By Shawn W. Smith
Keoni Koch’s introduction to combat sports wasn’t unlike so many others.
As he sat with his father, they flipped through the channels and landed on Enter the Dragon, the iconic Bruce Lee film from 1973. A young man at the time, Koch was mesmerized by the things an undersized Lee could do against his opponents.
“The first glimpse I saw of the movie was Lee up against Bob Wall. He did his infamous super-fast lightning speed punch. That moment I decided I wanted to be able to do something like that. I wanted to be like this guy.”
For so many kids, Lee was everything that was right with the world. He bowed before his matches, fought with respect, and was constantly an underdog who had to fight against the odds to overcome. What else could you ask for?
Koch was just one of so many children to become enamored with the martial arts icon. The film Enter the Dragon launched America into a deep fascination and addiction to the exotic world of martial arts. It was a far cry from the boxing and wrestling that had dominated their combat sports world for decades. Everyone and their mother wanted to learn a martial art in one form or another.
Unfortunately, small-town Iowa didn’t offer a lot of options. Koch tried Tae-Kwon-Do but wasn’t sold on it. Like his idol, he didn’t believe in a single martial art. He wanted to grow and mature and learn from all aspects of the martial arts.
Then he found the UFC.
“I happened upon a VHS cassette of UFC 2 shortly after it was released at the local Blockbuster years ago. At first I thought it was another Van Damme-esque combat movie about a tournament of champions. When I found out it was a real fighting event pitting real martial arts against each other, I thought “this is what I wanted.” I watched it the first time, I watched Royce mow through the competition. It validated, or would validate what Bruce Lee theorized about being a well-rounded fighter.”
He became completely engulfed in the sport, unable to miss an event and training at every chance he could. His stories of training on hardwood floors with his brother of UFC fame, Eric Koch, and rolling around in the kitchen of his friend’s farmhouse for hours at a time are like so many others who became enthralled with the sport in the 1990s. The seeds that Lee had planted in the early 1970s had finally sprouted in the form of mixed martial arts. His ideals of there being no single martial art to overcome all others had come to fruition. Thousands of young men and women across the world were learning and experimenting and pioneering the sport we have become so fond of today.
“I look back to when I started, it was me and a friend of mine sparring in a kitchen. They had duct tape on the floor, the smell of beer from the party he had had the night before permeating through the room. I was so poor. I was 18 and couldn’t afford gloves. He had a pair of disgusting, stupid boxing gloves and that was all we had. Luckily I was a southpaw and he was a standard so I had my jab hand and he had his jab hand and we would just chase each other around this kitchen that was probably structurally deficient at a farmhouse in the middle of nowhere and beat each other up. We’d grapple on the carpet and leave bloodstains all over the place. If carpet didn’t work and it was summer, we’d go out on the grass. If you’re truly passionate about something and you really have a deep desire and deep love for something, it doesn’t matter what you have. You are going to chase that dream.”
Now 33, Koch is 5-0 inside the cage with four submissions. This Friday, he will step in against his most formidable opponent to date, Brian Ortega. The bout will be for the RFA Featherweight Championship and his opponent is a 7-0 Gracie Black Belt fighter with submission skills of his own. It’s the kind of challenge someone like Koch salivates over. With most of his wins coming by submission, there’s a certain irony in the combatant who thrives on being a well-rounded competitor having the strongest facet of his fight game negated for the biggest fight of his career. To win, Koch will have to use all of his skills both mentally and physically to overcome the young, talented fighter in front of him.
“This fight is going to be a little bit different. Ortega is a Gracie black belt. I know he has the confidence on the ground. He’s accomplished in sport jiu-jitsu, he’s accomplished in MMA. He’s used his jiu-jitsu very well in MMA. I don’t think I’m going to have an enormous advantage over Brian (Ortega) on the ground. Also, I’m not concerned about it; if it goes to the ground, I don’t feel like I’m going to be jumping into triangles left and right. I have a different strategy for this fight than I’ve approached other fights.”
In much the same way his idol Lee insists that life is about the journey, Koch too believes the fight is just a small part of what he’s here to accomplish. He describes the bout itself as an experiment and the camp as just part of setting up the experiment. That’s not to say he is not 100 per cent dedicated to coming out victorious. Koch has a sly confidence in knowing that he has put together the most elaborate and developed training camp of his career and will have no excuses come fight night.
“I don’t really get nervous when I get in the cage. People have this preoccupation in Western society with winning and losing. Winning is very important to me, but I want to ensure that I’ve done everything in my camp to be ready to win this fight. I know how MMA is, I know nobody goes undefeated. If I were to lose a fight, I can take solace in knowing that this guy is the better guy.”
It’s a liberation rarely embraced by athletes. The philosophies of winning and losing on a field, a rink or on a mat have become so engrained in our culture that there is a God-like aura around those who succeed in sport, no matter how poorly they treat those around them. The athletes become so obsessed with winning that human obligations are thrown by the way side. The desire to be a good person or respectful to opponents is one at the heart of all true martial arts, and is what truly separates the martial arts from sport.
Koch insists he is not a fighter. A fighter enters training camps with the purpose of working towards the ultimate goal of being successful in a particular bout. For Koch and all martial artists, there is no fight. It’s simply a test of where your constantly expanding skillset is. There’s no stopping or starting, just a constant growth.
“I’m not a fighter. I’m a competitor, a martial artist. This is about the journey for me, this isn’t about the destination. I’m always seeking perfection and I’m never wanting or expecting to feel like I found it. When I go into the cage, I don’t want people to think I don’t care about winning. I want people to know I care about it based on the camp I put in. The camp I’ve put in says I’ve put my life into this; I’ve put my soul into this.”
And so on Friday night, it’s not six weeks of hard work that Koch takes into the cage with him. It’s not a training camp in his mind. This fight is the culmination of a 33 year journey and nearly 20 years as a martial artist in one form or another. The training camp is merely a honing of the skills Koch possesses and the focusing in on an opponent. It’s simply one more mountain to climb and one more chapter in his book. Win or lose, life or death, Koch insists he has poured everything into this fight and he’s okay if that’s not enough.
“In the next two or three years, I want to make the biggest and strongest run in MMA as I can to kind of leave my legacy. It used to be that I competed only to prove to my team that I knew what I was talking about. I would fight once and sacrifice time with my family. I look at it as the end of my life. I look at this coming Friday as potentially the day that I die. People think that’s really extreme but that’s the way I think a competitor should see competition if you really want to take it seriously.”
Photo: Facebook.com/keoni.koch
