For most people, the idea of getting into a fight is one that fills them with fear, something to avoid at all costs, because after all, why would you want to get punched, kicked and choked until you’re physically smacking the ground to get people to stop. There are however, of course, many people who do within sport, boxing has always been the most popular combat sport, with greats such as Muhammad Ali, Mike Tyson and Lennox Lewis all being household names in the past.
Other similar sports, until recently were overshadowed by boxing, but as time goes on, more people are into the likes of kickboxing, or especially, MMA. The crowning glory of the sport is the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) but the levels go right down to amateurs just starting out, trying to make their way up the pecking order, and one man who hopes to do just that is 23 year old Jack Winiarski.
Jack, from Coventry, is someone who has followed the rise in popularity of MMA recently and decided he wanted to be a part of it;
“I was never into combat sports growing up, I was more into my football and swimming. It was around the time of the London 2012 Olympics, and seeing Anthony Joshua’s rise in particular, that sort of made me start watching boxing.”
“This kind of ran into the time when Conor McGregor hit superstardom, I wasn’t really bothered about MMA before this, and he was one of the main examples of someone who transcended the sport into the mainstream.”
As he got older he realised that a career in football or swimming might not be possible, so upon joining university decided to let them go and take up MMA, but as a young sociable man, juggling intense training with an outgoing lifestyle that your first year of university comes with, it wasn’t an easy task. Especially when it was followed by a global pandemic.
“It’s been very difficult to keep disciplined when it comes to training. Not to be disrespectful to the level, but you don’t get financially compensated for missing out on things more than in the way if you were at the professional level. It’s definitely a challenge.”
“Then Covid came and threw a spanner in the works for that. It was really difficult to contact train if you weren’t already considered an elite athlete, which of course I wasn’t.”
Once things gradually opened, the chances to progress and excel started to come more often, albeit more behind schedule than he would have liked, and after a long wait, a few push backs and cancellations, his debut came in October of 2022 in Birmingham.
“It was an interesting build up, as it was my debut and it didn’t really have much media attention behind it, you go in as an unknown entity in that situation.”
“It wasn’t particularly overawing or anything because I didn’t feel nervous or like I was out of place, probably because I wasn’t. I’d played football at a decent level and swam at big events so it wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to.”
Despite not being nervous and no one having any expectations due to not being known yet, the same mystery surrounded opponent Elliot Winfield, who similarly had no footage of him to sift through in preparation for the fight, but Jack was encouraged when he eventually saw him at the weigh in and was met with a normal looking lad of a similar build and slightly younger age.
Once you move from sparring to the ring, fight plans can go out the window, all it can take is for you to get hit across the face for instincts to kick in and to lose track of your mindset before going in. This however, wasn’t the case;
“After the first few exchanges I realised it genuinely didn’t hurt. It just feels like a hard kick in sparring. It was obviously an adrenaline dump. I realised he wasn’t going to take my head off in the first 10 seconds which is ideal and you will get people like that. I think the first round was a good feeling out process and I definitely think I edged him out in the first round.”
“The second round was a bit hesitant, I would take space and give up space, which I think maybe showed my own inexperience a bit. There were also a few kicks to my leg that I didn’t really want to take, so I didn’t really close the range too much”
“Going into the third round there was a lot of wrestling after I lost my footing. I’ve rewatched it once or twice and he went for a sort of an anaconda choke, which I wouldn’t have recommended.”
“As I was doing my wrestling sit out, he tried to transition that into a Kimura, which allowed me to take his back. I was in totally the wrong position for him to do that, but again, that maybe showed his inexperience. I got the takedown from that and could kind of feel how tired he was.”
The euphoria of winning a fight like that after the amount of training is something you’d imagine is indescribable, but that’s what Jack had just achieved. Following his head coach trying to enforce how good the feeling was, Jack started to realise that the physical side of the fight had started to take its toll;
“Once we got backstage is when the swelling and pain started to come through, but it was a good pain, I’d got done what I needed to do.”
This wasn’t a one shot deal however, and Jack immediately began looking to the future, and how far he could go in the sport;
“I’m looking for an active 2023, I’m scheduled to fight in April, it was originally March but I’m nursing a couple of injuries right now. The aim is to get three or four fights this year, and obviously the plan is to get some finishes. If you can get that it means you can be more active.”
“If I win every fight this year, then the odds are that I’ll be turning professional and we’ll be talking about some actual money doing the sport, and from there, the skies the limit. As long as you take good fights and don’t pad your record, you develop and you meet the right people. The UFC has to be the goal.”
So after a couple tough years, Jack Winiarksi finally got his opportunity to shine and took it, and if things continue to go right, who knows what the future might hold for him within the sport.
Callum Hands Journalism 