Fighting with heart

If Josh Wright succeeds in his goal of becoming a mixed martial artist in the UFC it will be his heart that gets him there.

The 20-year-old Superior native has a passion for his sport that is contagious – a passion that comes out in the form of a small smile when he speaks about knocking out the head wrestling coach at Great Falls University in 11 seconds or the pride he shows when he said he hopes that his hometown will be with him on his journey to become a professional.

“I want to show that Superior can produce athletes too,” Wright said. “I hope to have the town behind me.”

Wright wrestled for the Superior Bobcats throughout high school and has always participated in contact sports – even as a child he recalls sparring with friends and family in the backyard he now uses to practice shadow boxing when he can’t make the trip into Missoula to train at Access Gym for the Dog Pound, a team of fighters he trains with.

“My older brother Mike lives in Washington and they have a training place down there,” Wright said. “He asked me if I wanted to get into it and I told him I would and it would be pretty exciting. But I didn’t really pick it up there – it really picked up last June when I started training at the Dog Pound.”

After Wright’s first fight he said he knew that MMA was his career, it was what he wanted to do with his life. It was at that fight that Wright was noticed by professional fighters and was approached to train at the Dog Pound.

Now MMA is Wright’s nine to five and he is doing everything possible to make sure that he is successful.

“I just focus on trying to get better every day,” Wright said.

“This is my career and I am just focusing on doing everything I can to get rapid improvements and getting my skills honed up. I know I can be there, I just need to keep working on it.”

Wrestling was essential to Wright in his transition to mixed martial arts – he said that

it has greatly helped out his jujitsu, which is something that is stressed when he trains five days a week.

But it was still a transition, and there were various skills that Wright had to relearn in order to be successful.

“Things you are used to in wrestling can get you in trouble in MMA,” Wright said.

“When you go to the ground, normally a wrestler is going to keep his neck up and when he shoots on you you are going to take down and have his neck exposed. But when you do that in an MMA fight somebody is going to wrap and catch you in a guillotine.”

The transition went well for Wright and he said he has made an effort to shake the stereotypes associated with a wrestler going into MMA.

“Fighters are always like ‘oh he’s a wrestler so he is only going to wrestle’ but myself, I like to think I can be more than that,” Wright said.

“I’m a wrestler, but I didn’t let that mean I wouldn’t get my stand-up good. A lot of guys think that some wrestlers don’t do stand-up, and some don’t, but I am not going to let that keep me from getting my stand-up good.”

Wright has fought in five amateur fights for various promotion agencies, including 221 Industries and Fight Force and Fusion.

Wright was supposed to have a fight on the 31st, but the venue fell through so he will fight on Sept. 18 for the Fusion championship.

“In October, I will also be fighting for the 221 belt,” Wright said. “Which is pretty awesome.”

Wright said that he was at a 221 sponsored fight two weeks ago in Great Falls, where two contenders squared off to face him for the belt.

When the fight was over, the winner was asked how he felt about facing Wright for the title.

“He said he was honored to be facing me,” Wright said.

“That made me feel good. It made me feel like I’m getting somewhere.”

There is also a possibility that Wright will forgo the fight in September in order to make his professional debut at King of the Cage, which puts him on track to start making money as a mixed martial artist.

“I’ll finally be making money,” Wright said.

“It kind of sucks being an amateur because you don’t make money, but it’s worth it. I think you do better. Once you’re pro you can’t turn back so I am going to make sure I’m ready.”

But at the end of the day, MMA is so much more for Wright than a paycheck.

It is a passion.

It is the thrill of a knockout blow that he said leaves him on cloud nine for days after.

“I get to use my heart,” Wright said. “It’s hard to explain the feeling, there’s nothing else like it.”