotion company, the Ultimate Fighting Championship, has signed a multiyear deal with Fox Sports.

The fights often feature two people in an octagon-shaped cage or boxing ring using multiple forms of martial arts fighting along with grappling and boxing techniques.

But Perez, who turned pro in July, is quick to point out that MMA is a cut way above two people brawling to the finish in a cage. The sport requires serious skill and training.

“It is not the sport of the past that most refer to it as,” Perez said of MMA’s dangerous beginnings. “It has evolved into one of the largest sports … with some of the most spectacular athletes in the world.”

There’s nothing like being in the cage with thousands of lights and even more eyes in the room on you, Perez said. And when those lights are shining on Perez, they’re also highlighting the Air Force, which allows Perez to wear the service’s logo when he fights.

He said he’s proud to show audiences that he’s a member of the Air Force, with the ability to combine both of his passions

“I want nothing less than to do 30 years if I make the rank and position to do so,” he said. “I would love the option of doing both and have not considered the choices I would have to make if I have to choose.”

Perez grew up on the tough streets of East Los Angeles, but he joined the Air Force more than 10 years ago. Fighting under the moniker “De Fierro,” Perez has lost only one fight, and he’d like to keep it that way.

He’s been fighting MMA competitively since 2006, and was undefeated as an amateur. At a recent fight at the 1st Mariner Arena in Baltimore, he took down his opponent in the first minute of the second round by submission. He also is the founder and coach of Team Warfighter Iron MMA at Fort Meade, where the sport is attracting a growing number of service members.

Ellsworth enthusiasts

A real MMA hotbed is Ellsworth, where the base held a competition called Ring Wars in June.

Josh Usera, owner of Dynamic Martial Arts about 10 miles away, said nearly half of the gym’s clients train in mixed martial arts, and most of them are airmen between 18 and 34 years old.

“It’s exciting, it’s raw and appealing to the younger generation because the fights are quick and there is a lot of action,” Usera said. “It’s very effective for military members to learn and can easily be applied to a real-world situation.”

One convert while stationed at Ellsworth was Nelson, who defied female stereotypes even as a child. Instead of dreaming of becoming a ballerina, she wanted to be a ninja.

She became an Air Force cop, with a serious passion for mixed martial arts.

Boxing, grappling, muay Thai and Brazilian jiu-jitsu — Nelson does it all. And often she has to climb into a cage with men much larger than she is.

Nelson, who fought tae kwan do for nearly 10 years, said continuously working to perfect the martial arts techniques involved in MMA is a great equalizer.

But she said some bases are not as accepting of MMA as Moody and Ellsworth.

Right now, each airman has to have the approval of a commander to fight. And as a female MMA fighter, Nelson said she has received mixed reactions to her requests.

“I was told, ‘Why do you want to do this? You’re going to get hurt, and if you get hurt you can’t deploy,’” she said. “I got support from some people, but others think it’s a waste of time.”

Nelson said her commander at the 820th Base Defense Group and her fellow airmen support her, and they actively use MMA in their combatives training. Members of the 820th also are working to put a team together that could go to the Army combatives championship.

She said she would like to see the Air Force be more accepting of MMA events.

“It’s beneficial in a lot of ways,” she said. “It’s great for fitness, and the best workout you could ever possibly give yourself … because you have to be going 100 percent the whole time.”

Her dream would be participating in the Army Combatives Tournament.

“That would be the coolest thing to beat the Army at their own game,” she said.

Training on their own

Until the Air Force makes a decision about competitive fighting, more airmen like Senior Airman Jerel Guyton seem game to try their hand at it where they are.

Guyton had an interest in martial arts when he was a kid, but no amount of pestering would get his mother to say yes to classes.

Based at Ellsworth, Guyton took matters into his own hands this summer when he trained for and fought his first MMA fight. He was one of several airmen at Ellsworth who participated in Ring Wars on base. He also recently fought in an off-base event.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘I gotta hit him before he hits me,’” said Guyton, a health services management technician with the 28th Medical Support Squadron.

Guyton said he was in decent shape when he started training for his first fight but realized that mixed martial arts was a whole new level of intensity.

“It was hard in the beginning because it’s a whole new fitness that you have to do,” he said. “But once I got a handle on it, I just kept pushing for that fight day.”

Guyton got a lot of support from Tech. Sgt. Correy Hodge and Capt. Jason Carter, both of the 28th Medical Support Squadron.

Hodge, who serves as the lead physical training officer for the group, helped Guyton work on his cardio so that he would have the stamina to endure the intensity of an MMA fight. Carter, a martial arts enthusiast since 1997, helped Guyton work on the many skills that he needed for the fight.

Carter said he’s heard the arguments that MMA is high-risk, but he doesn’t buy it.

“It’s no bigger risk than intramural sports,” he said. “The proper training minimizes the outcomes being negative.”

The outcomes of Guyton’s first two fights: He won in less than one minute both times.

Guyton said he’s not nervous in the ring — just confident.

Carter said seeing Guyton do so well has him excited about getting back into MMA, too. He’d taken a break to train Guyton and is a wholehearted supporter of incorporating MMA into Air Force combatives training.

“Watching him getting into the ring makes me want to get back out there,” Carter said.

Perez, who never seems to take a break, balances 120 to 180 minutes of workouts each day, and said others can do it to.

It all comes down to one thing that’s important to survival in the Air Force and MMA: discipline, he said.

“A lot of young men and women say they don’t get enough time to work out because they have to work all the time,” he said. “In my opinion, that’s hogwash and speaks to a lack of personal responsibility.”