In the valley of the monster heavyweights in mixed martial arts it’s easy to get overlooked when you’re a fighter who weighs less than 135 pounds.
Even if you’re Charlie Valencia who’s small but packs a lot of noise like an MP3.
Valencia is one of the top fighters in the lower weight divisions that are quickly gathering fans for their incredible combination of speed, agility and power in the world of mixed martial arts.
They’re all making noise now.
At five-feet, four-inches, Valencia wasn’t an instant invitee to Ultimate Fighting Championship. Instead he toiled in smaller MMA promotions with other fighters near his size.
“I just wanted to fight,” Valencia said.
After years of participating in high school wrestling, Valencia wanted more after graduating from Monterey Park’s Mark Keppel High in Southern California. So he wrestled at East Los Angeles College and later at Fresno State.
“I have a competitive nature,” Valencia says. “It did seem like the next logical step.”
Following college, Valencia still needed to fulfill that need for competition so the former wrestler who had performed at 118 pounds looked for a place to continue grappling and scrapping.
“When I first started fighting there were no different weight classes. I fought up to 165 pounds, but again, I was a pretty good wrestler coming into a new sport. It was easy for me to beat the heavier guys,” said Valencia (9-3) who often fought for free in the early days of his MMA career. “I was a jump ahead because many of these guys I fought had never wrestled before. But as the years passed people started getting more educated in the sport and training in different aspects. It made it difficult for me to compete with heavier guys.”
Now Valencia fights for World Extreme Cagefighting, a group owned by UFC.
Though the Ontario, California resident has earned recognition for his fighting prowess, the highly ranked bantamweight works daily as a truck driver for a local beer brewing company.
“I still got to work,” he says. “I don’t make enough to just fight.”
Experts feel that MMA fighters like Valencia are catching the fancy of fans and could one day make a good living by their fighting.
“When you see the smaller guys fight you realize just because they’re small doesn’t mean they’re less deadly,” said Don Leonard, a writer for a MMA magazine in California. “They’re so very quick.”
In the beginning of organized MMA when the likes of Royce Gracie, Dan Severn, and Ken Shamrock fought in an all-comers tournament, size, weight or fighting style didn’t matter one iota. It was whoever felt like testing their fists, strength or speed was warmly welcomed into a cage back in 1993.
But Gracie’s success also brought change. His use of Brazilian jujitsu ignited a rash of jujitsu schools opening up in the bigger cities. Plus, it didn’t go unnoticed that wrestlers fare pretty well too.
“I love competition,” says Valencia, who’s been involved in MMA since 1995. “I fought bare knuckle, fought in submission tournaments all mostly for free.”
Valencia has grown with the sport and continues to participate against the younger and stronger MMA fighters of today. Three of his losses have been to a trio of the best fighters in the lower weight classes.
“It’s no embarrassment to lose to guys like Urijah Faber, Brian Bowles or Cub Swanson,” Valencia offers. “You can’t fight today and not lose. But from every loss I’ve learned so much.”
Faber, who holds the WEC featherweight title, often invites Valencia to his training center in Sacramento.
“When I have a fight coming up I go up north and get great preparation,” said Valencia who grew up in Rosemead and East Los Angeles. “Urijah is a great fighter and helps me a lot.”
When not scheduled to fight, Valencia drives to New Breed Jiu-jitsu in Santa Fe Springs where he works with several dozen youngsters and MMA veterans training mostly in jujitsu and various aspects of the fast-growing sport.
“I love watching the next generation of fighters evolve,” Valencia says while a group of young men grapple on the ground. “And I still love to fight.”
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