Issue 131
August 2015
Middleweight Mark Munoz may have retired from the Octagon, but he’s not done with the MMA life – he just wants to be a dad.
Looking into the eyes of his 13-year-old son, Mark Munoz had an epiphany. Despite being just one fight into a new four-fight UFC contract, he realized his days of competing were over. It was time for his son’s athletic career to take precedence.
In May, the beloved ‘Filipino Wrecking Machine’ stepped into the Octagon one final time at the UFC’s debut event in Manila, the Philippines – his parents’ home country. His one-sided points victory over Luke Barnatt was a fitting end to the career of one of the sport’s good guys.
In the run up to the fight, the 37-year-old also closed down Reign MMA, the celebrated training facility in Orange County, California he’d built from the ground up. The move came as a shock to the athletes who frequented the gym, never mind the industry as a whole.
Yet Munoz believes he saw the light at the turn of the year. His life had become more than he could handle – too many fingers in too many pies – and it was time to practice what he preached, before it was too late.
“I’m pruning my life,” Munoz tells FO in the aftermath of his final performance. “The agricultural attitude of just pruning back is cutting away certain parts of the tree or bush so that it can be more fruitful in other places, and that’s what I’m doing. I’ve made my family the priority.
“I had an epiphany. I suddenly thought, ‘Where have the last seven years gone since I’ve been competing in mixed martial arts, and the six years I’ve been in the UFC?’ And then me owning the gym since I’ve been in the UFC, all of my time has been focused on coaching in the gym – and with all my community work – when really I need to be concentrating on the little ones, because those are the ones I leave my legacy with: my family.
“I’ve always preached in the gym, ‘Family comes first.’ I’d be telling guys looking to fight full-time but who couldn’t find a paycheck in the sport, ‘Hey, you’ve got to provide for your family first.’ So for me to continue on fighting, I’d be a hypocrite. I wouldn’t be someone that practices what they preach. And I don’t want to be that.
“I pride myself on being a man full of integrity and leadership and that’s definitely not how to be a leader – someone that doesn’t have good character or integrity. So to remain a man of example I had to walk away.”
Munoz admits helping his son to realize his sporting aspirations overshadows any number of UFC champions he could have coached at Reign. “It really hit me when my son asked me to coach him for high school and I just can’t do that if I was running a gym for 12-13 hours a day – as well as being a UFC fighter. It’s just too hard,” states the master of Donkey Kong ground ‘n’ pound.
“Family must come first. He wants to be a wrestler. He actually wants to quit baseball and soccer – two sports where he totally excels and plays for two of the most outstanding teams in Orange County – to focus on his wrestling.
“He sat me down and told me he wants to quit everything just to wrestle because he loves wrestling and he doesn’t want to rely on other people for his success. He wants his success to be reflective of just what he puts in. That’s what he wants to take out.
“To hear that, being a wrestler myself, that was awesome. He understands the sacrifice it takes to make it in wrestling already and so that woke me up. I knew then that I had to spend more time with him. I had to coach him.
“Then he says, ‘Dad I want to earn a full-ride scholarship to a Division I University.’ So I asked him, ‘There are 77 schools that offer scholarships, so what makes you think out of the thousands of kids shooting for those scholarships you’re going to get one?’ And he looks me dead in the eye and says, ‘But, dad, I have you.’ And I was like, ‘Wow!’”
Munoz revealed he also had to sacrifice time with his 15-year-old daughter, and his two smaller girls, aged 10 and seven. In fact, running Reign meant his wife too was spending more time away from the family than either of them had ever imagined. In the end competing, running a gym and being a father all became too much.
Munoz also admits life inside the Octagon had grown tough. His win over Barnatt ended a three-fight losing skid, which was the worst run of his 20-fight career, and he can’t remember the last time he felt truly injury-free.
“Aside from the victory over Luke in the Philippines, this past year has also hardly been a banner year for me. It’s been hard. It’s probably had a lot to do with me wearing so many hats, juggling so much. I’ve been wearing the Reign hat since I started in the UFC, and it was a big hat.
“I was also hurt for 18 months and I’ve never fully recovered. I’ve been going into my fights far from 100% and you just can’t do that. Not at this level and certainly not at my age. I want to be able to play with my grandkids when I’m older. I don’t wanna have injuries that spoil my life in my 50s and 60s.”
Beloved by teammates, coaches, fans and the Zuffa hierarchy; Munoz enjoyed eight years of mixed martial arts competition, seven of which were in the WEC and UFC. Something of a championship gatekeeper at 185lb, he fought all over the world as his media presence and intelligence were utilized to spread the gospel of MMA.
He adds: “I honestly believe I can still compete with the best of them, but I can’t do it by spreading myself too thin. I also do a lot of community work here in Orange County, I have an anti-bullying campaign where I have already spoken in over 70 schools about my own experiences of being bullied and that’s something they want to do nationwide, using me as a spokesperson for it.
“Then I have my wrestling program and I want to get my teaching credentials also so I can teach in schools. You know my wife was like, ‘How cool would it be for kids if you taught?’ After all, kids are going to be really disciplined in my classes (laughs). But I’ve always been a teacher and a coach and I’ve always felt that’s where my true gifts are.
“Throughout my life I’ve told people I felt I was a better coach than an athlete – I can see things. I’m not the type of coach who needs to change a fighter or a wrestler, but I have the ability to just add things. I’ve been around this for so long that I’ve seen so many things, so many styles, and with regards to MMA wrestling in particular, I can offer so much. I have a lot of skill-sets and I definitely want to use them.”
And Munoz is far from walking away from MMA for good. In fact, he’s determined to spearhead first-class MMA coaching in the Philippines, while he continues to teach his own style of MMA wrestling to the great and good of Orange County and beyond. We haven’t seen the last of the infamous Donkey Kong ground ‘n’ pound technique.
“My ground ‘n’ pound is something
I utilized from being able to control someone with my hips, that’s from wrestling, and allowing my hands to punch. That’s what I’ve been known for. It was my old manager who used to say, ‘Man, you look like Donkey Kong when you’re on top of people.’ And so I coined it one time and it stuck. And I feel like my ground ‘n’ pound is unparalleled with a lot of the fighters in the UFC. And that’s definitely something I want to pass on to the next generation.”
