Ultimate contradiction
Naperville resident, North Central grad lives double life as restaurant manager, no-holds-barred fighter
It's a Thursday night at Hugo's Frog Bar and Fish House in downtown Naperville. The bar brims with men and women drinking red wine, martinis or bottles of Heineken. Conversations nearly drown out the music provided by a pianist and guitarist as they play "Sweet Caroline" and other tunes so popular that patrons sing along.
Anthony Gomez, the tall, black-haired night manager, dressed in a dark suit and striped tie, strolls through to help servers close out tabs. He stops at tables, chats with customers and flirts with waitresses.
(Jonathan Miano/Staff photographer)
(Jonathan Miano/Staff photographer)
PHOTO GALLERY
• Ultimate fighter
He moves with a confidence expected from a man who knows he is handsome but doesn't always flaunt it. He is the kind of man who appears in control at all times.
This is "Professional Anthony," a persona Gomez has chiseled since moving to Naperville nearly five years ago to attend North Central College. It's a refined version of the Anthony Gomez who grew up on Chicago's far-South Side, around the corner from the violent South Deering neighborhood - an area that exists in oblivion to most people at Hugo's.
On this night, the customers have no idea Gomez spent the previous Saturday night trying to pummel a man from Poland while 2,000 people watched.
"Professional Anthony" does not show this side to the customers. Yet it is right there - appearing in the purple bruise below his right eye.
Yes, there are two sides to Anthony Gomez. And both of them can kick your ass.
It's Saturday night, Nov. 4, at the UIC Pavilion. In the depths of the arena, Gomez paces in the locker room.
His first professional mixed martial arts fight, more commonly known as no-holds-barred or ultimate fighting, is less than an hour away. A heavy, olive-colored parka covers his inside-out ratty white T-shirt and black knee-length basketball shorts.
His feet are bare, his hands concealed with blue fight gloves much smaller than the boxing kind. White tape covers his wrists. He circles the tiny room building a sweat while his coaches, Jeff Neal and Miguel Torres, watch.
Chris Hogan, another of Neal's fighters, sits on a chair looking dejected as he applies an ice pack to his swollen face. Gomez glides back and forth, often glancing at his reflection in the glass door of an unplugged refrigerator.
His fight against Krzysztof Kulak is the 11th of the 12-bout International Mixed Martial Arts Competitions event, dubbed the IMMAC Attack, the first sanctioned professional MMA event inside Chicago city limits.
Kulak, who is from Czestochowa, Poland, says this will be his 21st fight, but his record is listed at just 6-3-2. Either way, the 6-foot-2-inch, 194-pound Kulak boasts more experience than Gomez, who was 3-0 as an amateur, with none of those fights reaching the second round.
"I try to get in and out as fast as I can," said Gomez, who turned 25 on Nov. 7. "I want to leave the other fighter thinking, 'Man, what just happened?' I want him to feel robbed or cheated. I don't care how good he is - he's never going to get the chance to show it."
He wants this fight to be the same, though in the back of his mind he also knows he did not train enough. Like many American MMA fighters, Gomez holds down a full-time job. He works weeknights at Hugo's, often not leaving until after 2 a.m.
On Saturdays leading up to the fight, Gomez trains at Neal's gym inside Velocity Sports Performance in Naperville, where the smell of fresh paint hangs in the air as he endures intense two-hour classes under Neal's tutelage.
On Mondays and Wednesdays, Gomez drives the 100-mile round trip from Naperville to Highland, Ind., to train at the Torres Martial Arts Academy inside World Gym, which sits in a decades-old strip mall.
Gomez also squeezes in trips to Carlson Gracie Academy in Chicago's Old Town. The Gracie family is famous in mixed martial arts fighting for establishing the Brazilian jiujitsu style Gomez employs.
In between, Gomez works out at North Central College, where he wrestled and graduated with a degree in small-business entrepreneurship in 2005.
All this for a fight that will pay him just $500, with an additional $500 if he wins.
"There is something rewarding about this for these guys," said Ryan Williams, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Springfield who studied 30 Midwestern MMA competitors. "They get a thrill out of it that they're missing (elsewhere). They're not doing it for the money, that's for sure."
Although not part of the study, Gomez fits the profile Williams discovered: a well-educated former wrestler with a street-fighting background looking for a competitive high.
"It's kind of like expressing myself," Gomez said. "Not letting out rage or nothing, but showing people this is what I can do."
He's about to show that now.
People marvel at Gomez's composure. He could be getting ready for his shift at Hugo's rather than preparing for his first pro fight.
While the opening bouts were under way, Gomez was in Section 107 chatting with his girlfriend of two years, Darcy Keag, his Jeff Neal teammates and some of his Hugo's co-workers.
"It's rare to see somebody on his level without any pro fights be as calm," said Neal, who was unbeaten as a pro MMA fighter before becoming an instructor. "He's as calm taking an interview as he is before a fight. That's a trait of a seasoned pro - and it's not an act."
Gomez remains calm in the tunnel as he awaits his entrance into the ring. Just ahead of him, Kulak bounces from foot to foot and occasionally shouts a defiant "Ha!" Kulak is confident - cocky, actually - and ready for Gomez.
