About
Who would have ever guessed this skinny farm kid would end up being a competitive MMA fighter?…
While growing up on a small wheat farm outside of Great Falls, MT and attending a Catholic grade school, Aric had boyhood dreams of competing in some kind of fighting…
Watching Bruce Lee movies and the Rocky franchise only served to fuel this fire, as did watching pro-wrestling with his grandfather (see blog entry for details)…A short stint in judo as a high schooler proved to him that he needed something more to be able to excel…His thin bone structure and lack of muscular size led him on a quest to gain weight, so his attention shifted to working out in the gym, not newaza on the mat…
Over the course of time, the pounds came, but there was still the insistent voice inside his head telling him that he needed to fight…A few years of competitive powerlifting added mass to his frame, yet had not silenced that voice and only served to increase it’s volume…
An attempt at college football at Montana State University stepped up the combative nature, but experience plays a vital role in college sports and with NO high school football experience, the road was more than rocky…As were further forays in the pigskin world in Canada and then later in arena football…
Somewhere along the way, an entity called the UFC emerged and videotapes of the events made their way into Aric’s hands…
They served as gasoline for that internal fire, but another fork in the road existed…That fork was the world of professional wrestling…As stated in Aric’s blog, the blue light of the tv on Saturday nights beamed out the suspension of disbelief where the world of pro-wrestling resides…