More than fighters

Team: defined by a group of people coming together to achieve a common goal.

On the outside, grappling an opponent into submission may seem like nothing more than an individual trying to prove his or her brute strength and physical dominance to the world.

But on the inside, the UW-Eau Claire Mixed Martial Arts Club embodies the very definition of the word team. And its common goal stretches far beyond the treacherous mat of hellacious one-on-one competition.

 

The Club

 

When freshman Brie Fuller first dipped her feet into the world of fighting back home in Eagle River, she wanted to learn self-defense. But as she started to learn quickly at her local fight club, she was convinced to try MMA. Immediately, she knew this was something she wanted to continue to do.

“I caught on and loved it,” Fuller said. “It’s a great stress reliever and just a lot of fun to do.”

She contacted Hunter Promer over the summer, the vice president of the club, to see if Eau Claire’s MMA club would give her a similar sense of satisfaction.

As she quickly found out, her college experience would indeed have that type of club where she could gain so many different tools and meet new people.

Promer said people join the club, which had its inaugural year in 2008-2009, for all sorts of different reasons. But at the end of the day, he said, everybody should feel the same sense of satisfaction as Fuller gets every time walking off the mat.

“It’s pretty much up in the air where members want to take it themselves,” Promer said. “If they want to do fights, we help them out and train them for fights. If they just want to get a good workout, we do that as well. We just try to make it all work for everybody.”

The club also has to be its own business. It has grown in popularity, growing from seven members just a year ago to 20 and sometimes even 30 people. While the members of this group are unique in the fact that they are willing to put their bodies through a vicious nightmare, they are similar to all student groups in getting started and attracting new members.

Promer said they chalk on the sidewalks, use the Blugold Organization Bash, have social gatherings and use social media heavily to make themselves visible.

In 2013, they also have a little help from the National Guard, as Sgt. Todd Raymond brings some of his members into the McPhee Physical Education Center to train with the club, which trains two to three times for a demanding two hours in the Blugold wrestling room.

 

Physicality, competition and self defense

 

World Wrestling Entertainment, one of fighting’s first “professional” stage, is all staged.  But in MMA, nothing is staged. Promer said almost anything goes in hand-to-hand, combat fighting.

“It’s pretty much as real as it gets,” Promer said. “There’s very limited rules that you can’t do, and it’s the real deal, for sure.”

In MMA, Promer said the body is pushed to the brink of exhaustion time in and time out. The MMA club structures its practice around a lot of one-on-one partner workouts with a lot of conditioning, including push-ups, sit ups and running.  He said MMA causes challenges in both the mind and the body.

“You need a good combination of both strength and endurance,” Promer said. “Mentally, you need the experience to prepare yourself not to freak out when you get tired.”

The club offers  competition for those who crave it. It just had a tournament two weekends ago at Hudson in a submissions only tournament, where a winner is decided only when the opponent gives in and taps out because he or she is put into a position so uncomfortable they willingly admit defeat.

But the fighting aspects the club teaches apply to more than making an opponent tap-out.

According to a study conducted by Dr. Kathleen Young, a

clinical psychologist specializing in the treatment of trauma and its aftermaths in Arizona, one in four college women report experiences that meet the definition of being sexually assaulted. Young also concluded 52 percent of sexual/physical assaults on campus occur after midnight for both young men and women, particularly 18-19

year olds.

Fuller is well-aware of those statistics, and she said the tactics she’s learned through fighting gives her the utmost of confidence if a dangerous situation were ever to arise.

“Some nights, I’ll have ended up walking home by myself,” Fuller said. “I was more confident because if something happened, I could do something about it.”

One big, happy family

 

For an hour and a half to two hours several times a week, the members of the MMA Club battle and beat one another in an attempt to make a teammate tap out.

But even in the midst of an onslaught of pain and exhaustion, the fighters in the group remain fiercely loyal and close to one another.

For Promer, a wrestler in high school, he said that only makes them closer, something he said he never experienced in wrestling.

“I didn’t notice a big team collaboration where everybody is helping each other out,” Promer said. “It’s more universal here, and everyone is trying to help everybody else out.”

Club President Matt Townley said the closeness of the club is what separates the MMA club from the rest.

“Everybody is there to get better and help those around them get better,” Townley said. “No one’s trying to be the big dog, and that’s what’s so great about our club. The environment is about as friendly as can be.”

Fuller said joining this club has been one of the best decisions of her life. Not only has she gained confidence in herself, but she has also found a new path, as she will be enlisting in Sgt. Raymond’s National Guard in December.

But most importantly for her, she was able to assimilate herself with a group of like-minded people as soon as she stepped foot on Eau Claire’s campus to enhance her college experience.

“Not only has it made me embrace being a Blugold and get to know so many different people from so many different years, but it’s just so fun,” Fuller said. “I’m four hours away from home, but I’ve found

my family.”

Like any other family, the MMA club has its fights (literally), but at the end of the day, its pursuit to fulfill everyone’s individual goal makes them as close-knit as any family you’ll ever see.