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MMA Comes To Wesley Chapel

Posted Aug 20, 2009 by Geoff Fox

Updated Aug 20, 2009 at 04:16 PM

I’ll watch two ants fight over a crumb just to see which one wins.

As a kid, I had fistfights with friends over four-square.

Thanks to boxers like Aaron Pryor, “Sugar” Ray Leonard, Ray “Boom Boom” Mancini and Marvelous Marvin Hagler, I was seduced by the flash and violence of boxing at a young age. I followed the sport for years before I started covering it, freelance work that eventually led to a full-time career.

And, I still remember the first Ultimate Fighting Championships (UFC) in the early ‘90s. It was fascinating to watch Royce Gracie, a 170-pound Brazilian jiu-jitsu master, twist much larger men into tapping, writhing, red-faced knots.

Once decried as “human cockfighting” by Arizona Sen. John McCain, mixed martial arts (MMA), which combines aspects of wrestling, jiu-jitsu, boxing and other fighting forms, has exploded in popularity, thanks mostly to the UFC.

Recognizing the sport’s increasing acceptance, Brian Wethington has offered MMA classes at his Wesley Chapel karate studio for about a year. While he wants the business to flourish, Wethington said he is not looking for students who want to unleash newfound skills in local bars and parking lots.

“We’re not trying to attract 18- to 26-year-old guys with foul mouths and no money,” he said. “Everyone else, we’re trying to attract. This is a family atmosphere. We have after-school programs and summer camps. “We want everyone in our classes to learn respect, discipline and manners.”

(In the photos, Ravi Seemananda, bottom, works with Cody Cottrill during an MMA class at Wesley Chapel Mixed Martial Arts.)

I watched a class this week.

Instructors Raz Sarsour and Mike Spielberger, black belts in karate who travel to Jupiter three times a month to train with UFC lightweight contender Hermes ÖFranca, led about a dozen students through 45 minutes of jiu-jitsu, teaching them how to reverse positions when someone is on top of you, among other things.

No one left the school on State Road 54, just east of I-75, with a concussion, broken bone, bloody nose, or even a bruise, as far as I could tell.

Among the students was first-timer Ravi Seemananda, a 40-year-old accountant, who broke a healthy sweat struggling to get out of arm bars and tussling on the mats with younger training partners. “It was very good – 45 to 60 minutes is a good workout,” he said. “I want to learn some defense and better breathing. When someone is struggling with you, you have to breathe.”

The man has a point.

On Aug. 29, instructors from Wesley Chapel MMA will do demonstrations at Winner’s Grill at Bruce B. Downs Boulevard and State Road 54. That night, Winner’s also will show the live broadcast of UFC 102 headlined by heavyweights Randy Couture, an MMA legend, versus Antonio Rodrigo Nogueria, who starred last year in season eight of “The Ultimate Fighter,” a reality series on Spike TV.

With live and replayed MMA events being shown on television almost every night of the week on multiple channels, the sport’s popularity only seems to be growing.

“In the ‘70s, you had Bruce Lee,” Wethington said. “In the ‘80s, it was ‘The Karate Kid.’ In the ‘90s, you had ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.’

“Now, it’s MMA.”

For information about Wesley Chapel Mixed Martial Arts, call Wethington at (813) 973-1403, or visit http://www.wesleychapelmma.com or http://www.wesleychapelkarate.com.
(Tampa Tribune photos by Jason Behnken)