By MATTHEW CRESS
Wrapping up a paying customer like a human pretzel and forcing him to submit with something called a triangle choke isn’t what most people would consider good business.
But the students of Josh Stith and Jimmy Wright at Jeffersonville’s Full Moon Martial Arts not only pay for the privilege, they even seem to enjoy it.
“The first thing you learn,” said Derek Traughber, who had just gone toe-to-toe with Wright on the mats on Friday, “is how little you can do against someone who has the knowledge.”
The knowledge in question is that of mixed martial arts, a combat sport that has been steadily growing in popularity since the birth of the Ultimate Fighting Championship, North America’s top MMA organization since 1993.
Far away from the bright lights and big cities that host the UFC’s pay-per-view events, Stith and Wright are among the first to have brought the sport here to the local area, setting up shop in the recently-opened studio on Middle Road.
“What’s great about it is that you can be good at a bunch of different things,” said Stith, a 1999 Jeff High graduate who has been coaching the wrestling team at Parkview Middle School. “I’m not downing any style, because I respect them all. It just seems to me that doing different styles every day is much more exciting.”
The clashing of different fighting styles is the engine that drives MMA. The UFC originally came into being as the answer to a question that many sports fans have asked — can a wrestler beat a boxer? Everything goes in the world of MMA, from kickboxing and karate to competitors with a wrestling background like both Stith and Wright, who will join coach Danny Struck’s staff as the conditioning coach for the Jeff grapplers this season.
That’s not to say that the pair can’t mix it up in other ways. Each one of the sessions, held three days a week, contains a mixture of boxing combinations, kickboxing and ground elements. A different submission hold, a move that forces an opponent to give up, is taught at each class.
“All of our guys are beginners, so we aren’t teaching anything real complicated right now,” said Stith. “We’re not trying to bombard them with a ton of holds.”
The classes are off to a quick start, much to the delight of Full Moon owner Chuck Dismang, who wanted to add MMA training to his school and lucked into a partnership with the two teachers.
“We’d been looking for someone for awhile,” Dismang said. “Josh came down one day to talk to me about it and we worked out an agreement. We want to have as many things in here as possible.”
Stith said that his class draws an average of 10 people per session. Most of them are men in their mid-20’s and almost all of them familiar with the MMA fights they see on television.
MMA has undoubtedly become big business with the rise of fighters like Chuck Liddell, a former UFC light-heavyweight champion and Tito Ortiz. A match between the two in December of 2006 drew a pay-per-view gross that rivaled some of the biggest boxing cards of all time. The UFC’s total gross from 2006 events surpassed that of any promotion in the history of pay-per-view.
“This is the wave of the future,” Dismang said. “It’s been marketed well and it’s really captured the young male audience. This is a business and we have to have what the public wants.”
Then there’s Traughber, who said he began watching the fights about two years ago and wants to use the techniques when he breaks into law enforcement.
“It’s something to practice for physical altercations in the future,” he said. “The more I watched the MMA them, the more I understood what superb athletes the MMA guys are.”
While Stith draws from his wrestling and coaching background to teach, Wright is in preparation for his second amateur MMA fight, coming up in Bloomington on July 21. As part of the Elite Cage Fighting organization, Wright will meet Greencastle’s Dennis Shalev (1-0) in a welterweight bout, for fighters from 140.1 to 155 pounds.
“I fight with a hybrid style,” said Wright. “If I can’t get a takedown, I’ll stand and bang with them. If I get the take down, I soften them up with submissions.”
Wright won his debut last August at a fight in Lexington, beating a significantly more experienced fighter.
“They were trying to build up the guy against an inexperienced guy,” said Wright. “It didn’t work out that way.”
Stith got his start by sparring with a group of New Albany police officers. He had never planned on teaching MMA, but sometimes the best-laid plans go awry.
“When you’re a wrestler, there aren’t a lot of options,” Stith said. “You can go to college and wrestle, or you can coach.
I ended up laying the floor there (at Full Moon) and I asked the owner if they taught MMA and told him I was interested.”
Full Moon’s program is the only one like it in the immediate area. The next closest facility is on Dixie Highway in Louisville, making it a tough drive for a fighter-in-training like Wright. Full Moon is also much cheaper, charging $55 a month for 12 sessions. A gym on Dixie Highway charges $110 per month.
“A lot of people like MMA, but you have to drive so far to train,” Wright said. “I used to make a 45-minute drive, twice a day, six days a week. Now people can get the same training without the drive.”
No one in the class seems too enamored with the idea of trading bombs with the likes of Liddell or Ortiz on national television, or even of having a professional fight.
That doesn’t mean that Stith and Wright don’t have a bigger goal for their current crop of students.
“Our goal is to develop a team,” Stith said. “In Indiana, tournaments are becoming much more common. Our goal is to get better and, one day, travel as a team and compete.”
For now, the honor of Full Moon Martial Arts will have to ride on the shoulders of Wright.
“That’s something for way down the road,” said Traughber, laughing a little bit at the idea of an actual fight. “My skill level is not advanced enough to get into that cage. We’ll see what happens down the road.”
For more information:
on Full Moon Martial Arts — www.fullmoonmartialarts.com
on Jimmy Wright’s upcoming bout — www.elitecagefighting.com
on Ultimate Fighting Championship events — www.ufc.com
Ready for MMA training?
Where: Full Moon Martial Arts
Address: 2920 Middle Road, Jeffersonville
Price: $55 per month
Sessions: Three times weekly (Mon., Wed., Fri.)
Phone: 812-288-9886
