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Former GMU star wrestler pursues mixed martial arts
A look of grim foreboding entered Bill Clifford's eyes when a smiling Johnny Curtis shook his hand at the weigh-in.
When Curtis, 6 foot 3 and with cauliflower ears, shakes your hand it is reassuring to know that those 233 pounds of solid muscle, trained to pin the arms and legs of opponents into unimaginable knots of pain, are not going to be inflicted on you.
But they were going to be inflicted on Clifford, who also weighs 233 pounds but has far less muscle than Curtis.
The advantages Clifford held over Curtis were his record in the ring (5-2) and a background in tae kwon do.
Being the hometown favorite as a two-time all-American wrestler at George Mason University and having competed in 13 countries as a member of the U.S. Nationals Team, it was evident that in making his mixed martial arts pro debut, Curtis would try to get into his comfort zone, that is, to have both fighters grappling on the mat as soon as possible.
Last Friday night was the first time GMU's Patriot Center hosted a mixed martial arts event.
The crowd of 2,000 was mostly college students, a perfect audience for the sport that is quickly overtaking boxing in popularity, with its kicks, elbows, body slams, flying armbars and arm triangle chokes; with grown men tapping the mat in submission to a splayed out fighter who is pushing on his windpipe with one fist and smashing his nose with the other.
It is a multimillion dollar industry, setting pay-per-view records in an age when filling boxing arenas has become a challenge.
At 37 years old, Curtis said getting back into the ring would be more of a glorified hobby.
With his tree removal business, Freedom Tree Service, Curtis doesn't have the pressure like many fighters of having to scratch out a living with only his health and the accuracy of his punches and kicks depending on whether he and his wife and four kids can pay the rent.
A very religious man, Curtis said after meeting Clifford, "That poor guy looked a little nervous. ... I like to carry myself as an ambassador of Christ and, again, reflect God's glory in a positive way. But if you see in someone's eyes that they're a little scared or hesitant, that's a good thing."
Karen Curtis, a bit nervous at her near-middle-aged husband going into a ring said, "I feel like, for right now, where we are in our life, this is what God has Johnny doing and I feel good about it."
Back in August, a friend encouraged Curtis to joining a local MMA club. By last month he had three amateur wins.
Against Clifford, the game plan was to go to the mat as soon as possible, to grapple and put a choke hold on him so that he either tapped out or lost consciousness.
After Clifford entered the ring, there was a rumbling in the distance. Driving a motorcycle into the arena and followed by an entourage of trainers and fellow students of the Combat Training Center in Herndon, Curtis heard the crowd erupt when the announcer shouted out highlights of his GMU wrestling career.
Not withstanding the shrieks of the crowd, the rumbling motorcycle, the months of training and preparing for people to throw lunging kicks at his head, the entire production boiled down to a minute and 44 seconds in the ring.
A couple of punches were thrown, but the two fighters were on the mat in seconds and after that there was no chance Clifford was going to get around the perfectly balanced hips of his opponent.
And then came the arm triangle choke. Curtis looped his arm under Clifford's neck and then pressed his interlocked arms together, strangling him and cutting off the flow of blood at the same time.
A couple of fights later, aware that he may later fight the winner of the main event for that evening, Curtis watched as Travis Wiuff grabbed Travis Fulton's hand and beat him with it until Fulton's head erupted, sending blood down Fulton's face and ending the fight.
Curtis felt confident he could beat Wiuff in the ring.
"I've got to learn some strikes, defend leg kicks," he said, adding a sobering thought to the prospect of going toe to toe with a more hardened nose-breaker than Clifford. "The first time I had on a real pair of boxing gloves was in August."
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