The first rule about fight club is you do talk about fight club.
As mixed martial arts — MMA — continues its fight to become America’s No. 1 televised violence supplier, so does the desire of its viewers to learn the secrets and techniques behind every guillotine choke and armbar submission.
But the increase in popularity also comes with an increase in demand for training.
So, two Santa Fe Community College students are offering an affordable training price for even the tightest budget: free.
Amateur kickboxers Trey Tucker, 20, and Jarrod Carmody, 19, started Gainesville Fight Club as a way to teach each others MMA style combat in between their full-time school and work schedules. The two of them meet several times a week in Carmody’s garage where Tucker has $500 worth of mats, gloves, bags and Thai pads.
Both fighters describe the club as a cooperative, where each fighter contributes something, whether it is equipment or training techniques, to the group.
“If you’re poor, we don’t care,” Tucker said. “Come in, man. You can use our gloves, and we can work something out. We can do car washes or sell GFC T-shirts. The whole point is to show there are other ways to do this than having to charge money.”
Tucker said his training suits the college lifestyle more than a professional system. Most professional training is geared for people who want to make a career out of MMA.
Jason Dolder, head trainer of the F2 Fight Team in Gainesville, said that while it’s admirable that Gainesville Fight Club is trying to offer free MMA training, his gym is far from ripping people off.
“There’s a reason why you pay professionals to teach you this stuff,” he said.
F2 Fight Team offers training for $55 a month, which, according to Dolder, is very affordable when compared with other MMA gyms.
Tucker thinks that even though he and Carmody are relatively new to MMA — their first organized fights in the discipline will be January — the training necessary to start out isn’t complicated.
Ninety percent of MMA training is relatively simple, he said. For the other 10 percent, such as Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and boxing technique, he said the group will pitch in money to hire a professional to lay the groundwork for that month’s training.
