Under no illusions about UFC challengeEspinal spells out tough road ahead

Mixed martial arts tournaments

Espinal: Ambition to convert his wrestling
 skills into becoming a UFC champion fighter

By ANTONIO ESPINAL

BHSB Journalism Student

Throughout life, you face challenges. At times, they may be hard. At other times, they may be easy. One enormous challenge I seek for myself is to become not just a good fighter in the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) league of mixed martial arts. I want to be one of its greatest.

This isn’t some far-fetched idea. I am already a competitive award-winning wrestler. I won the award of most valuable player for my team, and I’m going to keep entering tournaments to become more competitive.

UFC is the largest mixed martial arts promotor in the world, and most of the sport’s top-ranked are featured by it.

It’s where two fighters enter an octagon-shaped cage, and then it’s, ‘May the best fighter win,’ Dana White, UFC president, has explained in interviews.

In this kind of martial-art you don’t only need strength and skills, you also need the courage to keep on going even when you’re about to lose.

Pankration

The sport goes back thousands of years – to when the ancient Greeks were around. The Greeks called mixed martial arts "pankration," where two people fight at full strength.

Ancient Greek pankration: "All force"

I realized I really wanted to join this sport when I found myself trying to get into it. Ever since I was a little child, I had loved play-fighting, but I could never join a team that involved fighting until the seventh grade, when I joined a wrestling team.

Being a part of a team showed me that, when you want something, you should go and get it.

When I train and practice, I have one scenario in my mind. I imagine being under water and unable to breathe. If you were in that situation, what would you want to do? All you would want to do is breathe. When you want to be successful as badly as you want to breathe, that’s when you’ll will achieve success.

Success requires being dedicated to the sport even while you’re training. You have to look at it like this: It’s not just a sport, it’s a lifestyle.

Hard work

Can anybody do the sport? Yes, anybody can, in theory. The thing that not everyone can do is handle the mentality that is necessary to keep you motivated – especially at your worst moments when you’re trying to reach your goal.

To reach your goal, you may take many years.

You’re one of the fighters, but you are not your own boss, which means you don’t get paid what you want. You get paid what your boss wants. If you want to get paid well, you’re going to have to reach the top.

However, there are other people competing against you. Which means you’re going to have to work harder than they do because, at the end of the day, it comes down to who puts in more work.

Espinal: seeks to leverage his wrestling

Antonio Espinal was born in Dominican Republic and arrived in the United States in 2003. He believes that there are a lot of opportunities in this country. One of his favorite pastimes is wrestling because it taught him how to be a team leader – and a leader for himself.