Heart, how do you know...

When I think about heart a few people come to mind, but today it's Felipe Puente. I believe heart is most times measured by how many times you are knocked down in life or competition and continue to get back up. I believe in Felipe's case it is the refusal to go down.

Felipe approached his first fight with no fear. Fighting at 135lbs is a tough for a fighter who some might consider small in the 125lb division. That is of no concern to Puente who throughout training camp never mentioned it nor responded to talks about it. He just didn't care and I think the idea that it doesn't matter who you put in front of me, i'm going to fight is exactly the attitude a fighter is suppose to have. Felipe embodies that. As we already knew going in Felipe's opponent was gonna be taller and longer, this one was going to be a difficult task. An extra tall 135lb fighter stood across from us as we awaited the bell. I told Felipe we needed to get right in his chest and not let him use his reach. Unfortunately he was able to get off first and in the first 30 seconds land a blow that bloodied Felipe's nose. His back was to me so I didn't see it until the ref stopped the fight momentarily to bring Felipe to get cleaned up. I was in shjock when he turned around, partially from the amount of blood coming out and partially because Felipe gave no indication that it even remotely bothered him. All cleaned up back into the fight he went. Like a captain of a ship steering into the storm. He fought his heart out taking punishment from the longer fighter but never giving an inch. He would not go down and i'm convinced if the fight went 10rds he would still be standing at the end saying "come on let's go!". That's heart that kept him fighting and that's why all 125lb fighters should be on notice because here comes the immovable object. Felipe "MF'n" Puente!!!

Training makes champions: Yoka D.

It's been a long couple of months but it was all worth it. I've been fully immersed in training my two fighters for their first fights and at the same time preparing for my own competition but more on that later. On October 13th, my fighter Yoka D. put all her hard work and dedication to the test and fought in the IKF PKB kickboxing tournament and won. Two fights and six rounds later she not only won the championship in her division but also fighter of the night. It was an amazing moment but it was even more gratifying because of how hard she worked. A Belgian import, Yoka has embraced Muay thai as a way of life and put in an enormous amount of time working on her skill set.

Throughout training there are always obstacles in the way as well as clashes between coach and fighter. We also endured some clashes and bumps along the way. The good thing about Yoka is that she is her own worst critic, so most of the time we bumped heads about how much she was training or how good she was doing. Even on her best day she would give the impression it was her worst. As far as her bad days went, well I wouldn't say it was a good time to be around. I pushed her to her limits in training and challenged her to be better every time. I yelled and she pushed at her and at times she let me know what she thought about it. She complained and I let her know what I thought about that.

Through all of that we kept our eyes on the prize. We met every week and we trained consistently. We worked hard on conditioning, technique, philosophy, and belief in what we were doing.

At the end of it all it was belief that carried her to the victory and the "fighter of the night" accolade. Belief in her coach, belief in the technique, belief in the hard work, but most importantly it was belief in herself. She deserved the championship, not because I say so, but because she genuinely earned it and it was an honor to watch it happen up close.