"He is an American - and Americans are good in football, soccer, baseball, but not in jiujitsu," Kulak said. "I choked a Brazilian black belt jiujitsu fighter my last fight in the first round. Fight over. It's no problem."
Despite cutting 17 pounds to make the 205-pound limit for the light heavyweight division, Gomez holds a size advantage. At 6-3, he is also slightly taller. But Gomez carries some extra weight around his midsection, a spare tire that the trim Kulak doesn't have.
The two are called into the ring - Kulak walking with another Polish fighter, Gomez led by six of his teammates, followed by Torres and Neal.
At the sound of the bell, the fighters approach each other. Quickly they go to the mat, the place Gomez says he is most comfortable. A former wrestler at Washington High School in Chicago and Kennedy-King Junior College before ending his career at North Central, Gomez uses a discipline that favors ground fighting over the stand-up brawling style most fans prefer.
"When I first started (seven years ago), people hated the ground fighting," said Torres, 25, an accomplished MMA fighter who holds five championship belts. "It was a blood sport. People wanted to see a knockout. They wanted to see somebody get kicked in the face. They wanted a spectacle, like back in the times of the Roman gladiators."
The Pavilion crowd, which includes some fans waving Polish flags, seems to understand what is happening while Kulak and Gomez grapple on the mat. They can see the fighters are well-trained in this technique, and they appreciate this side of the bout.
"It's not a bunch of wild dogs fighting," said Mike Murphy, a fan from Yorkville who is at the event with his wife and young son. "It's a real sport and there are a lot of people who are into it and we're real people. We're not animals."
As the fight continues, Kulak shows a dirty side, striking Gomez with an illegal knee to the chin while in a hold as the two move to their feet. Kulak is not penalized, and the first of the three scheduled five-minute rounds ends. This is officially Gomez's longest fight.
The UIC Pavilion atmosphere is nothing like East 130th Street in Chicago's Hegewisch neighborhood, where Gomez grew up. His family lived next door to South Deering and less than three miles from the Altgeld-Murray Homes, a housing project in Riverdale.
More than a dozen years ago, mixed martial arts fighting was taking hold of Anthony and his brother, Eric, now 27. They and their friends used to go at it in the front yard, imitating the Ultimate Fighting Championships they watched on TV. UFC was then a fledgling pay-per-view event born out of the Toughman competitions that had drawn the ire of politicians, most notably U.S. Sen. John McCain of Arizona.
McCain called the events human cockfighting and moved for them to be banned. Many states complied, including Illinois in 2004. The breaking point came in 2003, when Stacy Young, a 30-year-old mother of two, was killed in an unregulated Toughman fight in Florida.
The public perception that MMA fighting is the same as Toughman has been difficult to escape.
"You'd be foolish to think people forgot what happened," said Lee Keirsted, president of the Chicago-based IMMAC. "I'm sure people look at Toughman competitions and say, 'Oh, they're bad. Don't go.' But there is no relationship from what we're doing to Toughman."
In the Gomez front yard, UFC-like events were being staged after Eric watched Royce Gracie win the first UFC title in 1993. Aggressive fighting was nothing new for the Gomez brothers, who admitted to more than once getting into street brawls.
In one that Anthony recalled, Eric was confronted by a boy wielding a knife. He used the attacker's younger brother to shield himself and avert serious damage. The front-yard "shows" could appear equally hazardous to outsiders.
"We lived on a main street, and you'd see a group of teenagers just hanging out and then two kids fighting in the grass," said Jennifer Gomez, 26, Anthony and Eric's sister. "People must have been so scared to even come by our house."
The bell rings and Gomez heads back at Kulak. Gomez tires and as the round progresses he gets fewer chances to take control.
Kulak lands punches to Gomez's face as the ground work continues. At one point, Gomez gets on top of Kulak seeking leverage. A thick plume of blood spurts from his nose onto Kulak's back.
When the round ends, a beautiful woman wearing a bikini - more rumor than an actual covering - sashays around the ring holding up a sign for Round 3, passing the spot where Gomez's blood once pooled on the blue ring covering.
The blood is why Jennifer Gomez chose to stay home and not watch Anthony fight.
"It's nothing I'm against," she said. "I just don't want to see anything bad happen. Ultimate fighting is real blood with real wounds and real injuries. I don't want to witness that."
If it bothers Eric to see his brother bloodied, he doesn't say so. He chuckles at the thought he should be worried Anthony might get hurt or seriously injured.
"We grew up in a tough neighborhood," Eric said. "That kind of stuff happened all the time - and we weren't getting paid for it. My brother is no stranger to that. He's probably seen a lot worse, too."
Even with blood showing on Gomez's face during the second round, neither fighter appears in danger of serious injury. But Gomez continues to fatigue.
He finds a chance to put Kulak in a triangle choke hold, a submission move where the person on the ground uses his legs to choke his opponent. Kulak slips out of it, a result of his slick and sweaty torso and Gomez's growing exhaustion.
