Not unlike many casual viewers, Blas Avena caught an Ultimate Fighting Championship card and wondered if he could do it. If he had what it takes to get into the cage and do battle with another trained fighter. That was 1993.
“I watched it,” Avena says, “and I wished that I was good enough to get in there.”
And so he trained. Went to work on his boxing, his wrestling, his ju-jitsu, and he excelled. Then he moved to Las Vegas because “it’s the fight capital right now,” with its efflorescence of boxing and ju-jitsu gyms, and he took up a job working security at the Joint in the Hard Rock, where World Extreme Cagefighting would hold fights. That was three years ago.
“Then I decided to put it all out there,” Avena says. “I said to my coach at my gym, ‘I just want to be a cagefighter,’ and he said, ‘Okay.’”
And so he got a professional match.
He enjoyed it—he won—and fought four more, with exceeding pleasure.
Now, “as ready as I can possibly be,” Avena will fight in front of his friends and co-workers at the Joint on August 5. And, now, Avena can see himself making a career out of this cagefighting business.