Aspiring professional fighter Lloyd Woodard upends Brian McGrath last week during a training session at the Dog Pound Fighting Academy in Missoula.
Photo by KURT WILSON/Missoulian
Caged rage
Appeal of professional no-holds-barred fighting turns man’s life around
Written by NICK LOCKRIDGE Photographed by KURT WILSON
loyd Woodard is no cupcake, but he’ll answer to it.
Woodard, a cocky 20-year-old from Missoula, is an up-and-coming fighter in the ranks of mixed martial arts, also known as no-holds-barred fighting. Last month, he won his first - and so far only - match.
Using the nickname “Cupcake,” Woodard fought in a Full Contact Fighting Federation bout in Klamath Falls, Ore., two Saturdays ago. His opponent surrendered in the first round.
It was Woodard’s first step toward a possible professional career in no-holds-barred fighting - a contest with few rules.
Fighters are often confined in a cage and are allowed to box, kick and wrestle their opponent into submission.
“I’ll probably have to think of another nickname,” says the 5-foot-11, 175-pounder. “But I was always told that nicknames choose you, you don’t choose the nickname.”
Woodard, like a cupcake, is a mixture of ingredients. He’s part wrestler, part boxer and part martial artist - especially Brazilian Jiu-jitsu. Combine those skills with an inherent street-tough attitude and some much-needed coaching and you get one tough … cupcake.
Woodard has been training in the area of mixed martial arts for more than a year. He works out with the Dog Pound Fighting Academy on Mondays, Wednesdays and weekends.
Matt Powers, co-manager of the Dog Pound, has been coaching Woodard, whom he likens to a little brother.
“The kid is a sponge, he really is,” said Powers, a former no-holds-barred fighter who now runs a home mortgage firm in town. “I’ll show him a move once and he grasps it.”
It wasn’t always so easy, though. The talkative Woodard really started improving when he got better at listening, Powers said.
“I would show him something and then he would do his own twist on it,” he said.
Powers, 35, still remembers meeting Woodard for the first time.
“He was a typical 19-year-old,” Powers said. “Brash, he ran his mouth a lot, but now his level of respect for everyone has really improved. He’s become the nucleus of the team.”
The Dog Pound Fighting Club has roughly 25 members, five of whom are looking at fighting in sanctioned matches this summer at the Missoula County Fairgrounds.
Powers is traveling to Helena on April 18 to sit before the Montana Athletic Commission and discuss the possibility of Montana holding licensed mixed martial arts events.
Woodard is the only Dog Pound fighter to compete in such an event. Most of the other fighters are college students, while Woodard is a chef at HuHot Mongolian Grill. Woodard’s schedule has allowed him and Powers to train more often than the others, making him ready for competition much sooner.
“He’s found something he’s good at and embraced it,” Powers said. “He’s able to do anything he wants. And right now this is what he wants.”
Woodard aspires to go pro in one of the no-holds-barred organizations like Ultimate Fighting Championships, King of the Cage or the Pride Fighting Championships.
“It’s my ultimate dream,” he said. “I want this to be my career. It’s pretty risky, but I’m trying really hard to be a pro.”
Most of the pro events are shown on pay-per-view. Woodard got hooked on the sport after renting an Ultimate Fighting Championship video back in high school.
“I watched it to see what it was all about,” he said. “As I was watching, I became a big fan. I went back the next day and rented out all the UFC tapes they had. I had the limit of like six tapes. I just really wanted to do it as soon as I saw it.”
The brutality of the sport - choke holds, arm locks, knees to the face - doesn’t scare Woodard. He likes getting hit.
“A lot of people don’t consider this a sport,” Woodard said. “They say `Oh, that’s barbaric. You fight in a cage.’ But if they ever came and watched me, they’d see I’m out there having fun.”
Woodard is always joking around with other Dog Pound members. He’s even developed into quite a teacher.
“I just tell people to chill out, have fun,” he says. “You’re not fighting for your life here.”
Woodard is a 2004 graduate of Hellgate High School. His first taste of competition came as a wrestler for the Knights. Then, as an 18-year-old, he tried Club Boxing’s Wednesday Night at the Fights. Woodard said he learned from both.
While boxing at the Wilma Theatre, he learned to fight in front of a crowd and he learned to stay calm when you get hit.
“If you’re worried, that drains your energy,” he says.
Woodard is scheduled to fight in the Club Boxing state championships Saturday in Bozeman.
In high school, Woodard developed a reputation as a tough kid who partied and picked fights. He says he learned to fight when he was younger, growing up on the “rough side of town” in Memphis, Tenn. Woodard and his older brother and cousin were always scrapping.
“I wasn’t raised proper,” he said. “If there was something in front of me, I’d probably steal it.”
After he and his mother moved to Missoula, it took Woodard a while to learn the right choices. His coach and girlfriend have influenced him to change the way he looks at life.
“The people I’ve met have made me a better person,” he said. “If I go out on the weekend and booze and get into a fight, what’s the point? Why would I want to hurt somebody?”
But now, pro fighting is all Woodard can think about.
“My perfect life would be watching (fight) videos and then go and fight,” he says. “My house will probably have a cage in it.”
His favorite fighter is Quinton “Rampage” Jackson, also a Memphis native. Like Woodard, “Rampage” likes to talk a lot.
Nicknames are common in no-holds-barred fighting. But Woodard balked at dubbing himself. He left that up to Powers and his Dog Pound teammates, many of whom accompanied him to his first fight on March 19.
Powers came up with “Pretty Boy” Lloyd after the notorious gangster “Pretty Boy” Floyd. Woodard didn’t care for it. During the 12-hour trip to Klamath Falls, Powers continued to torment Woodard about the nickname.
“You didn’t really put `Pretty Boy’ Lloyd did you?” Woodard finally asked before they reached town.
“No, no. I changed it,” came Powers response.
“Oh yeah, to what?”
“Cupcake.”
“All right. (pause) I can roll with that.”
Woodard said he even filled out the paperwork at his first fight with Cupcake as his name.
“When I beat the guy, his corner was like, `You just got beat by somebody named Cupcake.’ It was pretty funny.”
Woodard is scheduled to fight in a Full Contact Fighting Federation event in Oregon on April 30, but no opponent has been lined up so far.
Woodard believes he can contend for an amateur belt in the federation after his second fight and possibly turn pro after his fourth or fifth amateur match.
By this summer, Woodard wants to be training in Portland with Team Quest, which is run by another one of his favorite fighters - Randy “The Natural” Couture.
“I just want to keep progressing and training and get my skills better,” Woodard said. “Because I know I’ll be pretty good.”
“Lloyd has something that you can’t teach,” Powers said. “You can teach how to hit or how to take a punch, but you can’t teach how to be hungry, and he’s definitely hungry.”
Hungry enough for a cupcake.
http://www.missoulian.com/articles/2005/04/03/territory/territory01.txt
Cupcake is a great nickname!!! :icon_tong