Nov 19, 2008

 

The Pages in Between: A Cage Fighter’s Story
By Carole Firstman

They call him The Black Superman. His name is Carlton Jones. At six foot one and 255 pounds, this former linebacker is a lean, mean fighting machine—and current rising star in the ultra-macho sport of cage fighting.

To fans and followers of combat sports, Jones needs little introduction. Since taking up cage fighting less than three years ago, The Black Superman already has four wins to his name. He’s performed in Texas, Fresno, and Lemoore, and he’s in training for upcoming Palace Fighting Championship events at Tachi Palace Hotel and Casino later this year.

Jones is a tour de force to be sure—in more ways than one. Cage fighting is just what he does for fun. Jones is also a fire fighter for the City of Fresno, a City Councilman for the City of Tulare, a dedicated father, and a devoutly spiritual man. In a candid interview, this soft-spoken Goliath is an open book, revealing a surprisingly gentle nature.

And like a compelling novel, his multi-layered life story has a heroic main character. Our leading man is a complex figure who believes in the spirit of community and the power of living by example.

“I’m a team player,” Jones says when asked if there is an overarching theme to his life, “and I have a lot of teams. No man can do it alone.” His fellow firefighters, his City Council peers, even his opponents in the fighting ring—each group is a team, he says, working together and building relationships. “But my number one team,” he says emphatically, “is my family. My kids always come first.”

Plucked and Protected
Jones’s own childhood was an uphill climb. Hard knocks made him a go-getter kind of warrior, a kid who somehow emerged from his many struggles to find wisdom and a bit of clarity.

Born and raised in Tulare, Jones lived with his paternal grandmother from the tender age of four. His own family was riddled with drug and alcohol abuse, so he saw first-hand the downward spiral of addiction and its dismal, life-altering results. He credits his grandmother with giving him the stable home life and enduring love he needed to stay on the straight and narrow. “I never touched drugs as a teenager,” he says. “I was never even tempted. To this day I’ve never had a drop of alcohol in my life.”

Despite the many roadblocks he faced growing up, Jones has no regrets. “We’re all products of our environment. My parents’ decision to leave me with my grandmother turned out to be the best thing for me. Tulare is a tight-knit community, and my grandmother filled our home with love,” he says. “I was somehow plucked and protected by God. I wouldn’t trade my childhood for anything. Our past makes us who we are.”

Without much contact with his own father, Jones grew up relying on other male role models for guidance, often calling on his uncles and his friends’ parents. “I learned my compassion for people because of the help I got,” he says. As an adult he has a restored relationship with his father.

Now in his thirties, Carlton is a single father himself, with five kids—three of whom were adopted—ranging in age from four to fourteen. And when he’s not coaching his kids’ baseball, basketball, football, and soccer teams or working a 24-hour firehouse shift, this mountain of a man is often found in the City Council chambers sifting through staff reports and reviewing meeting minutes.

Jones is just the second black person in Tulare’s history to serve on the City Council. With African Americans accounting for only two percent of the county’s population and with half of Tulare’s black residents living below the poverty level, Jones’s position as an elected official is significant indeed.

His main concern is the fair treatment of all city employees and the open communication required for cooperation between the ranks. “This community gave so much to me when I was a kid,” he says. “Now I’m giving back.”
 
Long before taking a seat on the City Council four years ago, though, Jones began serving the community as a fireman. For the past fourteen years this gentle giant has been putting out fires, responding to emergencies, and keeping all of us safe and secure.

How does a firefighting hero become a cage-fighting star? Is there a connection? Or inversely, is there a discrepancy in motives or mission? “It’s just a sport,” Jones says with a disarming smile. “Pure sport.”

Out of the ring, he says, the other fighters are like him—regular guys who get along and go along. Many of his sparring partners and opponents have become close friends, in fact, even coming to his aid in times of need. But in the ring, it’s no-holds-barred; may the best man win.

Let the Games Begin
The sport of unarmed, man-to-man combat has been around a long time, predating it’s official inclusion in the Olympic Games of 648 BC. Like many long-standing cultural phenomena, this sport’s popularity and perceived legitimacy has waxed and waned through the centuries. Although it hasn’t been an Olympic sport for centuries, it’s definitely here to stay. Commonly referred to as cage fighting today, the sport’s official name is Mixed Martial Arts (MMA).

MMA is a full contact sport in which a variety of traditional and modern fighting techniques are used, including striking (kicks, knees, and punches) and grappling (throws, takedowns, sweeps, pinning holds, submission holds, and clinch holds).

Modern MMA first entered pop culture’s ring about fifteen years ago. In an effort to determine which martial arts disciplines would be most effective in real, unregulated combat situations, competitors of various arts were pitted against one another with minimal concern for rules or safety.

More recently, however, a few safety rules have been added. Biting, eye-gouging, and strikes to the groin are definite no-no’s. And the word on elbows, head butts, and spinal locks? The allowance of those maneuvers varies according to competition and organization. In other words: Even with rules, MMA is pretty much a he-men-only, all-out fight. No wimps allowed.

Want to see these tough guys in action? Join the crowd. “MMA is one of the fastest-growing sports in the country,” says Bruce Bucz of BB Advertising, the company that acquires sponsorships for local fight venues for one of the top-rated MMA event series in the nation—Palace Fight Champions, held in Lemoore. Televised via Comcast SportsNet, 3 million viewers from six western states are tuning in to catch the PFC bad-boys in action. “We’re lucky to have so many good fighters come from around the country to be featured in our own backyard,” says Bucz.

First Things First
When asked about his first MMA fight, Jones recalls two stories: The Would-Have-Been first fight and the For-Real first fight.

He was all set for what would have been his first fight—dressed and ready to go, hands taped. The Porterville event was under way, the crowd roaring. Jones was psyched, poised for action and ready for his turn in the ring. But at the very last minute he got a phone call that changed everything. His baby son had lapsed into seizure and was being rushed to Valley Children’s Hospital at that very moment.

“I apologized for about 10 seconds,” Jones says, and he was outta there, racing full speed from Porterville to Fresno. In taped hands, fighting shorts and all, he stormed through the hospital doors with Hulk-like authority, his only concern to find his 14-month-old son. “I spent five days in those shorts, by my son, in that hospital. I never left his side.” Today Jones’s baby boy is a healthy and happy four-year-old.

When he finally did enter the ring for the first time, Jones experienced the first-time jitters that all fighters know. New surroundings, the crowd’s frenzied cheers, the TV cameras, the lights, the expectations, the pressure—some new-timers say it’s hard to breathe and impossible to concentrate, let alone fight—and Jones was no exception. But every now and then there’s a guy who’s made to stand up in the ring, and then even a loss turns to a victory. And that’s Jones.

Winning a match is great, he admits, and he’s had his share in just a few short years, but Jones sees beyond the mere win-or-lose of a single event. The long-term camaraderie he’s developed with his fellow sportsmen over the years, the friendships he’s formed with the fighting-tribe with whom he trains and spars: the duel is in the ring, but the synergy of teamwork is all-pervasive.

Public protector, community leader, courageous sportsman, dedicated father. He’s The Black Superman, and he’s fierce. Fiercely courageous, that is, and fiercely himself. In his own words, “Don’t judge this book by its cover.”

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