Later Gomez would say he needed another two seconds with the hold and the fight would have been over. Instead, it continues. Gomez goes to his corner after the round and sits down for the first time.
"I can tell when he's gassed or getting tired," Keag said. "I could tell that was happening, and I was thinking, 'Uh-oh.'"
Despite its rouge reputation, MMA fighting bears only a passing resemblance to those Toughman competitions McCain railed against. To hold the IMMAC Attack in Illinois, the state had to regulate it, which meant using the International Fighting Council as a sanctioning body.
"There had been some really egregious examples of problems with the sport," said Sue Hofer, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulations. "Contestants were getting maimed or killed, and we didn't want it to get to that in Illinois."
IFC President Paul Smith created a set of unified rules for the sport in 1996 that have since been adopted by 22 states, including Illinois. The state went even further than others, requiring a boxing ring rather than the usual octagonal cage, a tweak Smith opposes.
"The cage is the safest environment to conduct this sport," he said. "They went with the ring because that's what people are most used to."
Just how safe MMA fighting is remains virtually unknown. Only two formal studies, both published this year, have addressed the issue, although supporters are quick to say it is safer than boxing. As evidence they point out no death has occurred in an organized MMA event. They say that's because MMA fights have fewer rounds than boxing, no standing-eight counts and, in MMA, it is considered honorable to quit, or tap out.
Whether it is truly safer than boxing is up for debate.
"It's not as simple as a yes-or-no question," said Gregory H. Bledsoe, director of the Combat Sports Center for Safety and Research, who co-authored one of the studies. "In my opinion, the mixed martial arts are at least as safe as professional boxing. But it's a combat sport, so it's just a matter of time before there is a death."
After the event, one of the IMMAC Attack organizers will say, only half-jokingly, they achieved their No. 1 goal for the night - nobody died.
The pressure is now on Gomez. The first round was a toss-up, but most believe Kulak was the clear winner in Round 2. As the final round begins, Gomez's best chance for victory does not lie in the hands of the three ringside judges.
"Keep it on the ground, and you can win this thing," Neal shouts.
"You have to win this round, Anthony. You have to win this round," Torres tells him.
Two minutes remain. More blood appears on Gomez as the fighters grapple, but Gomez is not badly cut. It's still coming from his nose.
One minute remains. Gomez gets on top, flailing with two left hooks into Kulak's face. Blood is on Gomez's forehead, his elbow and his shin. The only blood on Kulak is from Gomez.
Time is running out. Gomez remains on top trying for last-second glory, but it never comes. The bell rings. It is over.
Gomez stands in his corner, his back to the ring, his arms stretched apart on the top ropes while Kulak dances around. Kulak points to an engaging blond woman sitting at a ringside table, and she smiles back.
The fighters move to the center of the ring for the judges' ruling, which is announced as a split decision. Judge No. 1 votes 30-27 for Kulak, Judge No. 3 rules it 29-28 for Gomez.
A slight pause and then: Judge No. 2 ... 30-27 ... Kulak.
The punches Gomez threw during the final minutes were not enough to sway the judges. Gomez himself said the punches smelled of desperation and it was like hitting Kulak with "wet noodles."
Back in the locker room Gomez rests, his face solemn. He voices frustration that his training regimen had not been good enough for the biggest fight of his life.
"I didn't think this day would come for a while - losing a fight because I was not prepared," he said. "I have two of the best coaches in the world in my corner, and I showed them nothing. I'm embarrassed, bro. I feel like a b----."
Gomez dissects the fight with others but his face shows none of the dejection found on Hogan after his loss earlier in the night. Gomez even jokes about his own swollen nose and battered ears.
"Hey, guys, do I look ugly now, or what? Ha, trick question. I never look ugly."
Gomez puts on a blue Cubs T-shirt, a pair of faded blue jeans and white tennis shoes and heads out of the UIC Pavilion.
It's Thursday night at Hugo's, five days after the fight. Anthony Gomez is finishing his shift, one of the few times he doesn't have to stay until close.
His right eye carries a bruise, which his girlfriend tried to cover earlier in the week with makeup. Other than that, nobody would know the other side of Gomez. They only know the side he shows to Naperville - the dignified and charming side. "Professional Anthony."
"I've been living in Naperville for almost five years now, so I feel like I've been playing this role the whole time, and it's starting to become me," Gomez said. "It's hard to say which role I'm playing now. I don't know which one is more in control."
He's far from abandoning "MMA Anthony," however. He says the only way he will stop fighting is if he sustains some type of lasting injury.
Another bout is already in the works. Neal is getting him on the next IMMAC fight card in February.
After taking a short break from training, Gomez since has returned to the Neal school, which recently moved from Velocity to Overtime Wrestling, also in Naperville. He promises training - or the lack of it - will not be an issue next time.
Gomez stands outside Hugo's, his tie removed and the top button of his white collared shirt undone. A nicely dressed couple - friends of Gomez - leaves the restaurant and start to cross Main Street. Gomez calls out to them.
"Hey, wait for me. It's a rough neighborhood - somebody might beat me up."
Contact Paul LaTour at platour@scn1.com or 630-416-5205.