By Carlos Arias
Orange County Register
It’s hard to imagine someone like Mark Munoz ever getting bullied.
After all, Munoz is a former NCAA national wrestling champion who is now one of the top middleweight fighters in the UFC who goes by the moniker “The Filipino Wrecking Machine.”
“In the eighth grade, I actually got jumped for my shoes,” said Munoz, who grew up in Vallejo and now makes home with his wife and three kids in Mission Viejo. “I was wearing the Jordan 3s, which are a vintage pair of Jordans.”
Munoz is very involved with his church and in the community. He has spoken at local high schools as part of his anti-bully campaign.
“I have a pair of (Jordan 3s) to this day,” Munoz said. “When I go and do the anti-bullying speeches at high schools, I actually wear those pair of Jordans and I tell them I got jumped for these shoes.”
Munoz said he felt victimized, helpless, ashamed and he felt like he couldn’t tell anybody about the incident. His friends sensed something was wrong, and they eventually got the whole story.
“It gave me a voice,” Munoz said. “Often times, people get bullied and they feel like they can’t talk to anyone. Those are the things that I like to communicate with them, the students. I say, ‘Hey, don’t feel like you don’t have a voice. You have a voice.’
“And then so many people just watch this stuff happen. They are just bystanders instead of standing up and saying, ‘Hey, that ain’t cool.’ Standing up for something you believe in is right. I talk to the kids about the people that are bystanders that can make a difference.”
Munoz, who owns Reign Training Center in Lake Forest, has been hitting the gym hard lately. He has a fight against Tim Boetsch at UFC 162 on July 6 in Las Vegas on pay-per-view. It will be his first fight in nearly a year.
Munoz hasn’t fought since being knocked out in the second round by Chris Weidman at UFC on Fuel TV 4 on July 11, 2012. Munoz had been on a four-fight winning streak, and there was talk he could be next in line to challenge UFC middleweight champion Anderson Silva. The loss and a couple of surgeries kept him out for nearly a year. His weight ballooned to 260 pounds, and he fights at 185 pounds.
“That whole year I had last year kind of threw me into a tailspin,” Munoz said. “Instead of concentrating my mind on positive things I fell victim to all the negative that was in my life. When that happened to me, I turned to food. If you watch the Austin Powers movies, one of his characters was Fat Bastard and I was just like him. I ate because I was sad, and I was sad because I ate. I couldn’t do anything because my elbow was still pretty bad. My foot was broken. I would go to the gym and I was sad because I was watching everybody working out. I mean, that’s what I do.”
Munoz eventually healed after six months of inactivity and it was time to cut out the hamburgers, barbeques and comfort foods. He said he stopped dwelling on the things that were out of his control.
“I think when people go through depression they don’t concentrate on the things that they actually have and are blessed with,” Munoz said. “Now, when I snapped out of it I was like, ‘You know what? I still have my health. I’m going to heal up. When I’m healed up, now I can go train. So right now I’m going to concentrate on what I can do right now to be able to benefit when I get back to training.’ I got control of the tailspin and I was able to start the upward climb. A little bit more, a little bit more, until now where I want to be. It was a hard climb.”
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