Trainer Will Moates: center, stands with 205-pound MMA champ Phillip Bohannon, left, and 170-pound champ Pat Freed, right. CONTRIBUTED
Most college graduates don’t enter the world of full-contact fighting after receiving that hard-earned diploma.
But Phillip Bohannon and several others at Nutrition First Fight Club have dedicated themselves to the sport of Mixed Martial Arts, or MMA.
Bohannon, 25 years old, graduated from Auburn University in 2005 with degrees in public administration and political science, but soon decided to devote most of his time and efforts to becoming an MMA fighter.
“I started off wrestling in high school. I wrestled at the University and then got into boxing and the Mixed Martial Arts, so that was a kind of easy transition,” Bohannon said. “I’ve been doing that for about two and a half years now.”
This weekend, he took his 6-2 MMA record to compete for the Southern Fighting Alliance Light Heavy Weight belt. Bohannon, standing at 6 feet even and registering as a middle weight at 185 pounds, challenged the 6-foot-4, 205-pound title holder.
Bohannon won by KO in 47 seconds.
“He hasn’t been beaten in two years and everyone was scared to death of him,” Bohannon said. “I’ve always wanted to go against him just to see how good he was, so I decided to bump up a weight class and fight him.”
Nutrition First Fight Club is the site where he and many other college graduates and students train under Will Moates, the store’s owner. Moates began with boxing, but expressed that he too transitioned easily into the sport.
“I had some guys come in to do some jujitsu, and they asked if I’d teach them how to do boxing and the next thing you know, I have a whole MMA team,” Moates said.
The physical demands of MMA fighting require that Moates’ team undergo vigorous training in order to compete. Training includes pulling sleds, flipping monster truck tires and a sledge hammer drill that involves pounding the tires to develop grip strength.
Preparing for a fight might also include a day dedicated to boxing, another to wrestling and then a day where it’s all combined in a three to four hour sparing session. In addition, these fighters often watch and dissect film of their opponents and then train specifically to capitalize on any noticeable weaknesses.
Cory Hamrick, a graduate of Birmingham-Southern, emphasized that each aspect of training was crucial, and fighting requires that you train past your limits as early as eight weeks before a fight.
“You train 10 times harder than you fight, you have to,” Hamrick said. “The fighting needs to be the easy part.”
