It's official!!

Signed my UFC contract on December 22nd. I am excited. I am fortunate to have entered the largest organization known in my profession. I've been training for 17 years to get to this point in my life. I started wrestling when I was 13 and finished my wrestling career in 2004. After a few years of teaching and coaching intercollegiate wrestling, I started to train in mixed martial arts in 2007. I've been blessed with talented coaches and wonderful people in my life. They have taught me that with hard work and smart training you can achieve just about anything. I've come to realize that you can do anything that you set your mind to with use of God's strength and Providence. Like the quote suggests, "it takes a village to raise a child," I feel that I've been blessed through and through. Now it is time to represent not only myself, but my family, my friends, the Filipino community/aking kapamilya, MMA, and all who helped me throughout the years. Lastly, but who has the most influence in my life, I thank God. With disciplined training and the support of good people, I continue on this path...

WEC 37

God has blessed me with another win! The fight however went another route that a script would have been written for the fight. If a script would have been written it would have read that I would be taking the jui jitsu black belt down and the jui jitsu black belt would be working for sweeps on the bottom. However that was the exact opposite of what occurred. As the fight began I noticed that he was standing south paw. I went for an inside leg kick and before I knew it he had dove in for a single leg takedown. As I stuffed his shot, my back hit the cage and we were in the clinch. Fighting for position I stepped around and attempted an uchimada throw, but that attempt got countered and he ended up on top of me in side control. Now most of you must be thinking, "uh oh!" But I get in that position all the time with the best in the world at the Gracie Academy in Torrance with Ryron and Rener Gracie. I roll with them often so I know that I've prepared and am ready for whatever anyone throws at me. So back to him being in side control.... As he was in side control I got an underhook immediately and worked for a sweep. I then swept him into his guard, postured up, and past his guard to take his back. From there I threw down seeral unanswered bombs from that position. As I threw my first punch, I felt his body go limp and thought to myself, "finish him!!" And that is what happened. The ref stopped the fight in 2:26 of the first round. After the fight people were telling me that they've haven't seen anyone hit that hard from that position before.

The future is looking like I will be fighting in March or April in the UFC. There is another option that I might be fighting in the Philippines in May. Nothing has been finalized, however I will take it day by day and train my hardest until that day comes. I have already been training since the day I got back from Vegas. There are still a lot of improvement that needs to be done and I'm up to the task at hand.

Thank you to all those who support and pray for me... for this is an adventure that I will need strength and grace from God. All I know is that I can't worry about the things I can't control, I can only concentrate on the things that I can control and that is how hard I will work on my weaknesses and make them my strengths until the next fight. I am very determined to work as hard as I can to achieve greatness!!