A Fighter's Paradigm

By Yan Digilov     1/28/10 6:00pm

Just a few years after the climax of baseball's steroid era, in the wake of a constant flow of NFL players through federal prison and amid constant allegations of officials' game manipulation in the NBA, the integrity of America's Big Three sports has never been under more scrutiny. As such, it is little wonder that many fans have begun looking to alternative sports to feed their competitive sides. But while disc golf and bocce ball are still on the outside looking in, mixed martial arts has taken the nation by storm, generating a wave of excitement and bringing an incredible blend of varied martial arts into the living rooms of millions.

The Ultimate Fighting Championship, Strikeforce and World Extreme Cagefighting are, if not already household names, then quickly on the way there. And while the epicenter of the mixed martial arts movement in the United States still lies on the West Coast, the tide is moving into the neighborhoods of Houston and, remarkably, Rice University.

An ultimate competitor

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Reed Shelger is one of the millions disenchanted with the traditional Big Three sports.

"I don't get excited about traditional sports anymore; it is all about money," he said.

It is not an uncommon criticism. But it is a sharp one when one considers that Shegler, a Rice MBA student, has been the co-owner of the Paradigm Training Center, a wrestling and MMA gym, for nearly a year.

A longtime fan of the sport, Shelger was first introduced to the MMA community in his days as a wrestler at the University of California-Davis. It was there that he befriended fellow wrestler Urijah Faber, known now in the MMA world as The California Kid.

Immersed in the rich California mixed martial arts scene, Shelger, a 29-year-old native of San Diego, began a process that has repeated itself countless times among mixed martial artists in the United States, taking his already stellar wrestling background and combining it with the techniques of submission grappling and kickboxing.

This process is the way that the United States has produced nearly all of its top-tier MMA, but with the help of people like Shelger the first generation of fighters that has been trained in mixed martial arts from childhood is beginning to mature.

No place like home

Paradigm Training Center lies on the boundary of the city of Bellaire, nestled near the corner of South Rice and US-59. Surrounded by homes and neighborhoods, its location mirrors the complex melding of cultures often found in the city, but also highlights the pervasion of the sport into varying settings throughout the country.

The history of Paradigm itself also parallels the development of the sport. After finishing his degree at UC-Davis, Shelger came to Rice University for his MBA, and immediately looked for a way to extend his passion for wrestling. Shelger was introduced to Gordon Oehmig and George Parker, who were both assistant wrestling coaches at Houston's Episcopal High School, and together they opened the Houston Amateur Wrestling Association.

The non-profit organization gave free wrestling instruction to local kids out of a closed-down YMCA. But as a non-profit, Shelger and his partners were limited financially, and the trio decided to take a chance and open Paradigm in the heart of residential Houston.

"I have an entrepreneurial bug, and I had the opportunity," Shelger said. "I spent my entire summer internship working on the gym while some of my classmates where doing investment banking or working for big corporations."

With a solid group of experienced wrestlers, the business team decided to extend the gym to include training for mixed martial arts, kickboxing and Brazilian Jiu Jitsu - an obvious extension from a business point of view, but an unfamiliar introduction for the surrounding neighborhood.

The model worked and Paradigm flourished. In a short time, the gym gained respect around the city as a one-of-a-kind training facility, emphasizing world-class training in an environment that felt like home.

Cody Robertson, a junior at Lamar High School, began training at Paradigm when it was limited to the coaches and a mat, but that sparse interior was all they needed to propel him to Team Texas, a competitive wrestling club.

"Paradigm is the reason I qualified," he said. "I only credit them."

With a strong instructing crew of former Division I wrestlers, the gym's ability to incorporate high quality wrestling with an emergent MMA culture has set the Paradigm crew apart from other gyms in town.

"We didn't want to have a traditional MMA crowd," Shelger said. "We didn't want to have the tattoos and steroids. We want to have an environment where everyone feels comfortable. We are serious about what we do, but you don't walk into our gym and feel like you're in prison."

An emerging blend

To some, there is an obvious allure to combining the skills needed to snap an arm or suffocate an opponent with punches and kicks to the face. But while what you see on the UFC may seem extreme or even barbaric, Paradigm is a testament to the unexpected accessibility that the sport of mixed martial arts has for men and women of all ages.

As an emergent sport, mixed martial arts exposes newcomers to a tight-knit community, and, once exposed to the real side of the sport, many realize that the torturous images on TV are not the best characterization of MMA.

"It is particularly great for college kids," said Ravi Stewart, another MBA student at the Jones school. "For us that are used to a more chess match-like, analytical game, there is an advantage that we have to master the sport."

It is an emphasis on the analytic aspects of the sport that Paradigm uses to flesh out the brute force egomaniacs from the skilled martial artists.

Stewart had been trained in Kung Fu before coming across the sport of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu in 2003. Stewart began training at Paradigm after meeting Shelger through the Rice MBA program, which boasts an unexpectedly quality crew of martial artists.

"Ex-athletes will have the advantage of cardio and physicality, but the great part of Jiu Jitsu is that anyone can learn it," he said. "Because combat is on the ground, there is a steep learning curve. Within six months of training I will see people easily dominate much larger competitors that are new to the gym."

Breaching the divide

Because the sport can be used as a form of empowerment for women, a mental escape for martial artists or hyper-cardio work out, Paradigm is designed in a unique way to be more than just a gym for its members. But Shelger is quick to point out that those with backgrounds aren't the only ones welcome in the gym.

"It takes a little bit of courage to overcome the stigmas attached to MMA," Shelger said. "To just give it a shot, a lot of people are intimidated to walk in with a bunch of guys that are going to beat them up on the first day."

Getting people to shed those stigmas has allowed Paradigm to become one of the top gyms in the city. Their greatest feat has been to at once attract top experienced wrestlers from as far away from League City and Katy while drawing in the average bloke from just down the street. Merging the cultures of an emergent mixed martial arts scene with an ossified wrestling culture is still the task that the sport, on a national level, is faced with conquering.

"Other places are more geared towards just MMA or Jiu Jistu, but Paradigm is a good balance of all of it," Roberston said. "You meet a lot of different people."

The conglomeration of talent has served to place Paradigm in front of the MMA tide that is slowly making its way eastward. But more importantly, Shelger said he hopes that his gym is working to reshape the image of mixed martial arts as a sport open to people from all walks of life, not just the ones looking to spend 15 minutes locked in a cage.

For more information about the gym visit www.paradigmtrainingcenter.com.

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